The Conferences
The Birth of the Global Women’s Movement
How the fight for our rights grew between 1945 and 1975
Minerva Bernardino (Dominican Republic) and Ana Figueroa (Chile) welcome Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit (India) at the opening of the Human Rights Commission’s fifth session in 1949. (via UN Photo)
The UN World Conferences on Women didn’t emerge in a vacuum. They followed 30 years of urgent work by women leaders everywhere from Brazil to India, who were determined to make sure that neither the brand-new United Nations nor the post-World War II order it helped inaugurate ignored the concerns of half the human family. Here’s how that unfolded.
The Fight for “Equal Rights of Men and Women”
Movements toward equality made their mark at the Movements toward equality made their mark at the UN from the beginning—starting with the powerfully egalitarian phrasing of the UN Charter, approved at the landmark 1945 UN Conference on International Organizations. That charter affirms the UN’s “faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, and in the equal rights of men and women.” But those last two words—”and women”—came thanks in part to the advocacy of Latin American women conference delegates, like Bertha Lutz of Brazil and Minerva Bernardino of the Dominican Republic, who deemed them essential. (U.S. and British women objected, feeling that women’s rights were controversial, according to historian Katherine Marino).
The same pattern played out the next year, when the UN established the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) as a subsidiary body, Marino writes. U.S. women’s organizations initially resisted the idea of a UN body focused on women, but female delegates from India and Latin America successfully made the case that it needed to exist. And it still exists as the primary intergovernmental body for gender equality and women’s rights within the UN today!
Top: Dr. Bertha Lutz, trailblazing Brazilian delegate, signs the UN Charter at the San Francisco Conference in 1945. (via UN Photo)
Bottom: Closing their final meeting at Hunter College in 1946, the Sub-commission on the Status of Women holds a press conference in the delegates lounge. (via UN Photo)A Human Rights Breakthrough
Three years into the UN’s existence, the General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR)—which established that fundamental human rights are to be universally protected around the world. Eleanor Roosevelt, the former First Lady of the United States, chaired the drafting committee. It is Hansa Mehta, a member of the Indian delegation to the UN and an activist in India’s fight for independence, though, who is credited with changing the declaration’s phrase “All men are born free and equal” to “All human beings are born free and equal” in Article 1 of the UDHR.
Eleanor Roosevelt presents the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1949. (via UN Photo)Change Begins to Happen…
Over the course of the 1950s and 1960s, the UN General Assembly began to adopt conventions that addressed the realities of women’s lives around the world—the idea of a minimum age for marriage, for instance, or the requirement of a woman’s consent to be married. (Most of these conventions were drafted by CSW—the entity Latin American and Indian women had helped fight for. CSW would also prove instrumental in advancing women’s suffrage globally.)
Issues around colonialism and its legacy of poverty and exploitation took center stage. And the fight for freedom from colonialist rule wasn’t just led by men: Many women played key roles, and assumed leadership positions in liberation movements and after their countries became independent. In South Africa, women organized in trade unions, federations, political movements, and protests, establishing women as leaders within the anti-apartheid movement. Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit of a newly independent India became the first female president of the UN General Assembly; watch her address that body here.
By the early 1970s, momentum began to increase. Many forces were converging. The rise of Non-Aligned countries (referred to as the Third World)—those not siding with either of the two Cold War spheres of influence—had begun to reshape the UN.
At the same time, women’s movements—plural, because there were many, and disparate—began to gain steam around the world. In the U.S. there was “women’s liberation,” Ms. Magazine launched in 1972 with an image of the Hindu goddess Kali on the cover. In Spain, feminists organized secretly, in opposition to military dictatorship. In Japan and elsewhere, women who had been involved in anti-war movements began to organize around women’s rights. And the proliferation of women’s studies at universities everywhere helped inform and energize a new generation of leaders.
Top: Madame Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, the first woman to lead the UN General Assembly, with Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld in the Security Council chamber in 1953. (via UN Photo)
Middle: South African women protest apartheid in 1959. (via Getty Images)
Bottom: At the 1963 March on Washington, sisters Delores Coleman and Elsie Eatman walk side by side, calling for civil rights, fair housing, and equal education. (via Library of Congress)An International Women’s Year…
and More
The public conversations around women’s status and rights started to hum throughout the United Nations. “The growing strength and visibility of the reinvigorated women’s movement influenced the UN staff in New York City,” Irene Tinker later wrote. “When the New York Times ran a story on how the UN, with its claim to support equality, discriminated against women in their hiring policies, the secretary-general hastened to appoint Helvi Sipilä as the first woman assistant secretary-general. Sipilä’s first task was to organize events and a conference to mark International Women’s Year in 1975.”
Women everywhere took the year seriously. Their concerns were varied—a “proliferating diversity” of issues, Jocelyn Olcott wrote, from the need for safer drinking water to educational access. Some marked the year by going on strike; others by lobbying for economic development reforms; still others with parties. And these approaches, these interests, these women would converge soon…in a conference that had no precedent.
Helvi Sipilä shares a press kit on International Women’s Year in 1974. (via UN Photo)Learn More
Explore the documents, data, and stories of the conferences.