COMMENTATOR (COMM.): Previously on Life:

NITAN DESAI: A socially progressive society would almost certainly have a reasonably high status for women.

JAMES WOLFENSOHN: Women are central to the whole issue of development. In most of the developing countries they do most of the work. Secondly, they guide the family. Thirdly, they educate the kids.

DR. NAILA KHAN: Violence against women is probably one of the largest causes of mortality.

COMM: Beijing, 1995 - and over thirty thousand women and men attended the largest meeting the United Nations has ever held - the Fourth World Conference on Women.

SPEAKER: This is a long awaited day... A milestone in the continuing struggle for women's liberation.

COMM: A hundred and eighty-nine governments committed themselves to policies to improve the lives of women - policies on poverty, violence, education, health, reproductive and sexual rights, and women as leaders. But agreement is one thing, action another. For this edition of Life, broadcasters from 26 countries contributed their reports on just what has been achieved - and just how far there still is to go - five years after Beijing.

For decades in Northern Ireland women and children bore the brunt of the conflict between Catholics and Protestant groups. But over the last five years women's work within the community - and their approach towards peace - finally gained recognition.

MAY BLOOD: Women united across the peace line because it was easier for women to cross and so therefore there was a great networking set up over the really bad days of the troubles. I live about two hundred yards from the peace line and the peace line's twenty three feet high and runs for eleven miles. Now, the problems on either side of that brick wall, right, were the same. If there was a incident on the Catholic side of the peace, we crossed the peace line and supported them very visibly. We were seen to support them, we didn't hide the fact we were visiting their homes, we didn't hide the fact that we were saying, hey, we're here for you!

And in the same way if anything happened, for instance when the Shankhill bomb happened here and we had a dreadful Saturday afternoon when nine innocent people were killed again the catholic people supported us. And it's all about being visible and standing together.

JANE MORRICE (Women's Coalition Party, Northern Ireland): There was a feeling that the future of Northern Ireland was going to be decided by men. And while twenty or thirty years ago this might have been acceptable, but in the 1990s people were saying, you know, hold it a minute - women have a right to have a-have a say in their future, particularly when it comes to peace making.

Have you ever in Northern Ireland seen a group of all shades of political colours sitting in one place at one time all ready to talk to each other? So in six weeks we stood for election and came ninth Party in Northern Ireland. We were all prepared to forget - maybe not to forget, but to leave our political baggage at the door and talk together and work together and plan together for a common approach, for a common future, for peace.

MONICA MCWILLIAMS (Women's Coalition Party, Northern Ireland Assembly): The press conference has been called this morning to launch our manifesto - Experiences are universal. And that's what has changed now that women have moved on, they've fought for their right to be there. They've gone out and competed and now they need to lead. And I think that that's what we did when we were in the negotiations - and afterwards when we went on into the elections -is to be able to show that we are as capable of competing and governing and leading as, as the men have been. As the normal, who were the normal established constitutional parties. COMM: But in other countries around the world, women are still fighting for their share of leadership roles.

DR NAFIS SADIK (Executive Director, UN Population Fund): In some countries the leadership is really trying to, you know, be more articulate and speak out. But that's not uniform and so I think that we must make sure that all countries all start to give some, you know, strong support at the leadership at all levels: religious; political, et cetera.

COMM: Nigeria's population of a hundred and twenty million elected a democratic government in 1999. But even though women played a key role in the elections, they voted, but weren't voted for. Only fifteen out of four hundred and sixty nine members of the government today - three out of a hundred - are women. Temi Harriman is one. She represents Warri City, in the oil rich Niger Delta - a region where the wealth of natural resources, unemployment, and environmental pollution sit uncomfortably side by side. But Temi Harriman's success did not come without a fight.

TEMI HARRIMAN (Federal House Representative, Warri Constituency): My election was in February '99 and I contested against two men one in PDP one in AD - and everything went well. Then suddenly we heard that the results from Warri and certain other areas in the Delta State were being suspended for security reasons. They refused to declare my results for the next three weeks - by this time I had my certificate I had won and published it in the newspapers. Finally INEC National were forced to declare and accept that we had won and finally we were declared winners. Immediately we were taken to tribunal by the people who had lost. My election was annulled. So we then had to go to the court of appeal and the day before the swearing in at about four o'clock I got my judgement. I think that there's an ego problem here - it must have been very difficult for them to accept being defeated by a woman and by a very wide margin.

