Let's Talk about Women's Rights: 20 Years after the Beijing Platform for Action

UNRISD is marking the twentieth anniversary of the Beijing Platform for Action, the outcome of the 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women, with this Think Piece Series Let’s Talk about Women’s Rights: 20 Years after the Beijing Platform for Action. Leading feminist thinkers from around the world have been invited to critically review progress on women’s rights and gender equality, informing the Beijing+20 debate through a critical and forward-looking discussion.

The online Series aims to create a space to:

• review achievements in the field of gender equality and the empowerment of women made in the implementation of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action;
• address the current challenges that affect the implementation of these international instruments;
• identify opportunities for the full realization of women’s rights in the post-2015 development agenda.

Following the launch of the Series on 2 March, the Think Pieces are being published online incrementally.

The Think Pieces

. Overview Think Piece: Two Steps Forward, One Step Back? Taking Stock of Progress on Gender Equality since the Beijing Platform for Action—Andrea Kaufmann and Valeria Esquivel, UNRISD .

Women’s Rights: Achievements and Challenges after Beijing

• The New Cold War on Women’s Rights?—Anne Marie Goetz, Center for Global Affairs (CGA), School of Professional Studies, New York University
• Achievements and Challenges in Gender Equality in International Human Rights Law: The Last Twenty Years—Fareda Banda. SOAS, University of London
• The CEDAW Committee 20 Years after Beijing: Progress in the Defence of Women’s Rights and Pending Challenges—Gladys Acosta Vargas, CEDAW Committee
• Eliminating Sex Discrimination at Work: Recent Court Decisions since Beijing+20—Jane Aeberhard-Hodges, former Director of ILO’s Bureau for Gender Equality and currently UNRISD Senior Research Associate

Challenging Social Norms and Social Practices

• Gender Norms: Are they the Enemy of Women’s Rights?—Raewyn Connell and Rebecca Pearse, University of Sydney
• Ending Violence Against Women: Achievements and Challenges 20 Years after Beijing—Marai Larasi, Executive Director of Imkaan, UK
• The ‘Feminization of Poverty’: A Reflection 20 Years After Beijing—Sylvia Chant, London School of Economics and Political Science

Women’s Movements and Activism

• How Feminist Activism Can Make States More Accountable for Women’s Rights—Andrea Cornwall and Jenny Edwards, Pathways of Women’s Empowerment programme, Institute of Development Studies
• Twenty Years after Beijing: Time to Re-evaluate Policy Engagements with the State?—Kalyani Menon-Sen, Women Against Sexual Violence and State Repression
• 20 Years of Shamefully Scarce Funding for Feminists and Women’s Rights Movements—Lydia Alpízar Durán, Association for Women’s Rights in Development (AWID)
• 20 Years of Mobilization: The Role of Young Feminists—Ruby Johnson, FRIDA, The Young Feminist Fund

Regional and National Perspectives

• Achievements and Challenges 20 Years after Beijing: An African Perspective—Faiza Jama Mohamed, Equality Now
• Achievements and Challenges 20 Years after Beijing: A View from Switzerland—Flurina Derungs, University of Bern, and Ursula Keller, Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation

Humanitarian Crises and Gender Equality

• Women, War and Peace in Africa: A Reflection on the Past 20 Years—Meredeth Turshen, Rutgers University
• Why Does the Security Council Have Few Teeth? A Reflection on Women and Armed Conflict 20 Years after Beijing 1995—Donna Pankhurst, Bradford University
• Gender Praxis in Emergencies: 20 Years after Beijing—Anu Pillay, Senior Gender Advisor to the humanitarian system and visiting professor at UPEACE