The Women's Rights Era

In 1975, delegates from 133 countries and over 6,000 activists travelled to Mexico City for the United Nations' First World Conference on Women. The Mexico City conference inaugurated the women's rights era: five decades of significant and consequential transnational organizing for women's rights. At the international level, women activists forged agreements across geography and difference. They crafted policy documents like the 1995 Platform for Action, adopted at the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing. These documents became the era's feminist blueprints, shaping women activists’ demands for gender equality.

Across the globe, remarkable changes followed. Discriminatory statutes fell, laws defined and sanctioned violence against women, and millions of women gained access to income, credit, and land ownership. Women entered parliament in record numbers and became presidents and prime ministers. By 2025, women in most countries enjoyed more on-paper rights and freedoms than they did fifty years before.

This book narrates an era characterized by two intertwined stories. First, the work of women activists, especially Global South women, to create international normative frameworks that enumerate women's rights. Second, how women activists then leveraged these blueprints to win national policy reforms. The book charts women's protagonism in the global arena and within their home countries, focusing on six policy areas: government, elections, labour force participation, family and care work, reproductive rights, and violence against women. While the road to gender equality is not linear, the achievements during the women's rights era recall the enduring link between advocacy and reform.