COMM: Only five countries around the world today have met the Beijing conference's goal of having one out of every three government positions held by women. But in Fiji women are now making significant progress in areas of work traditionally regarded as male-only. In 1999, former Director of Public Prosecutions, Nazhat Shameen, became Fiji's first woman judge.

NAZAHT SHAMEEN (Judge Justice): When I was first admitted I think there were only five or six practising women lawyers in Fiji and now seventeen years later, a large number of women are not only becoming lawyers but are appearing in court and some of whom have reached quite a high level of seniority. So that is very positive because I think with, with more women in the legal profession I think the legal profession becomes more representative of the community.

COMM: In other professions, women are still struggling for recognition. Inspector Sera Bernard is one of just two senior women police officers in the country.

SERA BERNARD (Inspector, Fiji Police): Throughout my service training, my male counterparts they treat us as a woman but not as an officer. With the promotions we were not recognised that we could take up leadership or management within the force. We are not that strong. But with dedication and hard work we can also achieve what a male officer can achieve.

COMM: But women in New Zealand have found away to break into formerly male professions in the business world - through new technology

EMILY LOUGHNAN (New Media Producer, Clicksuite): he television industry that I have come from was er quite hierarchical. And I'd come through the state broadcasting system which was a very traditional male dominated management system that I'd been a part of. And in the new media industry it was kind of like pioneering days, starting from scratch; sewing the seeds. But the really amazing thing about the new media is that your - because you don't have a broadcaster to broadcast your projects, you're doing things that are commissioned for clients. It might be for a museum, it might be for a corporate client; or it might even be something um that we've initiated which would be a piece of product or a project that we would sell or get royalties from. So we are very much in control of what we do and that makes a big difference.

MARIAN HOBBS (NZ Minister for Broadcasting): If I have some fears about technology is that it is because some people become information rich and others are information poor. And poverty comes from two areas: one is they don't get access to the new technology, they don't get access to the computers, they don't get access to the digital cameras they don't get access to the way of transmission of the programmes of the future. So it is very important that that is accessible to people.

CAPTION: Brazil

COMM: Education is the entry ticket to the new digital society. A third of all internet users have at least one university degree. In Brazil, just five out of every hundred people own a computer. The rest of the population live very different lives.

COMM: Gabriela Silva is sixty five; she collects waste paper and cardboard for a living and is bringing up her three granddaughters on her own.

INTERVIEWER (Translation): Where do you go with your cart?

GABRIELA SILVA (Translation): Out there!

When I left my husband I was pregnant. Nine months after I left him my boy died of gastritis. I was left alone in this world, working by myself.

Young man don't you have any paper? I was told to come here this morning.

All of us must struggle to live - you won't get anything without struggling.

SCRAP MERCHANT (Translation): Two and twenty for all the material she's brought. Two reals and twenty cents.

INTERVIEWER (Translation): Do you think your granddaughters will end up living the same way you do?

GABRIELA SILVA (English translation): Ah, young man, I pray to God not, because I have suffered a lot. I pray to God that they get a better job. They can work and have a better future I hope they won't end up like me.

COMM: Of the almost one billion illiterate people in the world today, two out three are women. And women still make up two-thirds of the world's poor. Over last five years, poverty among women has actually increased.

PART TWO

COMM: The ability to chose, to have a say in their future, is also fundamental to young women - especially when it comes to deciding when, and if, to have children. According to the UN, more than five hundred million teenagers become pregnant every year.

NAFIS SADIK (Executive Director of UN Population Fund): In the case of teenage reproductive health issues - or adolescent - these are extremely sensitive. It's a common thread that runs around the world, it's not like the industrialised countries are now above it and, and have programmes that allow information and services. In the case of the UK teenage pregnancy is extremely high compared to the rest of Europe and, you know, the Government has been trying to introduce sex education programmes on responsible behaviour, based on the experience of some of the other European countries. And I've seen that some teachers refuse to teach them; some of the parents have objected.

