“A decisive, irreversible step forward”

Learn about Beijing from “Mama Mongella”

As Secretary-General of the 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, Tanzanian leader Gertrude Mongella was a key architect of the historic gathering—but like every participant, she also felt its power. “It changed everything,” she says. “It changed me too! I no longer looked at the world as this small sort of planet.” And with the ambitious plan of action that emerged from Beijing, women “took an irreversible step forward,” she said at the time. “There’s no going back.” Listen to “Mama Mongella,” as a generation of future leaders have called her, tell the story here.

Learn more about the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing.

“It changed the world. It changed me too. I no longer looked at the world as this small sort of planet.”

—Gertude Mongella, Secretary-General, Fourth World Conference on Women