The resulting declaration is known as the Beijing Platform for Action. It outlined twelve areas of concern, including women and poverty, power and decision-making, education and violence against women. The goal was to outline key ways to promote women's rights in the following century. The Fourth World Conference on Women has been followed up by a series of five-year reviews.
Hillary Clinton, who was the First Lady of the United States at the time, addressed the conference with her Women's Rights Are Human Rights speech. The phrase "human rights are women's rights and women's rights are human rights" became an influential phrase used in the feminist movement.
An article I found on Global Citizen claims that 25 years later, today's society has failed to live up to the standards set forth in Beijing. It provides an array of facts on the status of women all over the world: 131 million girls are deprived of an education, more than 750 million women alive today were married under the age of 18, and women are 2.6 times more likely to do unpaid labor than men. The Beijing declaration and following conferences remind us that there is still work to be done and can provide a guideline for how to move forward.https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/beijing-declaration-legacy-after-25-years/
https://www.unwomen.org/en/how-we-work/intergovernmental-support/world-conferences-on-women
https://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/beijing/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Conference_on_Women,_1995
It's really interesting and also disappointing that even though women are so powerful and important, there is still a lack of respect for them worldwide. However, there are a lot of women who have dedicated a lot of time and effort to changing the stage for young girls. For example, other first ladies, such as Michelle Obama, have been advocates for foundations like Let Girls Learn, which provides safe access to education to millions of girls around the world.
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