Platform for Action

We have managed to transcend historical and cultural complexities; we have managed to transcend socioeconomic disparities; we have kept aflame our common vision and goal of equality, development, and peace. A revolution has begun and there is no going back. There will be no unraveling of commitments, not today’s commitments, not last year’s commitments, and not the last decade’s commitments. This revolution is just too important, and too long overdue. - Gertrude Mongella, Secretary-General of the Conference

Description

[1]

The Platform for Action was a comprehensive, ground-breaking plan for the international community to promote the status of women, which drew on progress made during three previous UN conferences on women. The Platform for Action intended to promote the status of women by setting guidelines that were projected to help improve the status of women and girls and promote equality. It intended to help plan for the future while making critical assessments about the past, in addition analyzing many common obstacles to women’s advancement and made recommendations for overcoming them. Moreover, it was intended to mobilize society to meet the challenges and dilemmas that women were to face in the next century.

Additionally, the Platform for Action called for the empowerment of women, integration of women into the mainstream of all institutions of society and of a gender perspective into all systems, plus an equal partnership between men and women for the good of society. Additionally, the Platform called on States to respond with concrete commitments to improve the status of women. More than 100 countries and most UN organizations made formal commitments in their statements during the Conference plenary, most of them dealing with three areas: reform of national policies; numerical targets for the year 2000; and frameworks for international development cooperation. Among them was the United States, which made seven commitments for the Clinton administration’s agenda to promote women’s equality:

1. Establish a White House Council on Women to plan for the effective implementation within the U.S. for the Platform for Action, which will work with the NGO community.
2. Launch a six-year 1.6 billion dollar initiative to fight domestic violence and other crimes against women. The Department of Justice will apply funds for specialized police and prosecution units and to train police, prosecutors and judicial personnel.
3. Lead a comprehensive assault through the Department of Health and Human Services on threats to women's health and security--AIDS, smoking, and breast cancer.
4. Conduct a grassroots campaign to improve conditions for women in the workplace. The Department of Labor will work with employers to develop more equitable pay and promotion policies and to help employees to balance the twin responsibilities of family and work.
5. The Treasury Department will take new steps to promote access to financial credit for women, with Presidential Awards to outstanding U.S. micro-enterprise lending organizations.
6. The Agency for International Development will establish important initiatives to increase women's participation in political processes and to promote the enforcement of women's legal rights.
7. Continue to speak out openly and without hesitation on behalf of the human rights of all people.

Moreover, the Platform for Action laid out realistic and tangible targets while focusing on many critical areas of concern for women. Some of the areas it focused on were poverty, education, health, violence against women, the effects of armed and unarmed conflict, economic participation, power sharing, insufficient mechanisms to promote women’s advancement, human rights, mass media, environment, and development. Within the Platform, it called attention to the increasing burden of poverty on women (the feminization of poverty), setting the framework for strategies to reduce poverty among women. These strategies pushed for governments to reallocate public resources to programs that would address women’s economic needs. In addition, it encouraged feminist research on such topics because many policies and programs continued to contribute to the inequalities between women and men. The Platform also outlined strategies for broadening the attention given to the health of women of all ages and from all backgrounds. It focused on eliminating discrimination and ensuring the rights of girls, including discouraging early marriage, addressing son preferences that lead to prenatal sex selection, addressing disparities in access to food, health services, education, and reproductive rights, and the prevention of sexually transmitted diseases. Education was also focused on in the Platform, which called for equal access to education for women and girls, as well as education, training, and re-training policies for women, with curricula free of gender stereotypes.

Additionally, the Platform for Action aimed to draw attention to the fact that the human rights of women were an indisputable, integral, and inseparable part of universal human rights, and that if women were to fully exercise their rights they must be informed about those rights. Furthermore, the Platform for Action called for the UN to integrate the concern for human rights of women into all of its human rights activities and it included a section on the importance of increasing the participation of women in politics. As well, the Platform for Action worked to ensure that the diversity of women was recognized and that attention was focused on the fact that some women faced additional barriers to their advancement because of factors other than gender. It also called for the recognition of the important role NGOs play, in improving the condition of women and pushing for gender equality in policies and everyday life across the world. [2]; [3]; (Hopkins, 1996; UN Chronicle, 1995)

Anti-Sexism | Feminist Movement | UN Fourth World Conference on Women - Bejing, China | GLBTQ | INCITE | Men's Liberation | Anti-Sexism Sources