Conference Background

Artwork from the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women. Read more about the conference series here.

On December 16, 1991, the United Nations (UN) General Assembly charged the Commission on the Status of Women to select a site for the Fourth World Conference on Women. The Commission had launched the conference series in 1975, with Mexico City as its first locale and had held subsequent conferences in Copenhagen (1980) and Nairobi (1985).

The UN stipulated that the next site could not be held in the same region as previous conferences. Austria and China offered to hold the 1995 conference. Seeking an Asian locale, the Commission accepted China’s offer to host in Beijing from September 4th to 15th. China viewed the women’s conference as a valuable opportunity to repair their international image after the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests.

Letter from the Association for Women in Science urges President Clinton to appoint the First Lady to head the U.S. delegation to the conference.

The conference would build upon the political agreements achieved at the three previous world conferences, as well as consolidate 50 years of legal advances for women’s equality. The UN asked member states to form delegations to send to the conference. U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Madeleine Albright, chaired the U.S. delegation, with First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton appointed as honorary chair.