The Fourth World Conference on Women: Dissension and Consensus

Abstract

The Fourth World Conference on Women (FWCW, or the Beijing Conference), held in Beijing on 4-16 September 1995, was the largest conference of any held by the United Nations, including the three previous women's conferences (Mexico City in 1975, Copenhagen in 1980, and Nairobi in 1985). Coming on the heels of the Earth Summit in Rio in 1992, the Vienna Conference on Human Rights in 1993, the Cairo Conference on Population and Development in 1994, and the Social Summit in March 1995, it was the high point of a long process whereby environmental, human and reproductive rights, and social and economic issues are being refined and synthesized into a more integrated and holistic approach to development. All the above issues found their way into the draft Platform for Action. The document represents not only a call for equality and empowerment by half the world's population, but a challenge to change the course of social and economic development in the direction of one that places people—including women—firmly at the center of analysis and objectives.