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Marianne Maloney from Maine, wearing a muscle shirt and shorts, stood smiling beatifically beneath the Older Women's Tent. She had just won a contest sponsored by the China National Aging Committee, the host for the day. But the Chinese mistress of ceremonies explained that Marianne had to perform--sing a song, dance, recite a poem--in order to claim her prize. So Marianne began to sing. And to everyone's surprise it was a song in Chinese! Many Chinese in the audience of 200 began to stand; she was singing the Chinese National Anthem. Eventually Marianne received her prize, a handpainted handkerchief from Tientsin. "Oh, how wonderful!," she said, "I was born in Tientsin 79 years ago!"

Surprising connections like this--across cultures, distances, and time--kept happening to women during the next ten days at Forum '95, the independent non-governmental event held in conjunction with the Fourth World Conference for Women held in Beijing.

On a hill above the Beijing suburb of Huairou, the Older Women's Tent of sweeping yellow canvas welcomed over 2,000 women from every continent. This Tent was one of seven "diversity tents" designated for special issues, such as disabled, indigenous, refugee, youth, and lesbian women. Held from August 30 to September 8, the Forum attracted some 30,000 participants.

Over the subsequent days, older women accomplished a lot. For the first time, older women succeeded in putting aging concerns on the international NGO agenda. They built a strong Older Women's Caucus that met daily at both the Tent and the Government Conference in Beijing. And they launched a worldwide network of support and solidarity.

Much earlier in the spring, organizers of the Older Women's Tent knew that the movement was gaining strength in important new ways. European older women's organizations had met in the Spring at the World Summit for Social Development in Copenhagen at a meeting called by Irene Hoskins (AARP). Here several national older women's organizations from major European Community coun- tries agreed to create a network among themselves. They quickly moved to schedule meetings, adopt some common objectives, get financial support, and, most importantly, a mailing list of organizations devoted to women's aging issues. Mamo MacDonald of Ireland and Elizabeth Schlater of the United Kingdom were among those who shaped this emerging network.

Later on in the summer, Tent organizers learned that approxi- mately 1,500 women who had registered for the NGO Forum had checked off aging issues as their primary interest. One-half of these women were Japanese! The other names were from many countries, both in the North and the South. Aging had gained a broad new constituency beyond North America and Europe.

Huairou confirmed that aging issues had wide appeal. Older women from two dozen countries--Uganda, Azerbaijan, Australia, Kuwait, the United States, Mauritius, Germany, Korea, Ghana, Japan, Netherlands, New Zealand, and Finland--offered more than forty workshops. The comfortable, even cozy, Tent headquartered the Older Women's Caucus and served as a place to talk informally about women's concerns in later life. One visitor, a 76 year old Kenyan woman, brought her 14 year old granddaughter, hoping the meeting would awaken in her a sense of unlimited possibilities.

Each day, women crowded under the Tent to hear speakers and hold debates on a wide range of issues--remarriage in old age, fit- ness, loving one's older body, affirming valuable traditions, nurturing ties to younger generations and loved ones, and pro- tecting the environment for health and well-being.

The Tent coordinators, Virginia Hazzard and Irene Hoskins (AARP) and I, had invited the China National Aging Committee to be co- hosts. Thanks to Mr. Wang-Zao-Xua, Chair of the National Commit- tee, a number of staff and scholars, led by Ms. Song Yuhua, pre- pared a day of lectures on critical aging issues. While Chinese television cameras whirred away, the experts and elderly them- selves held forth. Ms. Hu Suyun described an Old Age Service Center at Dapu, a Shanghai neighborhood where 22% of the popula- tion is over 60 years old. The Service Center offers day care, short-term temporary care, and nursing home care. Names of persons over 90 years, mostly women, go on an "especially-cared- for-list" and have a staff visitor who determines their needs each month for service and equipment. The Elderly Communication Center, which older persons manage themselves, organizes exercise programs, visits to lonely elderly, jobs programs, and much more. Funding comes from the government, from economic enterprises, from the Community Service Development Fund and the Fund for Those in Economic Difficulty.

Another scholar, Ms. Xie Heng, described the recent emphasis on encouraging older persons to re-marry. Long taboo in Chinese society, the new program aims to unite couples to overcome loneliness, reduce the costs to the state, and end adult child- ren's responsibilities for caregiving. Opposition often comes from adult children who have a cultural veto power over the re- marriage. Most of the audience at the Older Women's Tent ques- tioned why such marriages would help women. The scholar acknowl- edged that a survey of 45 marriage brokers in Beijing revealed that 87% seeking a partner in old age were male!

That evening Chinese national television carried a program on the Older Women's Tent and the various papers and debates held that day. A hundred million people may have watched the show!

The Women's Group for Improvement of an Aging Society in Japan, led by Professor Keiko Higuchi, Tokyo Kasei University, hosted the Tent on another day. Throngs of Japanese women surged into the Tent revealing their keen interest. Topics included an exploration of isolated rural older women, the deadly effects of the Kobe earthquake on elderly women too weakened to leave their collapsed houses and apartments, even the fervent pacifism among Okinawan older people who have lived under military and occupation forces for most of their adult lives. Running through their analysis was a recurring theme--the deep unfairness of a cultural tradition that expects elderly parents to be cared for by the wife of their eldest son.

