United Nations Decade for Women

The UN Decade for Women was held from 1976 to 1985. Included in this decade were three major meetings for women. The first UN Women's Conference was held in Mexico City in 1975, which proclaimed 1975 as International Women's Year and designated the 1976-1985 period as the UN Decade for Women. The second UN Women's Conference was held in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 1980, and the third UN Women's Conference was held in Nairobi, Kenya, in 1985. The participants at these meetings discussed the issues that prevented women from receiving equality with men such as pay equity, violence against women, land holding, and basic human rights.

[Page 867]During the UN Decade for Women, the focus concentrated mainly on women and development. For example, women in the South were previously ignored in development projects that helped people in subsistence economies, whereas women in Africa were involved in economic and political activism during the wars of liberation from colonialization. The UN conferences helped moved these agendas for women's equality to the forefront. The emphasis on women and development focused efforts on ensuring that women received equal treatment in economic development, including education and employment. The UN Women's Conference in Mexico City produced two major documents: “The Declaration of Mexico on the Equality of Women and Their Contribution to Development and Peace” and the “World Plan of Action for the Implementation of the Objectives of the International Women's Year.”

The conference in Copenhagen was used to report on progress since the Mexico City conference and produced a “Programme of Action.” The last conference in Nairobi was established to celebrate the accomplishments of the Decade for Women, but also to establish an agenda that would continue the efforts to establish worldwide equality for women. The Nairobi conference adopted a document titled, “The Nairobi Forward-Looking Strategies for the Advancement of Women.” Outside the Decade for Women, a Fourth World Conference on Women was held in Beijing, China, in September 1995 to accelerate the implementation of “The Nairobi Forward-Looking Strategies for the Advancement of Women.”

The UN Decade for Women and its conferences were important for establishing the legitimacy of women's issues regarding their roles as workers in the home and outside of it. The decade also brought the many inequalities women face in education, health care, and work to the attention of national leaders and the general public.