Posted by C3W Admin on January 16 2024
At the same time the 1975 International Women’s Year (IWY) Conference took place in Mexico City (between June 19 and July 2), Ecuador was electing that year’s Miss Ecuador. Newspapers around the country covered the event with anticipation, making space in their pages to write daily profiles about the candidates, remarking on their grace and beauty. Embracing the sexual revolution vibe of the 1970s (1), Ecuadorian women occupied new spaces, which included the vastly popular exposition of their bodies in bikinis. In that light, the media coverage of the International Women’s Year Conference was part of a losing battle for space in the printed media. While the simultaneous development of the events was a coincidence, the narrative constructed through the publication agenda was not. It was clear that women were occupying new spaces in public life. Still, some were much more in accordance with predominantly male perceptions of the new role of women in society and to what extent liberation was possible.
Figure 1. El Telégrafo July 4 newspaper coverage. The main picture on the front page is the picture of Miss Cuenca. In the bottom left corner, the news about the end of the World Conference of the International Women’s Year. The pre-title says, “sin pena ni gloria” [unremarkable].
The narrative created by the Ecuadorian media changed as the conference unfolded. If divided into stages, it first presented the event as an important international activity; then, as soon as the conference started and women appeared at the centre of the diplomatic and political event, there was open criticism about women’s attitudes. Finally, the media had an abrupt end in the news cycle. In this final stage, the Ecuadorian delegation called for a press conference to denounce the type of media reporting of the event. Diario El Universo published an article titled: Solo aspectos grotestos resaltaron de Conferencia Mundial de la Mujer [Only grotesque aspects were reported about the International Women’s Year Conference]. The title summarised the women’s claims of unfair coverage of the event.
In the days before the conference and the first day of the event, most articles and headlines positioned the meeting as an event of international relevance that would gather important political and diplomatic figures. The reports, primarily sourced from international news agencies, remarked on the presence of representatives from the USSR, the US and China. This resonates with an Ecuadorian interest in expanding global connections; for example, reports on an Ecuadorian economic delegation’s trip to China and a visit of Yugoslavia representatives to Ecuador appeared in the media before the event. Interestingly, these initial reports did not present details about the Ecuadorian delegation or the coverage of Latin American delegations travelling to Mexico. Articles naming the Ecuadorian representatives appeared only by the end of the conference. There was no mention or discussion of the Ecuadorian international agenda for the event.
Ecuador sent nine delegates to the conference: Piedad de Suro, appointed by the Foreign Ministry as Head of Delegation; Blanca Salazar, President of the Association of Professional and Businesswomen; Nancy Bravo de Romsey, General Coordinator of the National Committee for the International Women’s Year of Ecuador, Luzmila de Troy, Irene Paredes, and advisors: Carlos Zúñiga, representative of the National Planning Board, Rosa Lobato de Miño, representative of Casa de la Cultura, Norma de Cabezas, representative of the Social Welfare Ministry and Elisa Moncayo, in representation of the Ministry of Agriculture. None of them were interviewed before and during the event. Hence, little is written about the delegation’s agenda or its formation. In an opinion piece published in 2011, Bravo de Romsey remembered that she cofounded the “Committee Pro-celebration of the International Women’s Year” and that she was part of a delegation that travelled to Quito to meet with the then head of state, General Guillermo Rodríguez Lara. “As a result of our management, she explained, the de facto ruler, by executive decree, ordered that every March 8, Ecuador would commemorate International Women’s Day, and public and private institutions in Ecuador should develop special programs to celebrate it” (Bravo de Romsey 2011).
As soon as the conference started, the reporting of the event began to focus on elements perceived as negative about the conference organisation and its female participants. If there were references to international relations, globalisation, and diplomacy at the beginning of the conference, they were replaced by the description of women’s attitudes. Headlines about women losing their temper, reports of screams and fighting in the conference venues, and mockery about feminist political agendas and women’s leadership appeared as part of the newspaper’s political cartoon sections. Below, I share two examples. The first (figure 2) is a cartoon about the election of a man as the conference president. The conference president was Pedro Ojeda Paullada, the attorney general of Mexico, and after him, there were 46 vice presidents. The Finnish jurist Helvi L. Sipilä, Assistant Secretary-General for Social Development and Humanitarian Affairs, was appointed Secretary General (of both the Conference and the International Women’s Year). The caption at the bottom of the image says, “Mr. President, you are the only one who can put up with all our complaints against men”. The image is an example of the generalised description of women as an unruly and unorganised group that needed external male supervision. In the caricature, women run towards a man to give the leadership title. In the second cartoon, the caricaturist does not target the event’s organisation but women’s political agenda. The image (figure 3), called Metamorphosis, shows the changes in women, depicted in their clothes and hairstyles. The change starts with a woman in a short dress and what might be heels, and as the woman changes, she loses her “feminine traits” until, in the last drawing, she is depicted in a “masculine look” with short hair. Her demands also changed. The first three signs say we want equal rights! The final sign says we want women! The image communicates that as women change in their fight for equal rights, what they are doing is moving towards “becoming men”, which also involves changing their sexuality. The image communicates both a problematic simplification of women’s demands for equality, an objectification of women’s bodies and a visual reference to the rampant homophobic feelings of the time (Ecuadorian decriminalised homosexuality in 1997).
Figure 2. Diario El Comercio. 23 June. A group of women chase a man to ask him to be president.
Figure 3. El Telégrafo. 25 June. The cartoon title is Metamorphosis.
The final reports of the event had headlines mentioning that the conference did not have remarkable results. Moreover, it was described as an event full of inner fighting between women. That is why part of the Ecuadorian delegation called for a press conference to denounce the type of news coverage. The negative narrative created by the media was unsurprising. In the 1970s, Ecuadorian women were slowly starting to participate in the job market, had no representation in Congress, and political parties struggled to incorporate women’s voices in their discussions and women’s concerns in their political agenda. However, the images provide a view of the deeply embedded patriarchal culture that positioned women as unfit to participate in political discussion. Hence, it gives a glimpse into the conservative and patriarchal backlash to women’s successfully gaining spaces in the public arena. It contributes to understanding the nature of the discourses that located women within the household and struggled to recognise women as public political figures. Finally, I will also point out what does not appear in the images. In the Ecuadorian media, the women whose roles were discussed (and contested) were all white, middle-class, and urban. The role of indigenous, black, montubio, or rural women was not even considered part of the public agenda. The analysis of the unfolding of the International Women’s Year (IWY) Conference in Ecuador (and from the perspective of the Ecuadorian media) allows the possibility to understand the massive challenges women face in their quest for equal rights and contribute to locating global struggles in the local contexts.
