Women Making a Difference

Abstract The Fourth World Conference on Women, held in Beijing in China 30 years ago, in 1995, was the most important of the four UN conferences on women held between 1975 and 1995, with more than 17,000 participants and another 30,000 participants at a parallel NGO Forum. The World Council of Churches (WCC) was present at the official intergovernmental conference and took a delegation of 50 women to the NGO Forum. The outcome of the Fourth World Conference had an impact on the ecumenical work among women globally through the work of the WCC and women in member churches and in partner ecumenical networks, and it was closely linked to the Ecumenical Decade of the Churches in Solidarity with Women (1988–98) as the response of the WCC to the global movement of women that the UN had created.