United Nations Decade for Women World Conference
United Nations Decade for Women World Conference

Author: Naomi B. Lynn

Publisher: Psychology Press

Published: 1984

Total Pages: 112

ISBN-13: 9780866561501

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This thought-provoking volume, dedicated to the International Women's Decade, reflects the decade's themes of equality, peace, and development. Experts assess the progress that has been made, lament the failure of nations to take more steps to improve women's status, and analyze the divisive issues that have been at the forefront of concern and have limited the achievements of the two United Nations conferences on women. With its broad perspective of women's involvement in political systems and processes in the Middle East, Latin America, Europe, the United States, and Japan, this highly insightful book confirms the critical importance of culture in determining female political status and behavior. The chapters reflect the diversity that results from the different levels of general socioeconomic and political development of the nations in which the world's feminists live, and the importance of culture, economic factors, and ideologies in determining the variety of visions women have about the ultimate purposes of their lives and the social change being sought.

International Women's Year
International Women's Year

Author: Jocelyn Olcott

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2017-06-01

Total Pages:

ISBN-13: 0190649984

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Amid the geopolitical and social turmoil of the 1970s, the United Nations declared 1975 as International Women's Year. The capstone event, a two-week conference in Mexico City, was dubbed by organizers and journalists as "the greatest consciousness-raising event in history." The event drew an all-star cast of characters, including Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova, Iranian Princess Ashraf Pahlavi, and US feminist Betty Friedan, as well as a motley array of policymakers, activists, and journalists. International Women's Year, the first book to examine this critical moment in feminist history, starts by exploring how organizers juggled geopolitical rivalries and material constraints amid global political and economic instability. The story then dives into the action in Mexico City, including conflicts over issues ranging from abortion to Zionism. The United Nations provided indispensable infrastructure and support for this encounter, even as it came under fire for its own discriminatory practices. While participants expressed dismay at levels of discord and conflict, Jocelyn Olcott explores how these combative, unanticipated encounters generated the most enduring legacies, including women's networks across the global south, greater attention to the intersectionalities of marginalization, and the arrival of women's micro-credit on the development scene. This watershed moment in transnational feminism, colorfully narrated in International Women's Year, launched a new generation of activist networks that spanned continents, ideologies, and generations.