BY LAURA HERSHEY

It's like escaping hostile territory and discovering a hospitable environment.

The International Leadership Forum for Women with Disabilities in June in Bethesda, Md., is, for me, like returning to a home I've too rarely lived in. Where else could I be surrounded by such extraordinary women?

Women with disabilities--arguably the most oppressed, impoverished, invisible minority on the planet--are now becoming a powerful force for social change. That's not headline news, but it's true. Witness the 600-plus women who have come from more than 80 countries just to attend this conference. These are real leaders making real changes: in African villages and Australian battered women's shelters; on the Internet and in the new market economies of Eastern Europe; at ob/gyn clinics around the world; and in the hearts and minds of millions of women and girls with disabilities.

Each day of the forum focuses on a different theme--employment, health, reproduction and sexuality, media and technology. We hear about ways to make work opportunities available to unemployed disabled women. We learn to build wheelchairs. We share music, poetry, leadership techniques and fund-raising skills. We discuss those most unenforceable of rights--the right to love, to be loved and to make love.

As before at international gatherings, I am struck by the savvy effectiveness of organizers from developing countries. I'd say the resources and technology available to women in the West are more than matched by the inventiveness and grass-roots efforts of women in such places as Nicaragua, El Salvador, Uganda, South Africa, Kenya and Bangladesh.

The conference isn't perfect. Far from it. Too many boring speeches by public officials whose agencies help pay the bills; too little interaction allowed in some of the workshops; too many scheduled workshops canceled without notice.

Even the access isn't all that great, a disturbing irony given that this event was organized for and by women with disabilities. We wheelchair-users can get around just fine, but the blind women can't get materials in Braille or on disk. Women with hearing impairments--or learning disabilities affecting their auditory processing--can't get assistive listening devices. Women with chemical sensitivities plead with the organizers to ask the delegates not to wear perfume. The request is refused, on the dubious grounds that it might be offensive to women from other cultures.

Despite the difficulties, the gathering takes on a marvelous life of its own. The hotel hallways, lobbies and all other available spaces are filled with women's voices, spirits, faces and bodies. Although I know in the back of my mind, somewhere, that I'm exhausted, I never tire of talking with the women who speak English and exchanging smiles with the others. Some of my happiest hours during the week are spent sitting at a table selling my poetry books and tapes--not for the small amount of money I earn, but for the opportunity to meet new people and reunite with old friends.

This forum is about women with disabilities seeking to be part of the larger women's movement and about empowering ourselves as disabled women without waiting for outside invitation. That had also been the dual agenda at the 1995 NGO Forum on Women in Beijing, where we'd found ourselves literally marginalized--forced by physical barriers into the margins and away from the centers of activity and discussion. There, we had demonstrated. Never mind that we were in Deng's China, six short years after the massacre in Tiananmen Square; some of our demands were met.

More important, our activism in Beijing brought new visibility to disability issues within the global women's movement. When we emerged from the margins, everyone was suddenly talking about access for women with disabilities. A few even asked about our larger concerns--health care, employment, education, sexuality and reproductive rights. And, in a remarkable show of solidarity, then-U.N. Ambassador Madeleine Albright chose to deliver her keynote address in the Disability Tent.

Here near Washington, two years later, Secretary of State Albright addresses us again. "For me, speaking at the Disability Tent was the high point of the whole Beijing experience," she says. "It was what the women's conference was all about--commitment, empowerment, access, unity." Albright makes some promises: USAID programs will begin to include people with disabilities. Disability issues will be featured "prominently on our development agenda with governments that receive our aid." And new plans are under way to make U.S. embassies and other buildings overseas accessible.

The Leadership Forum is also graced by Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala, Education Secretary Richard Riley, his deputy Judith Heumann--a long-time leader among women with disabilities--and other high-level Clinton administration officials.

We know the mere appearance of these luminaries will not actually give us access to real power. Yet after working in relative obscurity for years, it is gratifying to have some bigwigs paying serious attention.

But the real news at the conference is the presence and power of all these women with disabilities. I'm thrilled, for example, to run into Kim Mi-Yeon. When I met her in Beijing, this woman in her early 20s was working on forming a disabled women's group in South Korea. The group had raised enough money to send her, alone, to Beijing to learn all she could about organizing. Mi-Yeon's group has thrived. This year, she has come to Bethesda with 14 other members.

It's a heady experience--our vast diversity, our shared experience. It's like escaping hostile territory and discovering a hospitable environment. It's not that I don't have disabled women in my life. I do, intimately and daily. But being at the Leadership Forum is different. Here, we are the majority; we are everywhere and in charge of everything. We bring together a world full of languages, colors and faiths, and we are all women with disabilities.

I love being here because these women know as well as I do how hard my life is and how worth the hardships. I don't have to explain it to them--they know. We don't have to start our friendships by justifying our existence to each other, and we don't fear drowning our conversations in embarrassment or fear. We can explain our histories, our thoughts, our opinions; but we don't have to explain ourselves.

I am stirred when my straight sister, Barbara Waxman Fiduccia, proclaims: "Disabled women are members of a sexual minority group. Our ability to have children is considered a threat to our cultures. Because of this, we have been sexually and socially segregated, and prevented from having and expressing our sexuality or our own free will."

I learn a non-cliched definition of courage from Maria Rantho, a wheelchair-user, veteran African National Congress activist, and member of South Africa's Parliament. She tells us that people with disabilities played an integral role in her country's struggle for democracy.

"South Africans with disabilities astounded the nation in April 1994," Rantho says. "They braved the bombs and threats that preceded South Africa's first-ever democratic elections. Images of disabled people--queuing at the polls, arriving in wheelbarrows, being led by family members, some crawling for kilometers to cast their first vote--filled our television screens during those historic three days." Their determination was rewarded when the newly elected ANC government targeted disabled people for development assistance in post-apartheid South Africa.

For me, the highlight of the conference comes on the final day, when a three-hour afternoon session on disability arts and culture brings together some of the most creative women I've ever seen.

I've heard of Mary Duffy, and the power and controversial nature of her work. I've heard about the divergent reactions people have when they see her. I only know I'm thrilled to be finally seeing the real person. I sense similar anticipation throughout the packed meeting room.

On a screen, slides appear. Images of stones, placed in various formations, are accompanied by rhythmic, haunting music. This is interesting at first, but I soon feel impatient. The effect of this multimedia collage is too abstract, too generic. Its main purpose seems to be to prolong the suspense.

Finally, from out of the darkness into the spotlight, walks a woman. She stands, completely nude, and in a soft, firm, Irish voice she speaks of her confrontations with the medical profession and with society. Duffy was born carrying the effects of thalidomide. Her form and proud posture evoke the image of the Venus de Milo: armless yet perfect.

Eloquently, she tells the stories of her life. She replays interactions with doctors, with lovers, with her own demons. She is alone up there, yet these conflicts and resolutions come fully alive. The performance makes an unforgettable statement about the naturalness of disability, and the wholeness of disabled women. She crystallizes what we are all feeling.

Finally, Sharifa Mirembe from Uganda teaches us a song, and soon we are all singing together, some smiling and some crying, all celebrating our existence and solidarity.

We are disabled, we are women
We are seeking full human rights
Let's work together
In unity we shall succeed.

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