Fourth World Conference on Women. Seeking action for equality,development, peace

There is a strong international push to secure broader rights for women. In the 20 years since the first global conference on women's issues was held in Mexico City, governments have adopted legislation which promotes equal opportunity, treatment, and rights, and women are entering the labor market in unprecedented numbers. There is evidence that investments in women have had an enormous impact upon society overall, but millions of individual women continue to face discrimination in social, economic, political, and cultural spheres. They are disproportionately denied access to positions of leadership, undereducated, underpaid, die from complications related to childbirth and unsafe abortions, and are battered and killed by men. The Fourth World Conference on Women will be held September 4-15, 1995, in Beijing, to allow participants to assess the progress and shortfalls of the past two decades and identify action to be taken into the next century. The UN-sponsored global meeting will offer governments, nongovernmental organizations, the private sector, and individuals the opportunity to review their efforts and renew their commitment to improve the equality and conditions of women and defend their human rights. The main objectives are to adopt a plan of action against obstacles to the advancement of women worldwide, to determine priority actions to be taken by the international community over the period 1996-2001, and to mobilize men and women at the grassroots level to achieve those objectives. A parallel nongovernmental organization forum on women will be held August 30 - September 8, also in Beijing.