Who is that man and what is he doing here? The man who caused all the trouble at yesterday's first conference plenary is the Honourable Michael Sata, Zambia's Minister without Portfolio who is in charge of women's advancement.

"Sweeping proposals will create a backlash, "Sata admonished yesterday after NGOs made recommendations for the harmonisation of customary practices with women's rights. "Some of our traditions are very deeply entrenched," said the Minister, who works from the office of Zambian president Frederick Chiluba. Sata is the leader of the Zambian delegation.

He also warned against a male backlash if scarce resources are diverted to national structures for women's advancement. "You cannot go from one form of discrimination to another," said the Minister who was booed in the gallery of the conference centre and in the plenary hall. The conference was abuzz with talk about Sata and delegates from Zambia were besieged for information about him. They were nonplussed by his outburst, saying his views were well known at home. Still, they shocked a conference where most of the men present are reconstructed feminists or "engendered. Not like that one," remarked a Zambian delegate.

The African Centre for Women, which organised the conference, has insisted that one third of all delegates are male. In many countries, male cabinet ministers - like Sata - are in charge of gender affairs. They control the budgets of institutional mechanisms set up by the state. A study of eight countries found that often these structures are under-funded, stuck at a low level of governance and that they lack political clout. Thus, the AWC wanted key male decision-makers at the conference. As the Centre's chief said "It is pointless for women to keep talking to women about women's issues. We have to bring men on board."

Meanwhile Sata was untroubled by the fury he provoked. "I'm giving you realities. I don't believe in flattery," he said as the chairperson tried to return order to the conference. "We have to start somewhere. It takes time, but it must be done," said Jeanne Dabenzet, conference chairperson, referring to customary laws and practices like genital mutilation and customary inheritance that discriminate against women.

The kerfuffle underscored the need to make men part of the solution for gender awareness by including the other half of the population in education drives. "I would have liked to have found as many men as women here," said a male Moroccan delegate. An "engendered" man, to borrow the phraseology of the Zambian woman, he also suggested that the ministers charged with gender advancement should be present at the biennial meetings of the world trade ministers because of the adverse effects that new trading patterns have on African women. A delegate from the Cameroon continued the theme. She said, "women's issues should cease to be women's issues. They should be gender issues. I appeal to the men to take our problems as theirs."

But Sata's remarks are a symbol of just how far the education of men still has to go. The NGO report presented to the conference this morning spoke of a renewed "entrenchment of patriarchy" in some regions.

Still, there is a silver lining, as pointed out by K.Y. Omoako, the Executive Secretary of the UN Economic Commission for Africa. In his opening remarks to the conference, Omoako said he found increasing numbers of men "…willing to change; men who value gender partnership, who see that, when women meet their full potential, societies will be better off".