UN Women Executive Director Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka on the Road to Equality

UN Women, the UN agency devoted to women's empowerment. Earlier in her career, she was the first woman to be appointed Deputy President of South Africa, and before that, she was a member of South Africa's first post apartheid parliament. Well sir ring in parliament, she learned about a game changing event taking place in Beijing where tens of thousands of women arrived to attend the u N World Conference

on Women. At that conference, Hillary Clinton declared that human rights are women's rights and women's rights are human rights, once and for all, and a hundred and eighty nine countries signed on to a commitment to gender equality. In the decades since, hundreds of law has been passed around the world to ensure women's full participation, all because of

the Beijing Conference. Plinzilli sat down with Milan at the Senega Woman Forum in Dabos to talk about the significance of Beijing, which celebrates his twenty fifth anniversary this year. Listen to their conversation and learned about how the conference put women's rights on the world agenda, the progress since, and what companies and countries can do to help accelerate women in Enjoy the conversation and stick around after for my top takeaways. Uh So from Zally, welcome, We're really

thrilled to have you here. She has Uh really, if anybody has been running a marathon here, I think it is she. This is a landmark year on women's issues. Uh. In the United States, we're marking our hundredth anniversary of suffrage. It was a long time struggle to get the right to vote. Um and for the world, it is the twenty five anniversary of the u N Fourth World Conference on Beijing. But so much happened in Beijing. It's hard to believe that it was the first time that women's

rights were chiseled into international human rights law. So it took that long violence against women, something we know is a global scourge, was put on the World Agenda back then, UM and Pumsali is leading a real effort for us not just to have an anniversary, but to really look at that platform for action that was adopted, to see the progress that we've made, and there has been progress,

we do have a long way to go. So Tom Selle, it's just wonderful to have you here, UM, and maybe we can begin UM by hearing from you about how this was so landmark for the women's movement and and personally how you remember it. Thank you very much. It's

wonderful to celebrate the many anvestories that we have. And let's see when Beijing happened to get hundreds and eighty nine countries agreeing on a set of standards, twelve teams that that we're going to implement that's to find what is right for women, that gave us a travel of direction. Was truly historical because nothing like that had existed. It raised the bar for all countries. No one could say after paging, they kind of like don't know what is

right for women in their own countries. What was also interesting was that this was for all the hundreds and eighty nine countries at least, who is diverse as you can be. And the fact that they actually agreed to implement this program, never mind that they didn't quite implement it, but that they agreed that they were going to implement

it was important. Secondly, it was also a moment where the United Nations used it's convening power to bring countries together to forge a common program, forge common standards for all those countries. Because in the United Nations it might not look very united from you when you are looking from outside, but this is where you get opposing views to sit side by side. So that was also quite

a historical. But also it amplified certain aspects in the women's In the Women's within the page of women's rights, for instance, the definition of a child was not just a child a girl child. In that way, we were able to amplify the wrongs that impacted the girl child child marriage. Before then, it was not discussed as a problem. We're able to amplify female genital mutilation. Before that, it

was not an issue and that only affected girls. So when you talk about the rights of a child and you don't amplify these these very gruesome atrocities that happened to girls were being hidden. It also was important because in areas such as say consent, before then it was always a gray area. When do you feel violated? You couldn't say I did not give content. What Beijing did was to introduce the concept of content, which, as we

know now after me too, it's very important. And of course it was also important because it just gives women a voice human rights with human rights, and that was quite important. You know. I think it's interesting, as you mentioned f GM and some of these other horrific abuses that girls and women were enduring, they were not viewed under international human rights laws. Violations of human rights hard to believe. But so it's brought us a long way,

even though there's still so much work. So from Sally, what did it mean to you personal? I was a parliamentarian at that time, and it gave us the momentum to change the laws in our country at a speed that you could not believe. We were able to learn from the countries, and a very few at the time we had made progress in changing their laws, but also we had to sit down and think about what was needed in our own country, and of course for us.

It was complicated also because it was also changing laws of our part it to bring them to a democratic South Africa as well as ensuring an entrenching gender equality. So it was exciting, truly, truly exciting to have an instrument, in a tool that we could actually use to drive change. And I remember the African women were really extraordinary leaders in Beijing and putting some for the girl child and

the agenda. Yeah, so we know from from the web Report, and it's always good to quote it here, especially that as you heard, you know, some of the data would suggest it's going to take us forever to get to equal participation, in equality and pay in the workplace. But yet there's been a lot of progress that the West Report also points out. How do you see the status of women today, Well, it's an expect the classes have

full we do have problems. That changes. Sometimes is success is exaggerated, there's illusion of progress when you have a handful of women, like of parliamentarians, it looks like this is a lot of women, but men twenty five twenty five percent, they are seventy five percent legislators who are men. Sev of the laws that govern all of us are made by men. Surely this cannot be acceptable. You only have fourteen countries that have gender equal cabinets fourteen one four.

