Adopted in 1995, the U.N.’s Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action shaped aspirations for women’s equality in the 21st century—and no amount of resistance or repression since has been able to reverse its momentum.
Author: Ellen Chesler
Ellen Chesler, Ph.D., is a writer and women’s rights activist. She is a senior fellow at the Roosevelt Institute and a visiting fellow at the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies at the City University of New York.
How Long We Did Wait
The complex circumstances of the suffrage fight are difficult to disentangle and judge fairly; Ellen Carol DuBois, an academic trailblazer in women’s history, brings vast knowledge and insight to the task in “Suffrage: Women’s Long Battle for the Vote.”
The Long History of the War on Contraception
For those surprised about the recent fervor over Obama’s contraception coverage decision, a look at its deep roots.
How Women Became Citizens (Hint: It Didn’t Happen Overnight)
It’s hard to fathom today, but for most of recent history, and even into our own time, it was simply assumed that women had no need to acquire identities or rights of our own–except, of course, those enjoyed by virtue of our relationships with men. This principle was central to defining American women’s claims on […]