FROM THE EDITOR—THE INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS ON WOMEN'S HEALTH ISSUES

Through lush fields of sugar cane nestled in rolling hills, our bus transported us from the Sao Paolo airport to our conference site in Sao Pedro, Brazil. It was unusual, to say the least, to see horses and cows in a nearby corral immediately upon disembarking from the bus at our conference hotel. The hotel was housed amidst a working farm, complete with chickens, vegetable gardens, and stables. In the next few days, along with more than 600 other women from 15 countries, I was immersed in stimulating presentations. This was the 15th International Congress on Women's Health Issues (ICOWHI). ICOWHI is an organization dear to my heart because it has afforded me the opportunity to meet so many bright and courageous women from across the globe during my 18 years of membership. Each time we gather for a conference, I am reminded of the grim existence of women who must struggle daily with poverty, discrimination, and abuse, women who must abort their girl babies, women who must bury young sons who were conscripted to become soldiers in wartorn lands.

Afaf Meleis, Counsel General of ICOWHI, galvanized the audience with her keynote presentation on “Safe Womanhood.” She spoke of women's work—“veiled, voluminous, devalued” ([Meleis, 2004]). Women's “work” is far more than the paid employment that might appear in a nation's terse statistical report. Women's relational responsibility, to care for their husbands, children, and in-laws, constitutes the unpaid, invisible,“emotional work” that is of incalculable worth to society. But women are not safe. They face risks to their health because they are overloaded, exploited, marginalized, and battered. As speaker Joyce Thompson pointed out, simply to be born female predisposes one to malnutrition, poor education, low status, and less access to health services. Did you know that maternal and neonatal morbidity is rising? Every minute a woman dies during pregnancy or childbirth. Every minute, 8 newborns die. Currently, entry into secondary education is worse for females than it was ten years ago ([Thompson, 2004]). Too many girls are still being sold into slavery and sex work, exposing them to deadly sexually transmitted diseases ([Meleis, 2004]). Older women are facing reduced status, declining finances, and a dearth of caregivers ([Covan, 2004]).

Many of the conference papers addressed women who grapple with the aforementioned issues. I have invited several presenters to submit manuscripts to the journal. Undoubtedly, other manuscripts will appear in our sister journal, “Health Care for Women International,” which is also published by Taylor and Francis. Watch for these manuscripts to reach publication. In the meantime, I want to close on a more positive note, lest you think that the conference presentations were merely a barrage of ever-more-depressing facts.

I will tell you about the presenter of this year's Taylor and Francis lecture, Maria Conceicao Maia de Oliveira. In lilting, musical Portuguese, she described to us her 37 years of work in the Amazon forest with poor rural women who have been virtually invisible. She organized them, held workshops and classes for them, told them of their rights as human beings. She taught them about reproductive health, equity, citizenship. Seeing her photographs of these empowered women was unforgettable. Their faces are the images that linger in memory after leaving Brazil. Would that women everywhere have an dynamic activist of this caliber to energize and inspire them! What could each of us do in our own countries?