High hopes were raised at the Nairobi meeting to conclude the United Nations Decade for Women in 1985. At the official meetings, more than 2,000 delegates from governments around the world met to hammer out a consensus of more than three hundred resolutions in Forward Looking Strategies for the Advancement of Women. Perhaps more importantly, the unofficial meetings (Forum '85) attracted approximately 14,000 women from existing and new organizations that emerged over the Decade, as compared to 8,000 in Copenhagen (Forum '80) and 6,000 in Mexico City, 1975.

Women experience numerous contradictions as they undergo social change. Many have celebrated the autonomy of Nigerian women. Some “got drunk” with the notions of this autonomy. Change created a number of problems that supposed autonomy could not come to grips with. Just a few examples: First, women appeared to contribute more labor to the development process than men, burdening them with physical and time constraints. Second, modernization created new resources and along with them, new kinds of inequalities in access to resources. Specifically, women had much more limited access to resources than men. Consequently, women could not invest resources in the same ways as men.

The 1985 Nairobi Conference to close the United Nations decade dedicated to women of the world caught Kenyan women (and men) by storm. Indeed, the majority of Kenyan women did not know, until the eve of this conference, that there had been an entire decade dedicated to them, and committed to the achievement of Equality, Development, and Peace. However, the Kenyan policy makers and the enlightened among Kenyan women, especially leaders of women's organizations, were not only fully aware of the decade's developments, but had in various ways participated and contributed to it. On its part, the Kenya government by the end of the decade, had adopted a Women in Development (WID) policy position and created and/or promoted national machineries to develop and coordinate programs for women.

The Women's Decade has had a substantial impact in Zambia. Before 1975 there was virtually no discussion about the economic and political situation of the nation's women. Since 1985, however, many of the issues raised during the Decade have been made specific to the Zambian situation by a small national women's movement. Professional women active in the movement have focused on changes in policy making and planning processes to improve women's economic situation, rather than on political mobilization and participation.

Five years ago, women in Africa moved to the center stage of the continent. The U.N. Decade for Women Conference held in Nairobi brought together women from all over the world to exchange ideas and discuss future strategies. African women turned out for the meeting in force. Women representing governments, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and grass-roots women's clubs converged on Nairobi to tell their story to other women in the common struggle for equality, justice and peace.

The United Nations Women's Conference in Nairobi was the high point of official and unofficial attention to women in Africa in the entire International Decade for Women. The conference seemingly had a profound capacity to influence subsequent policies, programs, and organizational efforts to empower women. Yet the internationally derived economic crisis has had an even more profound effect on Tanzanian women's work and politics. Since independence, but particularly since the 1967 Arusha Declaration, Tanzania has made remarkable progress in extending access to education and health care facilities. As a result of crisis and structural adjustment policies, however, state budgetary investments have moved from social to productive sectors; budget redirection looms large in explanations of women's work and politics.

The significance of the UN Decade for Women, in Africa as a whole and in Senegal in particular, must be assessed not only in terms of what was gained and what was not, but also in terms of where we started and the odds we were up against. For women in Africa, the decade meant the droit a la parole — the right to speak out, and the right be heard -- whether this right was won or granted, exercised spontaneously or in organized ways, and even if it was controlled or censored. Discourse by women on women was opened. Women seized the right to speak for themselves about themselves, sometimes freely, and sometimes cautiously within imposed limits.

At the NGO African Women's Task Force Meeting in Nairobi in April 1988, Sara Longwe suggested that the “main problem in Africa is to shift women's development above the welfare level in the face of resistance from male dominated government bureaucracies.” She also maintained that ”… women's welfare is not likely to be much improved until the affected women themselves achieve control in such areas as control over factors of production and distribution of income and benefits… This dimension is concerned with women's power to control their own lives and become independent and self-reliant — both individually and collectively — on equal terms with men. Equality in control is the ultimate objective of the process of empowerment.“

Today the world is in crisis. The impact of this crisis on the countries and people of the Third World has been very severe. In this context, Africa is the most affected continent as this economic crisis is aggravated by natural disasters such as drought in many parts of the continent. However, the major problems faced by Africa are external domination and the misplaced priorities of existing development strategies resulting in internal mismanagement. We note the disproportionate bias of the national budget in favor of military expenditure at the expense of basic human needs and services. Past experience has shown that the total emancipation of women and their full participation in the governance of their societies depend largely on the socio-economic and political conditions in which they live.