The Conferences

Copenhagen,
1980

It featured a “failed consensus”—but also paved the way forward

The Context for Copenhagen

Halfway through the UN’s Decade for Women, progress for women was alive and well—if somewhat uneven. More women began to attend university, and women’s studies programs proliferated around the world. In many countries, women began leading efforts to unionize, particularly in the industrial and agricultural workforce. There were also big steps at the United Nations: In 1979, the UN adopted the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), which had been decades in the making.

But with progress comes backlash. As women across the world entered the workforce, they encountered job discrimination and economic exploitation. In Global South countries, they navigated severe debt crises brought on by austere international economic policies.

There was still so much to be done. It was time for the women of the world to meet again.

Dr. Lucille Mair, Secretary-General of the 1980 UN World Conference on Women, and Alba Zizzamia, President of CONGO, meet with women at the NGO Forum. (via Anne S. Walker)

The Planning

Learning from the hasty planning of Mexico City, organizers held preparatory meetings for Copenhagen in major cities around the world—New Delhi, Macuto, Lusaka, and Damascus. The conference itself was originally scheduled to take place in Tehran, but after the overthrow of the Shah in 1979, the UN moved it to the Amager Centre in Copenhagen.

The opening ceremony of the Copenhagen conference. (via UN Photo)

The Players

Helmed by Secretary-General Dr. Lucille Mair of Jamaica, the World Conference on Women in Copenhagen drew together a diverse group of participants, including lawyer Sarah Weddington, who led the US delegation, and who, at just 26, had represented “Jane Roe” in Roe v. Wade, securing the right to abortion for American women; First Lady Sally Mugabe of Zimbabwe, who served as Vice President of the Conference and led the Zimbabwean delegation; and Mexican economist and advocate Ifigenia Martínez, who served on the Mexican delegation.

Dr. Lucille Mair, third from left, Secretary-General of the Copenhagen conference. (via UN Photo)

What Happened in Copenhagen

A workshop group at the NGO Forum in Copenhagen. (via Anne S. Walker)

Senegal's Maimouna Kane addresses the conference on opening day. (via UN Photo)

The second UN World Conference on Women opens at Bella Center in Copenhagen. (via UN Photo)

One of many votes during the closing meeting of the conference. (via UN Photo)

Lucille Mair, Secretary-General of the conference, speaks at the opening ceremony in Copenhagen. (via UN Photo/Per Jacobsen)

Conference President Lise Østergaard and Secretary-General Lucille Mair speak at a press conference. (via UN Photo)

Interior view of the exhibition hall at the Bella Center, site of the World Conference of the UN Decade for Women in Copenhagen. (via UN Photo)

There Were Challenges…

The Copenhagen conference has historically received mixed reviews—maybe unfairly. Western media labeled the conference “discordant” and rife with political tension over racism and Zionism. In fact, because of those tensions, it was the only conference that failed to produce a consensus-based outcome document. Notoriously, even though this was a conference on women, observers noted that male delegates led the most substantive negotiations. Leticia Ramos-Shahani, who was an official delegate at the conference, wrote, “The techniques of negotiation, back-channeling, and consensus were not yet well-developed among the feminists.”

Moreover, the differences in viewpoint between women of the Global North and Global South continued to surface. Indian economist Devaki Jain wrote of “the patronizing assumptions” of Northern women: “We [Southern women] appeared to be poor and illiterate,” she wrote, “trapped in archaic cultures and conventions, needing to be rescued by modern systems. Southern women objected to the incompleteness and inappropriateness of this analysis…There was also a certain inequality in the descriptions, because from the perspective of women from the South, Northern women appeared economically marginalized and socially trivialized in their own societies.”

Denmark's Prime Minister Anker Jorgensen, top, and Queen Margarethe II of Denmark, bottom, both spoke at the opening of the Copenhagen conference. (via UN Photo)

…And There Were Victories

The conference was attended by 1,326 official delegates representing 45 countries; the accompanying NGO Forum had 8,000 participants. Despite tensions, many who attended the conference saw it as a useful moment to network with members and leaders of new NGOs and women’s programs that had sprouted in the five years since Mexico City. Most importantly, there was a shared understanding that not enough had been done since Mexico City to improve the status of women. “The conference broke new ground by discussing the root causes of women’s inequality,” wrote Peggy Antrobus. Capitalism and colonialism were on the table—and so were the issues of domestic and sexual violence. “These were not new issues for women,” she noted, but they were new at the UN—and that would turn out to be revolutionary.

Perhaps Copenhagen’s most notable victory took place during the opening ceremony, where 64 nations signed CEDAW. The convention was fully ratified and enacted just one year later, faster than any previous human rights convention; it has since been instrumental in securing property, marriage, and inheritance rights for women worldwide.

One of many votes during the closing meeting of the conference. (via UN Photo)

The Outcome

In addition to CEDAW, Copenhagen produced “the best researched documents of the decade,” according to activist and scholar Irene Tinker. It was this research, written primarily by scholars of the Global South, that would advance the global agenda for women and call for an increase in women’s representation in the UN.

Finally, Copenhagen served as a necessary evaluation of how the first half of the Decade for Women had gone. “There were workshops on every topic,” Antrobus wrote. “Many women left the Forum, and the conference, recognizing…the enormity of the task ahead.”

Report: World Conference of the United Nations Decade for Women: Equality, Development and Peace, Copenhagen, 14 to 30 July 1980.

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