Understanding the Beijing Platform for Action: The global pledge to achieve gender equality 29 years on

Legal equality is the foundation for transformative change across all sectors of society. By removing discriminatory laws, we unlock a cascade of benefits that ripple through economies, governments, and communities.

September 15, 2024, marks 29 years since governments from around the world gathered at the United Nation’s 4th World Conference on Women in Beijing. Together, they pledged to work toward gender equality and empower all women and girls. With the latest figures from the World Bank’s Women, Business and the Law report this year showing that not a single country has achieved gender equality, how can we build on the promise of 1995 to secure a gender-equal future for women, girls, and people everywhere? 

What happened at the 4th World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995?

Marking the fiftieth anniversary of the United Nations, representatives from governments around the world met to discuss the state of women’s rights globally. Famously the occasion on which Hillary Clinton coined the phrase “women’s rights are human rights” and also where Beverly Palesa Ditsie became the first openly lesbian person to address the United Nations and speak to member states about LGBTQ+ rights, the conference culminated in governments around the world signing on to the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action. Considered the most progressive blueprint ever for advancing women’s rights, governments committed to repeal or reform all sex-discriminatory laws, but still, almost three decades later, no country has fully eliminated sex discrimination in their laws.

Equality Now’s founders were in Beijing 29 years ago, and every day since, we’ve continued to hold governments accountable for their promises, creating a better world for women and girls. For the past 25 years, we have tracked, analyzed, and campaigned on sex discriminatory laws throughout the world. Our findings have been published in five reports, issued every five years, titled “Words & Deeds— Holding Governments Accountable in the Beijing + Review Process.” Our fifth edition was published in 2020, and in 2022/3, we released a series of briefs exploring the impact of sex discrimination in law and what still needs to change.

Last year, we took our advocacy to another level with ‘We Change The Rules’, our latest podcast hosted by award-winning journalist Samira Ahmed.

Progress is slow, but we’re making it

We know that legal equality is the foundation of gender equality, and in the three decades since the Beijing Platform for Action, we have seen governments make great strides towards achieving both, including in this year alone.

• In June 2024, Virginia and New Hampshire became the latest of 13 US states to ban child marriage.
• In the same month, Mexico elected its first-ever female president. Read our blog about the importance of women’s political representation.
• In July 2024, Sierra Leone officially banned child marriage. Learn from our experts what this could mean for women and girls in the country.
• Just a couple of weeks later, in a historic win, Members of Parliament in the Gambia voted to uphold the ban on female genital mutilation (FGM). 

Women’s human rights are under constant threat

Against the backdrop of these celebratory moments, we have also seen a rollback on women’s rights in countries across the globe. In Afghanistan, women and girls were literally silenced in public spaces just a month ago. We have also seen violence against women and girls on the rise in different parts of the world, from Sudan in Africa to Bolivia in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) region and India and Bangladesh in South Asia. In Kazakhstan and Saudi Arabia, Women’s human rights defenders face constant scrutiny, including imprisonment. June 24 also marked the two-year anniversary of the Dobbs decision in the US, which overturned the Roe v. Wade case, undoing constitutional protection for access to abortion.

Together we can achieve gender equality

The fight for gender equality isn’t unique to one country or region, nor are the opposing forces threatening it. If we hope to see any real change, it can only come from collaborative efforts.

Equality Now calls on law and policymakers, human rights defenders, and governments everywhere to end discrimination in the law to empower future generations of women and girls. We look forward to the 30th anniversary of the Beijing Platform for Action in 2025 and are hopeful for change as we continue to strive for a safer, more prosperous, and equal future for women and girls everywhere.

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