Twenty years ago, a global gathering organized by the United Nations yielded what many consider a defining moment in the ongoing fight for gender equality.
The first lady of the United States took the stage in Beijing and, in a , laid out a simple but soaring equation. "Human rights are women’s rights and women’s rights are human rights, once and for all," Hillary Rodham Clinton said as applause erupted.
Her speech – delivered September 5, 1995, at the – distilled the concerns brought forward by 5,000 official delegates and at least as many other participants. They challenged limits on women's and girls' education and health care, including reproductive health. Disparities in economic security, wages and inheritance rights. Violence against women, from domestic abuse to female circumcision to human trafficking.
This fourth women's conference made history, 20 years after the first, by securing the pledges of 189 world leaders to help females attain equality. Leaders committed to setting benchmarks and ensuring that women have "a full and equal share in economic, social, cultural and political decision-making" in public and private life.
"There was anticipation. There was excitement, too," recalled , who'd led a small, bipartisan congressional delegation to the conference.
The Republican said she "felt the eyes of the world needed to look at what was happening to women.... I knew that my sisters in other parts of the world needed to have the protections I needed to have. In most instances, they needed them even more."
Fiji islander Sharon Bhagwan-Rolls said the conference, which she’d attended as a journalist and delegate aiming for more media coverage for and by women, "had a huge impact."
Personally, it set her on a course of activism – the kind celebrated in a new VOA documentary, "A Single Step: Journeys of Women Leaders." The 30-minute film showcases Bhagwan-Rolls and four others who are striving to aid women and indirectly advancing conference goals. More on that later.
As the conference’s action plan stated, "Equality between women and men is a matter of human rights and a condition for social justice and is also a necessary and fundamental prerequisite for equality, development and peace."
Two decades have brought limited advances toward those lofty goals, according to Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, executive director of .
"If countries had lived up to all those promises, we would be seeing a lot more progress in equality today than the modest gains in some areas," she earlier this year.
Among those gains:
? Nineteen women serve as heads of state, up from 12 in 1990. "But the rest are men. Eight out of every 10 parliamentarians worldwide are still men," Mlambo-Ngcuka reported. The , in a , shows Rwanda has the highest rate of female parliamentarians, at 58 percent.
? Maternal mortality rates declined 45 percent, though the goal was 75 percent by this year. And "there are still 140 million women with no access to modern family planning," Mlambo-Ngcuka wrote. "The goal for 2015 was universal coverage."
? Roughly half of all women are in the paid workforce, up from 40 percent two decades ago, Mlambo-Ngcuka noted. She added it likely would take decades more to achieve employment parity and longer still to receive equal pay.
?Mlambo-Ngcuka challenged current world leaders, meeting for the , to firmly recommit to the equity goals established in Beijing. More than 70 are expected to make pledges at a September 27 event.
Beyond the organization, many individuals continue to press for equality. Among them are the five women featured in "A Single Step":
? Bhagwan-Rolls coordinates , a nonprofit organization that uses radio and other media to give Fiji women a voice in setting national priorities;
? Peggy Liu, an American living in Shanghai, helps motivate Chinese mayors, youngsters and others to by living sustainably;
? Katie Meyler, another American, started – and, as the Ebola epidemic raged, operated the Monrovia school building as a community outreach center.
? Sachiko Kuno, a Japanese biotech mogul, created a Washington, D.C., trying to solve a host of global problems;
? Aparna Hegde, a physician in India, launched a of pregnant women, new mothers and babies in a country with one of the highest rates of maternal and infant mortality.
"A Single Step" is "an important initiative for VOA as we profile women leaders around the world who are change agents and role models for future generations," said Kelu Chao, the news organization’s acting director.