Same kind of resistance that you get in some developing societies. Parents say that, you know, our teenager doesn't need this information - it will encourage her or him to have sexual activity.

CAROLINE: I was fifteen when I had Dean, I was fourteen when I fell pregnant. I never really faced reality until I was about six months. And then there was about a month working myself up to tell Mum and Dad, and they were just really shocked and they were upset that, again I was only just turned fifteen, and I was pregnant and I was having sex at such a young age, I think. I think it just disgusted them.

COMM: Many teenage mothers leave school with little or no formal qualifications. On the outskirts of Edinburgh in Craigmillar a school-based project - the first in the country - is helping young mothers continue their education, giving them more opportunities and choice.

SHARON: I was in a long-term relationship - I'd been with my partner since I was twelve. When I was 16 I decided I wanted a family of my own - why, I don't know! I think it was 'cos I'd been babysitting, you know. And I thought babysitting was pretty cool stuff, you know, putting bairns in their beds, have a party kind of that. I just thought it would be like that for me. But it was nae - obviously!

When I was at school I wasn't encouraged you know. It wasn't smart to be smart when I did leave it I didn't have any qualifications I had nothing. I suppose I thought there was nothing else I could do - but be a mum.

MELANIE: Girls see you with a buggy and that and think - oh, that looks good, I'd like to have one! But it's not like that. It's very hard and I wouldn't advise anybody at this age to go and do it. Tell them to wait until they are older.

COMM: The whole concept of women's right to choices in their lives - of their autonomy - is still novel in many parts of the world. Women are still regarded as chattels - possessions - to be bought and sold by men and violence against women is still seen as just a minor infraction of the law.

SOPHIE BOYERS (Founder and co-ordinator 'Women and Vision'): I ran down to the police station one morning at three am when my husband beat me up; and when I got to the police station I opened a, a charge against him and the guy said to me, the policeman told me, "I can arrest your husband but it's going to be in exchange for sex".

NAOMI WEBSTER (Advocacy Manager, Tswaranang Legal Advocacy Centre): Secondary victimisation means the lack of investigation; the lack of proper follow through; the lack of providing witnesses, you know, with protection; the lack of getting information from victims in terms of strengthening the case; the inadequate training that is given to police which makes them insensitive to rape survivors. And I think just also just generally about not just the police but magistrate, the prosecutor, the interpreters of the police.

ANCHORWOMAN (South African TV news report): A special police team is investigating the brutal abduction, torture and rape of a twenty-four-year-old woman. Fearing for her safety she's being moved to an undisclosed location. Houghton MEC for health and safety paid her a visit before she was relocated.

NORMULA MOKONYANE (Safety and Security MEC): We have to make sure that we do not allow such barbaric acts actually being orchestrated in such a peaceful and democratic country that have. We do have laws!

COMM: Makhosi knew her attackers. She'd told the police she'd ended the relationship with her boyfriend but he'd come back with his friends.

MAKHOSI (Translation): They put me in the boot of the car and took me to a wooded area. And they tied my hands and began raping me. When they stopped raping me they started hitting me. I don't remember much of what happened next. I didn't regain consciousness until I woke up in hospital seven days later.

MARIETJIE FOURIE (Assistant Director, Crime Prevention Directorate): It's time to get involved, each and everyone of us! It is time that if the neighbours beat each other up to go there and say, stop it - you're not going to allow this to happen! If there is a rape, to report it and if the Criminal Justice system is victim-friendly we won't have a problem.

DOREEN MKHIZE (Translation): Now when she goes to hospital -you see, they've given her a pass out so that she can come home to visit - my heart is very painful because if the culprits see her again they'll kill her. They're in Johannesburg at Park Station.

MAKHOSI (Translation): They, the police, came when I was in hospital and they told me they had found one of the guys. But they haven't taken me to identify him. That was the last time I heard from them. I'm angry with them because they don't seem to be doing their work. They should have caught all those guys last year. I'm sure they are just sitting there doing nothing.

COMM: In South Africa only one in twenty men tried for rape are convicted. A UN report shows that around the world, one in three women have suffered physical abuse from someone close to them. But violence against women isn't only physical. Women's second class status, and lack of legal protection, make them particularly vulnerable to abuse. In Central and Eastern Europe ruthless criminal Mafias have taken advantage of collapsing economies to traffic in drugs, alcohol, cigarettes - and women for the sex industry. Sexual slavery has increased dramatically in the five years since Beijing. Virginija's story is all too common.