Indigenous older women, Winifred Pele Hanoa, a Hawaiian Kapuna; Nana Apeadu, a Ghanaian tribal elder and chief, and Pauline Tangiora, a Maori from Australia explained their difficulty in conceptually separating themselves from their communities, either on the basis of gender or age. While acknowledging the leadership that elders often have in indigenous communities, they were reluctant to think of themselves apart from their communities. Recent French nuclear tests in the Pacific Ocean enraged them, endangering their health and threatening fish supplies, their primary source of food (particularly for the old) and jobs.

Hosts on other days developed similar themes. The United States' Older Women League, led by Lou Glasse and Susan Kinoy, highlight- ed their advocacy activities and distributed stickers with the slogan, "Aging to Perfection," which turned up everywhere at the Forum. Anne Marie Sharman of Help Age International offered a panel about its far-reaching self-help programs in many develop- ing areas of the world. The Older Women's Network Europe and the recently organized Network in Australia hosted a day that re- counted their organizational victories in creating ways to communicate among aging groups.

As discussion and debate proceeded, friendly but vigorous, something happened to show the "take charge" attitude among women in the Tent. During a heavy downpour, a woman rolled up in a wheelchair to the edge of the Tent, saying, "I want to speak but I can't come in!" The round concrete base that formed the floor of the Tent rose about 8 inches above the mud of the Huairou field. There was no way she could enter! While some wanted to refer this issue to the Chinese arrangements committee, a number of women seized the moment.

"Nonsense," they said, "she wants to come in now and we will build a ramp. . . now!" And with that, they proceeded to use a garbage can lid as a shovel to pick up loose dirt and stones to form the ramp. In less than 30 minutes, the ramp was ready. The Tent occupants had coalesced into a group who cared about each other and did what was necessary to assure equal participa- tion.

Running through many discussions in the Tent were two large questions--about human rights and economic security. Women know the demographics of their situation. Thanks to public sanita- tion, increased food production, and reduction of deaths in childbirth, growing numbers of women are living into old age. Population aging represents a revolutionary change in global society and one of the great human achievements of our time. By the year 2025, one in seven persons--or 1.2 billion--will be over the age of sixty. Because women live considerably longer than men, the great majority of older people are and will be women. Sadly, many policymakers see increasing numbers of older people as a problem, not a gift.

The Tent headquartered the Older Women's Caucus which debated the issues, developed strategies and lobbied the Government Confer- ence. Previous Caucuses had been organized for the UN Confer- ence on Population and Development and for the World Summit for Social Development Conference. But never before had so many regions of the world been represented with such strength. Key figures in this Older Women's Caucus were Elizabeth Schlater (HelpAge International), Judy Lear (International Council of Jewish Women), Victoria Justiniani (UNANG BANAAG SA NEGROS, a Philippine community development organization focussed on squat- ter widows.) Irene Hoskins, in Network News, a newsletter of the Global Link for Midlife and Older Women, had prepared a grid, based on the Platform for Action, noting items affecting older women that had been adopted and others that remained in brackets to be resolved in Beijing.

In discussions at the Tent, the Caucus felt that older women had been ignored in deliberations about violence, both at the Forum and in the Official Document. Personal accounts of abandonment of poor, old women in their communities as well as those suffering physical abuse at the hands of their families came from every region of the world. In China, we were told, neighborhood committees step in to arbitrate difficult cases when adult chil- dren quarrel about who should care for a frail elderly mother.

Some Caucus members were particularly concerned about the effects of economic restructuring. Women from Argentina, India, the Philippines, Brazil, and other developing countries had described the harsh structural adjustment programs forced on them by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund during the past decade. These programs have slashed public pensions, cut back on social programs and health care and imposed fees for essential services. Grandmothers, as well as mothers and girl children, suffer especially from these "reforms."

Acknowledging that their national governments are powerless to protect them from these international pressures, older women argued for global action to overcome old age impoverishment, including new approaches to employment and a globally financed income-support fund.

The Caucus leadership took many of these concerns to the Official Conference. In the earlier preparatory meetings in New York, advocates for the aging, particularly Virginia Hazzard (AARP) and Rita McCullough (National Women's Conference) had worked hard to insert age-inclusive language in the final document, particu- larly to affirm the right to health and education for women across the lifespan. In Beijing, Bette Mullen (AARP) lobbied effectively to assure that Governments were called upon to allow women access to social security and social insurance systems in equality with men throughout the whole life cycle.

The final document gave older women some prominence but still fell far short of the hopes of most NGO women. Betty Johnson, representing the Older Women's Network of Australia, addressed the plenary and decried the discrimination on the basis of age in employment, education and training which leads to the social isolation and poverty of older women. She chided the Official Conference for its failure to notice violence and abuse toward older women.

On the last day of the Forum at the Tent, women decided to build a global older women's network. Despite differences of culture and economy, many core issues are the same across regions: elder rights, economic security, and a desire to participate fully in the life of society. Network members, such as Global Action on Aging, China National Committee on Aging, HelpAge International, Old Women Networks in Europe and Australia, American Association of Retired Persons and many other NGO's, want to mobilize grass- roots constituents to speak out on aging issues in their communi- ties and nations as well as at international meetings over the next few years. With solid research and communication capabili- ty, the Network can produce a serious strategy document on aging by 1999, the United Nations International Year for Older Persons.

The Platform for Action, hammered out during the closing days of the Official Conference in Beijing, represents a small step forward for older women's rights. It will be a foundation for NGOs to move ahead, and to have the mandate to demand change from the United Nations, their countries, and their organizations. As one woman put it, "Turning the promises into reality depends on how much we women, and our advocates, are willing to fight."

Susanne Paul coordinated the Older Women's Tent at Beijing,