The Conferences

Early
1990s

Before there was Beijing in 1995, there was "the Conference Decade," which helped activists build power

A Decade of Massive Change

The ten years between the Third World Conference on Women in 1985 and the Fourth in 1995 saw new realities reshape the world: the Cold War, which had molded global alliances and tensions for four decades, came to a close. Apartheid ended, and Nelson Mandela was elected the first president of a free South Africa. Former Soviet states formed new, independent governments, and the 1993 Oslo Accords between Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) resulted in unprecedented agreements, even if temporary.

The decade between Nairobi and Beijing also saw the global women’s movement gain strength and influence, successfully shaping key debates at UN conferences on the environment, human rights, population, and social development, and pushing for sexual and reproductive rights and broader gender equality. And let’s not forget the arrival of modern technology! Feminist organizers on opposite sides of the globe began to communicate through email, faxes and newsletters, negotiating faster and mobilizing at scale. As the Sister to Sister newsletter in 1995, “If you’ve been considering becoming an ‘online sister,’ this may be the moment.”

Although there was no World Conference on Women during that decade, four other critical UN conferences created powerful opportunities for feminist leaders to move their work forward together.

Top: Jubilation following the victory of Nelson Mandela during the 1994 South African general election. (via Getty Images)
Bottom: An unprecedented number of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) convened in Rio for the 1992 Global Forum. (via UN Photo)

The 1992 Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro

At the “Earth Summit,” feminists brought gender into the heart of environmental discussions. They made sure that diplomats did not focus solely on “population growth” without also discussing the socioeconomic status and reproductive health of women. Indigenous women advocated for their communities' rights and environmental concerns, their inclusion in decision-making processes related to sustainable development, and highlighted indigenous knowledge in protecting ecosystems. And through the Women's Action Agenda 21, a tool for women activists to lobby for gender issues in the conference’s official Agenda 21, feminists established women’s global leadership on environmental issues.

Top: Kenyan environmentalist (and future Nobel laureate) Wangari Maathai participates in a panel discussion at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. (via Getty Images)
Bottom: A conversation on women, environment, and development at the summit. (via Getty Images

The 1993 Conference on Human Rights in Vienna

The phrase “women’s rights are human rights” is familiar today—and would be famously uttered by Hillary Rodham Clinton in Beijing. But the global recognition that violence against women was not a private offense but a fundamental human rights violation was achieved through the advocacy of the women’s and feminist movement at this conference two years prior. The Global Tribunal on Violations of Women’s Human Rights provided a platform for women to share their personal experiences—and later that year helped achieve the landmark adoption of the UN Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women, which recognized this violence as a human rights violation and called on states to condemn it.

Speakers in Vienna included, from left to right: Fatoumata Sire Diakite, Mali delegation, Roxanna Carrillo, UNIFEM, Charlotte Bunch, Director of the Center for Women's Global Leadership at Rutgers University, and Paul Hoeffel, Project Manager for Human Rights, Department of Public Information. (via UN Photo)

The 1994 International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo

Building on the conversations in Rio, activists helped shift the global focus from “population control” to reproductive health and rights, specifying everything from the “right to decide freely and responsibly” the number and spacing of one’s children to the right to a “satisfying and safe sex life.” In fact, Cairo marked the first time that reproductive and sexual health were officially recognized in a UN intergovernmental agreement. “There’s a lot of things in my life I'm proud about, including DAWN, but this conference, I’m really, really proud of,” reflects feminist scholar Gita Sen. In the 1990s, feminist activists whose engagement in prior UN conferences had primarily been in NGO Forums began their inside-outside strategy of influencing the intergovernmental negotiations for conference outcome documents. “We learned everything from scratch,” Sen recalls. “We strategized. We were smart. We negotiated. We came together to resolve differences among ourselves to be able to put forward a unified agenda, and it's out of that, that the International Conference on Population and Development Programme of Action of 1994, which is called…a paradigm change, happened.”

The 1995 World Summit for Social Development in Copenhagen

By the mid-1990s, it was clear that the so-called trickle-down economics of the 1980s were leaving too many women behind. The connection between gender and economic policy, a longstanding call from Global South feminists in particular, became impossible to ignore, and feminists ensured that government leaders did not ignore it. Delegates at this conference pushed for policies that centered poverty reduction, employment creation, and social security—recognizing that social development was impossible without full gender equality. Their advocacy led to concrete action, including the formation of the International Gender and Trade Network in 1998, a watchdog holding the World Trade Organization accountable for women’s economic rights.

World leaders (noticeably mostly male) gather for the World Summit for Social Development in Copenhagen in 1995. (via UN Photo)

The Outcome

By the time activists and allies descended on Beijing for the Fourth World Conference on Women in 1995, the global women’s and feminist movement was sophisticated, well-connected, and had significant policy victories under its belt on everything from human rights to environmental sustainability. The “Conference Decade” had done its work. As Peggy Antrobus put it, “In some ways, the conferences of the 90s were more important than Beijing”​—because they made Beijing possible.

An NGO Forum group gathers outside the Beijing International Convention Center. (via UN Photo)

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