by Lina Abou Habib
In November 1994, I accompanied my feminist mentor, Dr. Maitrayee Mukhopadhyay, to an event which was probably the turning point of my ensuing feminist activism. Back then, the MENA region was preparing for what was to become the last UN Conference on Women which was held in Beijing in September 1995. The event was the regional Amman preparatory NGO Forum which was supposed to bring in the voices of civil society into the global UN IVth Conference on Women (subsequently referred to as the Beijing Conference).