Working for women's lives goes on. After the planning sessions before, during and after the NGO met in Beijing in August 1995, women worked with dedication and excitement to make changes in women's lives.

Nearly forty thousand women from all over the world gathered in Beijing. Some did not get there because they were refused visas to visit China. The number of attendees was so much larger than expected and the requests for workshop space boggled the minds of the Chinese planners.

I could just see planners' collective eyeballs rolling skyward when faced with supplying another room with technological machinery for visual presentations about harassment, child abuse, wife battering, job discrimination, child care, or female genital mutilation. What ever happened to the embroidery, knitting, painting, and pottery that were supposed to dominate women's art festivals?

But China had agreed - the only nation in Asia that offered - to host the United Nations conference and they did, as best they could. They were not practiced in putting on large conferences where the attendees could describe their own workshops - for heaven's sake! And these were women yet!

The original site in Beijing obviously was not going to accommodate the thousands asking to register. It was suggested that the attendance from the United States would be limited - to some arbitrary number - but that was not negotiable and all were issued visas. My tour guide was a cracker jack and prepared a tour of fabulous places on the way to Beijing.

Hotels rooms for the conference were undecided until the last minute because of the meeting change from the city of Beijing to Huairou (pronounced why roo) where buildings were in different stages of completion. Our group remained comfortably in the Hua du hotel in Beijing making the daily 35 mile trip by taxi or bus.

I walked six long blocks to the Worker's Stadium for the free shuttle to be rewarded with a glimpse of Chinese nationals on the hour-long ride. Chinese soldiers guarded side streets, there was no turning off the appointed path.

Squads of soldiers marched past me as I made my way to the bus yard. I grinned widely at them and was greeted with hesitant smiles and eyes curious but never hostile. They were serious young men alert and energetic. Solitary guards at embassy residences, bored and tired, would return my smile with a slight nod, or an indifferent stare.

Street signs were in two languages, Chinese and English. I must refer to the language of the USA as English, but English it is not. I found that out first hand in last November on my first trip to England. But I digress.

Officially the United Nations conference is a meeting about women. United Nations member countries send delegates in proportion to their population. Most delegates and decision makers have been men. Shut out of the official conference, activists began the non-governmental organization (NGO) meeting at the Third UN Conference in Nairobi, Kenya, in 1985.

The NGO meeting has become a way station for grass-roots activists in their quest to understand other women's lives in far flung areas of the world. And to collectively change them all for the better. Everyone came away changed - inspired and comforted - from shared experiences.

The agenda included:

• The effects of violence on women, from war to abuse at home
• Interpreting women's rights as international women's rights
• Securing equal access to education, money, jobs and health care.
• Ways to increase peace
• How to help the world's billion girls

The activists continue at home to push their governments to uphold resolutions made at the conference. Without the attention of the non-governmental organizations, these would remain simply paper agreements.