Women’s Rights: 1975–1985

Abstract

The contemporary challenge to traditional ideas about women’s position in society was the stimulus for the UN-sponsored International Decade of Women which was launched in 1975 at a UN conference in Mexico City. A proposal for an International Women’s Year had been proposed earlier, in 1972. It originated with a group of non-governmental women’s organisations, although, since they could not technically introduce resolutions it was proposed to the UN Commission on the Status of Women in Geneva by the Romanian government delegate, Mrs Florica Andrei. The Commission itself was established in June 1946 under the auspices of the Economic and Social Council under Article 68 against the opposition of the US and the UK, both of which also opposed Article 8 of the Charter establishing the principle of equal eligibility of participation of men and women in UN organisations. One of its early achievements was the Convention on the Political Rights of Women adopted by the Assembly in 1952 and subsequently ratified by many countries. It has co-operated actively with the ILO on equal pay and against discrimination in employment. However, by the 1970s, these and other concerns of the Commission had attracted little attention so that the Mexico conference and International Women’s Year were designed to identify the problems of women and the proposals for their solution and to bring them forward on an agenda for reform.KeywordsGlobal IssueAgenda StatusChild MarriageRoll Call VoteConsultative StatusThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.