The Women's Rights Era

In 1975, delegates from 133 countries and more than 6,000 activists travelled to Mexico City for the United Nations' First World Conference on Women. The Mexico City conference inaugurated the women's rights era: five decades of significant and consequential transnational organizing for women's rights. At the international level, women activists forged agreements across geography and difference. These documents became the era's feminist blueprints, shaping women activists' demands for gender equality.

Across the globe, remarkable changes followed. Discriminatory statutes fell, laws defined and sanctioned violence against women, and women entered politics in record numbers, becoming presidents and prime ministers.

This book narrates an era characterized by two intertwined stories. First, the work of women activists, especially Global South women, to create international normative frameworks that enumerate women's rights. Second, how women activists then leveraged these feminist blueprints to win national policy reforms. The book focuses on six policy areas: constitutional rights, government and elections, labour force participation, family and care work, reproductive rights, and violence against women. While the road to gender equality is not linear, the achievements during the women's rights era recall the enduring link between advocacy and reform.