The Gazette

France Bourgault will rehearse her lines on her flight to Vancouver tomorrow. The Montrealer, who is coordinator of a women's centre here, is heading to the United Nations World Urban Forum to talk about her group's efforts to give neighbourhood women a voice in municipal planning. She is one of as many as 8,000 participants from 150 countries going to the five-day conference, which opens in Vancouver on Monday, to ponder and debate the state of the world's cities. The participants represent governments, universities, professional fields like architecture and urban planning, and grassroots and community groups, like Bourgault's centre. At a workshop on gender and local governance to be held on Wednesday, Bourgault will stand shoulder-to-shoulder with nine other women from Canada, Argentina, Ghana and San Salvador. Like her, they've been invited and their trips funded by Women in Cities International, to make five-minute presentations on their initiatives to improve women's participation in local decisions.