As the US backslides, can China claim moral high ground on women’s rights?
Three decades have passed since the Chinese capital hosted a landmark women’s conference. Now it plans to do it again
“If there is one message that echoes forth from this conference, let it be that human rights are women’s rights and women’s rights are human rights, once and for all,” she said at the United Nations’ Fourth World Conference on Women in September 1995.
Hibaaq Osman remembers this moment clearly. The founder and chief executive of Cairo-based Karama, a movement of women’s rights groups in Africa and the Arab region, was one of 30,000 women who had navigated the Chinese capital’s rainy weather and muddy roads to find common ground.
“We were coming from different cultures, but women were there to discuss their troubles, personal and political,” she said.
At the time, the feminist movement in the United States was in its prime, Osman said, and the strong presence of American NGOs and feminists played a crucial role at the conference.
Clinton was widely seen as a “rock star” for women’s rights and the US was pushing for a feminist agenda, though, Osman said, there was disagreement on certain aspects, such as the right to choose and reproductive rights.
“For me, this was a progressive movement, and I didn’t see it as just a US agenda, but rather as a feminist agenda on a global scale,” she said.
