In reviewing the progress made since the Rio Earth Summit in 1992, WEDO has chosen to focus its report on the image of fire. Across religions, cultures and mythologies, fire exerts a powerful and evocative symbolism. Fire is elemental and transformative, a life-giving force that can nurture and sustain, giving warmth, light and energy. It can also scorch and destroy, turning to ashes instantly what may have taken a lifetime or a millennium to build.
Women everywhere are the users and keepers of fire.
Everyday, millions of women, especially from the South, spend arduous hours in search of fuel wood to kindle a fire and feed their families. Elsewhere, women can simply light a flame with a turn of a knob. But women everywhere have need of fire. As we near the new millennium, women may well judge their progress through their relationship with and control of the flame. Women need to ask themselves, and the world, whether the last decade of the century and the years since the Rio Summit have improved their access to this basic resource.