But of course we will we will take it. But we have to drive change much faster. We need to drive change much faster because if we move slow and not in scale, it is very easy for us to real back. We are seeing that and when we rel back, we lose the gains that we have already made. In Beijing, we did not have a roadmap to coordinate the changes that we're going to implement after we got in the declaration. We did not have an investment plan to finance the

changes that we wanted to see. We did not also align the emptiges with Beijing. Beijing came before em digs. When emptyges came, we did not align the same. So now with the s diges, we want to align the two. Otherwise we are too spread and chances are that one of the two agendas is going to lose. We're putting them together. Two. We want to have investment plans that will clearly define what is needed, cost what is needed, and make sure that we know who has to pay that.

That thing is that we must have a coordinated program that we can influence all of us. I mean that we can coordinate together. So we've worked out six domatic areas, calling them action coalitions, ending violence against women, economic justice, leaders ship and participation, Technology and innovation as our h R women in climates. These are the six areas, and it puts together the Beijing Declaration and the s digs and it will focus on this topic at the on

the biggest obstacle that remains in this area. If you're thinking about it as a pyramid, the obstacle that is at the base of the pyramid, which may be the biggest one, that is what we will target so that when you correct that one, the whole pyramid can crumble. And these are the action collisions that we are going to be using to celebrate Beijing twenty five. We are going to in Mexico in May craft these action points and take them to Paris in July. And in July

we will then announce these action collisions. They would have been formalized, they would have been costed, and I hope after that we will be good to go. And in September we will take that to the General Assembly to present it as a finished program, and we will be saying basically two heads of states. Most of them are dudes. Dude,

this is the thing, this is the thing. So you know, com sally in this room, we have a lot of representatives of the private sector UM as well as organizations in civil society, but for companies they have a role in this. And um, you know it's interesting as you were talking about the SDGs that STG seventeen, I don't know that I would have projected this, uh ever, but the United Nations actually says in SGG seventeen we need to work collaboratively and specifically pulls out the private sector.

So what can companies do give us a sense of how we can engage, particularly in moving this agenda forward. UM, in this landmark here and then beyond, let me just say in Beijing in private sector was not as active as it is now. This is one thing that we've gained along the way. Along the way, private sector has arrived and has arrived in a big way. So moving forward, we definitely are forging partnerships like just like we did in the s digis and look what it has done.

It has made the stgis basically trend in divorce because private sector has come on board. So we are hoping that in the collision action collisions that we are forging going going forward, we will have private sector in each coalition. Just give you an example. The companies that have been speaking to here want to do violence against women and these are tel Costs telecommunications company who want to fight violence against women online. This is a problem crucial, crucial

and critical. Companies want to fight wants to contribute to sexual rights and and and to sexual rights, social rights and health and reproductive rights. These are companies who say we need to close the gap on access to contraception and they need to be produced, they need to be distributed, They need to reach the people who do not have them. Public sector cannot do that alone. If you are looking at a climate, well you see yourselves what companies are doing.

So in these partnerships will definitely have a private sector leading and participating. And will they be protu operating on some of the events, whether in Mexico or France or later at Anger next September. Yes, they will participate in Mexico, they will participate in Paris, and we need them to accompany us to younger so that we can all speak with one voice when we're speaking two heads of state, and I must emphasize that this is an intergenerational campaign.

It is called generation equality. Basically, what we are saying is that we are the generation that will have to put this to an end. We will also focus on young people, specially ages fifteen to five, because this is the age that is very vulnerable. If we do not engage and supports them, we will not be able to make significant progress because they are the largest population on f right now. If you make progress with that population, it supports the young people, the younger, the children because

they look after the children. It supports the older because they carry the older. So it's important that they become a strengthened population. And of course they have no recollection of Beijing because they weren't even born. Uh So, it's also interesting when pum Zeli laid out those six areas that technology and climate were not part of the platform for action, because those are challenges that have developed since.

So it's coming together in so many different ways. Well, let me just ask you one one final question, pum Zeli, because we're here dealing with all of these global challenges and sometimes it can be a very heavy weight and I'm sure you feel that keenly, particularly with respect to women. But what makes you optimistic? You know what makes me optimistic. It's the young people. They are truly, truly amazing these days. They start to be activists at seven years old, and

I think this is the function of technology. They see so much. It's a very early age and they know so much of the options that they have to work around the changes. I am very, very optimistic that if we empower, if we give them space, they're unstoppable. They are truly truly unstoppable, as are you. Uh, and so we will follow you as we do as you go forward, because Pomsli truly not only talks to talk, she walks

the walk. So thank you for calling us to action as walk A tuned for our takeaways after this break. I hope you enjoyed Milan's conversation with Pinzili. To learn about generation equality, go to you and women dot org our top takeaways. First, it's important to remember that until Beijing, women's rights were not squarely on the world's agenda. That summit chiseled women's rights into international law for the first

time in history. It also provided a roadmap for equality as Punzili says after Beijing, no one can say they don't know what's right for women in their countries. Second, we can no longer rely solely on governments to create change. Companies have an important role to play, and through public private partnerships, they can help us complete that journey to equality. Finally, as we continue the work to advance progress for women and girls, there is great reason for optimism, and that's

the young people of today. They know how to engage and they're not afraid to speak up. Now it's up to us to help guide and support them in order to bring about the world we all want to see. You're listening to Seneca Women Conversations on Power and Purpose, brought to you by the Seneca Women podcast Network and

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