Amid a global backlash against women’s rights, thousands of people head to New York City this month for the world’s largest annual event focused on women’s empowerment. Dubbed “Beijing+30,” the special session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women will evaluate progress implementing the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, a 30-year-old blueprint for gender equality.

Silvia Hernández, a former Mexican senator who led her country’s delegation in 1995 to the first Women’s Conference, said the her country’s delegates in Beijing came from across the political spectrum. “It made us realize that the differences ran deep, but that there were some areas that ran even deeper and that could unite us,” she said in an interview.

The 1995 conference is perhaps best remembered for the famous declaration by then-First Lady Hillary Clinton, “Human rights are women’s rights and women’s rights are human rights.” But it was Latin American feminists who helped enshrine the concept in the UN Charter 50 years earlier–over US objections.

When 50 countries came together at the 1945 San Francisco Conference to draft the UN Charter, women made up just 3% of participants. Of the six women among the 850 delegates, three were Latin American, Brazil’s Bertha Lutz, the Dominican Republic’s Minerva Bernardino, and Uruguay’s Isabel Pinto de Vidal. Together, they fought for the Charter to include language that made gender equality central to modern human rights principles.

At the 1945 San Francisco Conference, women made up just 3% of participants. Of the six women among the 850 delegates, three were Latin American. Together, they fought for the Charter to include language that made gender equality central to modern human rights principles.”

For Bernardino, the issue was so urgent that after breaking her ankle the night before her first speech, she convinced her doctor not to apply a cast so she could make it to the podium the next day. Along with the other Latin American women in San Francisco, she pressed for the Charter’s first article to promote “respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion.” For her part, Pinto Vidal introduced an amendment ensuring the Charter guaranteed women equal access to UN roles and participation.

It was thanks to Lutz’s leadership that the Charter’s preamble included the word “women” when affirming “the equal rights of men and women,” though US delegate Virginia Gildersleeve said her insistence was “very vulgar.” Lutz, a biologist and suffragist, also proposed the creation of the UN Commission on the Status of Women. At the 1949 commission meeting, Castillo Ledón proposed a document on the political rights of women, guaranteeing the right to vote and hold office. The UN adopted that language in 1952 and in the next few years, women won the right to vote in Mexico, Honduras, Nicaragua, Peru, and Colombia. Later, the treaty served as a precursor to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women.

These contributions challenge the notion that feminist ideas “trickled down to the Global South,” according to Katherine Marino, a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles and author of Feminism for the Americas, a history of the Pan-American women’s rights movement. Latin America was “a creator of rights, and especially of international human rights,” she said in an interview.

Indeed, the region has continued to play a pioneering role in women’s rights. In 1975, for example, the first UN Women’s Conference took place in Mexico City. Mexican President Luis Echeverría was jockeying to lead the UN General Assembly at the time. Hosting the conference allowed his government to showcase the country on the global stage, even as it divided Mexican feminists, given Echeverría’s role in the violent repression of dissent.

But Duke University Professor Jocelyn Olcott, who authored the book International Women’s Year, argued that the frictions in Mexico City made it innovative. The event highlighted issues such as the gender wage gap and unpaid domestic work and paved the way for the UN Decade for Women, an equality-focused action plan, and for women’s conferences in Copenhagen (1980), Nairobi (1985), and Beijing (1995).

These global gatherings helped give rise to networks in Latin America to combat gender-based violence and advance women’s political power. Today, 36% of lawmakers in the region are women, the highest rate in the world.” 

These global gatherings helped give rise to networks in Latin America to combat gender-based violence and advance women’s political power. Today, 36% of lawmakers in the region are women, the highest rate in the world. Nearly half of the countries that have elected a woman head of state are in Latin America and the Caribbean. One of them, former Chilean President Michelle Bachelet, later served as the first head of UN Women in 2010.

But pendulums swing in both directions. Eighty years after Lutz fought to include the word “women” in the UN Charter, a number of Latin American governments are working to undo hard-fought rights. In his January speech to the World Economic Forum, Argentine President Javier Milei promised to remove femicide from the penal code and dismissed the importance of the gender wage gap, estimated to be 25% in the country. Last year, El Salvador excised discussions of “gender ideology” from public school materials. In recent years, in the run up to the 30th anniversary of the historic Beijing conference, lawmakers from the Dominican Republic to Bolivia to Uruguay have introduced bills to weaken protections against sexual violence and restrict reproductive rights.