VIRGINIJIA (Translation): I'm an orphan. It happened after I graduated from school. I wanted smart clothes and something more. It was then that the offer came of employment in Germany and I agreed. Two guys came to have a look at me; they seem to be pleased with what they saw. They told me I would have to go to Kaunus to pick up my visa. They promised everything would be fine after that. So I said OK, I would go. They took me somewhere, I've no idea where - just took me somewhere. From what I know it was Tel Aviv: they called that place 'Makhon'. It's the Jewish word for brothel. A man came up to me in the evening and told me I had to have sex with some men. I refused to begin with - then he hit me and I had to obey. What else could I do? They kept me locked in like a prisoner - I wasn't allowed to make phone calls either. Later they told me they'd paid ten thousand dollars for me which I would have to work off.

ONA GUSTIENE (Support Centre for Missing Persons' Families): The girls working abroad are deprived of all their civil rights. Illegal immigrants are almost slaves. But when the girls return the situation changes again. In theory there is ground breaking legislation that states that traffickers can be sued for damages - both materially and morally - caused to the victims of sexual abuse, but in practice this is not done because of lack of money. It's only possible to bring charges against the actual person who is involved in trafficking. Up till now none of the traffickers have been prosecuted.

COMM: According to the 1999 Human Development Report there are five hundred thousand women being trafficked into Western Europe alone - a business worth seven billion dollars.

NAFI SADIK: Fifty percent of migrants are women and women are much more subjected to all kinds of violence and trafficking in these situations than are men are. And you see these examples in several countries around the world.

COMM: And trafficking doesn't just happen in Central and Eastern Europe. In Sweden, the law itself means immigrant women are vulnerable to abuse. When foreigners marry Swedish nationals, they're only granted a resident's permit for one year at a time. If the marriage fails before two years, the foreign partner is deported.

AMY NDATE NDAO (Translation): I've got a friend a Swede - she has a dance school, a place to teach people how to dance- and it was during that time that I met my ex-husband. I loved him but he has destroyed my life. The day came when he told me you must go to Munskillnadsgaten and work as a prostitute, you must go out and earn money.

MARGARETA ROSENGREN (Crisis Centre for Women): Amy rang the crisis centre and wasn't sure at all she would get any help because she had been - was married to a Swedish man who had told her nobody would help a black woman; no-one would help a Negro slave.

AMY NDATE NDAO: In May 1998 he threw me out and I was outside in just my underwear - with nothing. But when he saw the police from the balcony he ran and opened the door and then I was able to get my jeans and a T-shirt.

COMM: Ulla Hoffman, from Sweden's Left Party, is a lobbyist for immigrant women's rights.

UMA HOFFMAN (Translation): As the law stands, all the man has to do is ring the Swedish Immigration Board and tell them he has thrown his wife out. And then the Immigration Board is there to ensure that the woman does not receive a residence permit. The man is then free to try the next woman and the next.

COMM: After Amy appealed against the decision to the Alien Appeals Board, her ex husband even tried to put pressure on the board to back him up by writing to them direct.

MAN READING FROM LETTER (Translation): "Dear Authority, as Amy's former husband I can not make any recommendations for her to be granted permanent residence in Sweden."

AMY NDATE NDAO: But, if I had agreed to prostitute myself, and be with him then there wouldn't have been this problem. But I refused to do this and that's why he threw me out - because I refused to prostitute myself. I have reported him to the police several times. He treated me like an animal.

COMM: On July 1st this year a new law comes into effect which will make it easier for victims of abuse like Amy to remain in Sweden. For Amy, though, it's probably too late. She's steeling herself for the day when the Swedish Immigration Authority puts her on a plane back home.

NAFIS SADIK: I think you need action at two levels: one is the change in the law; but the more important action - because that will prohibit, but in, in to prevent it - is really changing the attitude in the, the minds of people. And that's where you need leadership, you need active advocacy and, you know, civil society groups to speak out about these issues. You need women themselves to speak out but you need also men to support that change.

END