For anyone plugged into the feminist stratosphere, it was clear there was a lot of moving and shaking going on last week, especially on Friday in New York City.
On Twitter that day, there were hashtags galore from women tweeting about the first day of the Women in the World Summit. Also in NYC, the UN Commission on the Status of Women's annual session; this year, the 1995 Beijing Conference on Women was revisited, especially the Declaration and Platform For Action that was established to push us all toward greater gender equity.
Women's issues superstar Hillary Clinton spoke at both events on Friday -- the last day of the UN Commission which celebrated the 15th anniversary of the Beijing Declaration, and the first day of the Women in the World Summit sponsored by The Daily Beast and Tina Brown.
According to the Voice of America, at the UN Clinton noted:
Women are still the majority of the world's poor, the uneducated, the unhealthy, the unfed. In too many places, women are treated not as full and equal human beings with their own rights and aspirations, but as lesser creatures undeserving of the treatment and respect accorded to their husbands, their fathers and their sons.
And in her capacity as Secretary of State, she told the gathering:
President Obama and I believe that the subjugation of women is threat to the national security of the United States. It is also a threat to the common security of our world. Because the suffering and denial of the rights of women and the instability of nations go hand-in-hand.
At the Women in the World Summit, Clinton highlighted the good and the bad of the last 15 years of progress since Beijing:
Growing numbers of women have been elected to public office, received in education, joined the workforce....but...for every place where women's lives have improved, there are still too many where ...women's rights may exist on the books but not on the streets, where violence against women remains an epidemic, and the extremist voices calling for restrictions on women's rights are growing louder. So we must raise our voices even more loudly.
So we meet today...about what more can be done, and how we can be those voices that are needed for so many who are silent....[W]omen's rights are human rights...women's progress is human progress.
The women attending both events were no doubt fired up by the prospect of advancing women's rights and improving women's lives. But since those who do not remember history are doomed to repeat it, it's worth going back 15 years to revisit the pivotal event cited by speakers at both gatherings last week -- the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing.
Instead of giving you a dry recitation of what happened in Beijing (and if you want that, here it is), I'm sharing the recollections of a fairly ordinary woman who pursued an extraordinary opportunity -- she somehow got herself to Beijing and participated in the 10-day conference and endured mud, torrential rains, and an hours-long wait at an impossibly overcrowded auditorium to hear then-First Lady Hillary Clinton speak.
If her story isn't enough to encourage you to get yourself to the nearest women's conference or women's summit, then I don't know what else will light a fire under you. If you are inspired, it's probably too late for this year and this Women's History Month, but you have a year ahead of you to plan and prepare.
Related articles:
- Reflections on the 1995 Beijing Conference on Women
- "Rock Star" - Hillary Clinton at the Beijing Conference
- Heartbreaking Stories of Women Shared at the Beijing Conference
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