Women’s Conference

The U.N. World Conference on Women in Beijing reveals just how naive some people are. If these ladies wanted to see the Great Wall, they should have traveled there as tourists. But, since they wanted to gather in order to have a “free and open dialogue,” why, oh why, did they choose a place like China where a repressive, paranoid and irrelevant regime is trying to hang on to power at all cost? What did these women learn about their hosts upon arrival that they did not already know before leaving home?

AVIK GILBOA

Hollywood

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Robin Wright’s revealing essay, “For Women Around the World, Survival Is Problem No. 1” (Opinion, Sept. 3), provided new insights even for those of us who thought we understood the problem in its entirety.

Nevertheless, Wright revealed only part of the story. While drawing examples of abusive behavior against women from countries all over the world, she omitted violence against women in our own United States!

The murder of baby girls and the mutilation of women’s genitalia do evoke horror, but are they less evocative than the brutality against women and children that we document daily--even hourly--in our country?

Every 15 seconds a woman is battered in this country. Family violence kills as many women every five years as the total number of Americans who died in Vietnam.

AGNES G. HERMAN

Lake San Marcos

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* Currently in America, we often hear decried the fact that both parents in a family must work in order to make ends meet. We also read that absentee parenting is not at all good for the children of two working parents. Benazir Bhutto states that “empowerment [for women] is attained through economic independence” as the only way to eliminate discrimination against women (Commentary, Sept. 1).

Since I think she means working outside of the home to achieve this, I would hope that the participants in the conference on women in China seriously consider how to mitigate the concurrent effect on children and, hence, society. Men and women both need guidance, without which we may inadvertently write off two or three generations of kids while we adults sort out our own priorities.

FORREST BONNER

Huntington Beach

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* Bhutto considers empowerment through economic independence as the solution to end discrimination against women. However, this is only partially true. Social customs and religious dogmas are the primary reasons for subjugating women.

In Islamic societies men can marry four wives but women cannot have four husbands; a man is able to divorce a woman by saying talak three times, but the same privilege is not accorded to women; a woman is put to death for committing adultery while a man is allowed to go free.

Islamic fundamentalist societies will not allow women to have equality with men, whether they are citizens of rich countries like Saudi Arabia or poor countries like Pakistan. Unless women are accorded equal protection before the law despite social customs and religious dogma, women will always be second-class citizens.

MAHENDRA DAVE

Tarzana