COVID and a Crossroads in the Path Towards Gender Equality
Twenty-five years after the landmark Fourth World Conference on Women, COVID-19 has eroded gains but opened unforeseen possibilities
By Saphira Rameshfar
The 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women was a watershed in the movement for gender equality. Some 17,000 diplomats and representatives gathered in Beijing, accompanied by a further 30,000 activists attending a parallel forum for civil society. Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi delivered the keynote address. Hillary Clinton famously declared that “women’s rights are human rights.”
A quarter century later, the COVID-19 pandemic has destabilized societies and disrupted the women’s movement as much as any other—for ill, but potentially also for good.
The effects of the health crisis have fallen particularly hard on women and girls. From the “shadow pandemic” of increasing gender-based violence, to the disproportionate loss of employment and income, to the explosion of unpaid care work, women around the world are facing not just the legal roll-back of rights and protections, but also the cultural rise of increasingly open sexism and casual misogyny.
The pandemic exacerbated long-standing deficiencies as well. Eroding commitment to the advancement of women provides one unfortunate example. The outcome document from the Beijing Conference is considered one of the most progressive political declarations advancing women’s rights, to date. The fact that it remains unrivalled today, however, means that years of conferences and deliberations had to be avoided, knowing that any outcome they produced would be movement in the wrong direction.
But the unparalleled disruption wrought by COVID-19 is also opening space to consider alternatives far more visionary and build consensus much more far-reaching than might have been possible before. This was a point emphasized by many who attended the United Nations annual Commission on the Status of Women, which concluded recently.
The complex interplay between forces of disruption and windows of opportunity was apparent in the microcosm of the Commission itself. Last March, the Commission had to be cancelled and plans for commemorating “Beijing+25” abruptly postponed, as COVID-19 raced around the world and across the New York City base of the UN headquarters. A year later, the Commission had to be convened entirely online for the first time in its history.
This was a great disappointment to numerous activists, who longed to join hands in honor of the victories won in Beijing. But crisis unexpectedly gave way to triumph. The virtual format provided far more inclusive access, and the Commission became the largest gathering of feminists and other advocates since the Beijing Conference itself.
“We never expected 25,000 participants to show up ready to mobilize,” said Houry Geudelekian, Chair of the NGO Committee on the Status of Women, New York. “We are very reassured that the women of the world continue to organize.”
At this unique moment in history, two simultaneous realities are voiced by those assessing the legacy of the Fourth World Conference. One is that its outcome document, the Beijing Platform for Action, led to significant improvements in women’s lives: more political representation, more protection under the law, more constitutional guarantees of gender equality.
The other is that the Platform envisioned a world that is gender equal in every aspect of life—a vision which no nation or people has yet brought about.
Where does this leave the quest for gender equality, in a world whose confidence has been shaken by a pandemic and which faces an array of global challenges potentially even more disruptive?
To commemorate the 25th anniversary, my office produced a documentary exploring how Beijing’s vision of a more gender equal world is being translated into lived realities around the globe. No one story gives the whole picture, of course. But what the people and communities who shared their stories demonstrated is that lasting progress can, in fact, be achieved.
Amid the turbulent cycles of progress and pushback at the global level, we are shown how local populations are gaining the capacity—and making the collective decision—to infuse the equality of women and men into individual hearts and minds, and institutionalize it in social systems and structures. We are shown that there is hope.
Activists increasingly emphasize the role of hope in bringing about lasting social change. We cannot be naive to the challenges still facing girls and women, they say. But neither can we let despair blind us to the progress already achieved or to the possibilities and promise ahead.
The arc of history is long, in other words, and our aspirations for a more equal world are not in vain. “Since 1995, much has been learned about the enabling conditions that foster gender equality,” noted one participant in the film. “Whatever setbacks and obstacles may appear over the next 25 years, the awakening of the majority of the peoples of the world to the truth that women and men are equal will never be lost.”
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Saphira Rameshfar is a Representative of the Baha’i International Community to the United Nations. She serves on the Executive Committee of the NGO Committee on the Status of Women and as Co-Chair of its Youth Leaders and Young Professionals program.