To Make A Difference

Artemis with the Nelson Mandela statue at the UN

"This was the 3rd year for me to actually be AT the CSW in New York. Every year, I wonder, before I go, but also when I am there, whether it is useful that I am at the CSW in person. But then I get to work, as a lobbyist and poser of hard questions (a good Jewish tradition I share with the queen of Sheba) and I find that yes, it actually does make a difference that I am present.

Come to think of it, every Dutch representative of any of the NGOs that travel to the CSW, or are at any of the other meetings in the Netherlands (UN NAP1325, to name just one) knows that it makes a difference I am there. They also know that I will manage to grab the microphone and ask my thought provoking questions, make government officials and cabinet members of the Netherlands, the Nordic Council, Mexico, or any other government side event that I walk into, THINK. Think whether their idea of Women’s Work, Women’s Place in the World, Women’s Contribution to us all, should not be viewed differently.

Also, I make suggestions on how to change the world for women. Many suggestions, and over the years I have seen a number of those suggestions grow into regulations, law, and in general ‘the way we do things’. This is slow work. Patience is definitely what is necessary. Thankfully, I always have had the Long View and the calm to wait it out, and to never despair on the slow pace of change. Even if I do not like that slow pace.

Next to that, being there in New York, or really anywhere at all, I build relationships. With the cabinet member in charge of Emancipation of various countries, with the diplomats and negotiators that work at the Dutch embassy to the UN, with ambassadors, certainly. However, also with random people, like the women working in the lobby of the building of the Dutch ambassy, the women/men that bring the coffee, with people I meet in the bus, the street, the security guards of the UN. Some of these relationships are flighty, one or two time encounters, still all of them are informed by me why I am here in New York, what the CSW is, what women hope to accomplish, what all those NGO-representatives try to change for the better. As I do believe, that we all are supposed to be ambassadors to women’s rights, where ever we are, whomever we meet.

I intend to be at the CSW69 – the Beijing+30 year - and will be working diligently, with about a hundred representatives of NGOs and the Government here in the Netherlands, and possibly in Europe, to prepare for that next meeting’s Political Declaration.

I will do what we all strive to do: I will make a difference."

Written by Artemis Westenberg,
General board member IAW
President Netherlands Association for Women’s Interests, Women’s Work and Equal Citizenship

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