Take Action

We are relaying a request from a group of feminist activists, some of whom are Gender & Trade Coalition members, who ask for your endorsement of a radical, urgent vision for the “Beijing+25” conference in Mexico City in May 2020 and Paris in July 2020.

In 1995, the NGO forum of the Fourth World Conference on Women was titled “Looking at the World Through Women’s Eyes.” It placed on the global stage the collective vision of women’s movements worldwide, which was pivotal to advancing the most progressive outcomes adopted by the conference. While we have seen achievements in the twenty-five years since, we have also witnessed backlash against those gains and the consolidation of power imbalances and structures underlying women’s oppression, with dire results.

The world is in a state of profound crisis, laying bare the perverse arrangement of capitalism. The ideologies that have been deployed for centuries to justify the accumulation of capital live on today through neoliberalism and the insidious contemporary incarnations of patriarchy, white supremacy, and colonialism that are central to its functioning. As systemic drivers of women’s oppression and inequality, they form an interlocking system that must be confronted.

In marking the Beijing+25, we must celebrate and affirm gains we have made in countering this system and advancing women’s human rights; harness our rage at the crises confronting our communities and ecologies; build on the hope of women’s mobilization and transformative actions; and take collective action to forge solidarity with other resistance and liberation movements, demanding accountability of states and the private sector.

The framework, challenges and demands can be accessed here.