Global leaders’ meeting on women in Beijing promotes new, accelerated process for development

Women play an important role in creating, promoting and carrying forward human civilization.

Advancing the cause of women is a shared responsibility of the international community.

Thirty years ago, the Fourth World Conference on Women was held in Beijing. The conference adopted the landmark Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, which has inspired persistent efforts for the global advancement of women.

Thirty years later, the Global Leaders’ Meeting on Women is being held in Beijing again, with attendance of heads of state and government, and representatives from over 110 countries.

Chinese president Xi Jinping attended and addressed the opening, injecting new momentum and consolidating new strength to promote global gender equality and women’s all-round development.

This is a grand event taking stock of the achievements in the global cause of women.

Over the past 30 years, guided by the spirit of the Beijing World Conference on Women, the cause of women has been thriving around the world. Equality between men and women is now a universal consensus of the international community.

It has been included in United Nations development agenda and priority development targets, and 189 countries have ratified the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women.

The environment for women’s livelihood and development has been improving steadily.

Nearly 1,600 laws on women’s rights and interests have been enacted by more than 190 countries, and more and more countries have made national action plans to improve women’s well-being.

Prominent progress has been achieved in women’s empowerment. Their education attainment has been steadily improving, and women are playing an ever more important role in economic, political, cultural, and social affairs. A great many outstanding women have stepped up to take the international stage, living their lives to the full and making contributions with their wisdom and strength. 

In China, 690 million women have entered a moderately prosperous society in all respects.

Maternal mortality has fallen by nearly 80 percent compared to 1995, and key maternal and child health indicators rank among the top among upper-middle-income countries.

Women account for over 40 percent of the total employed population, and in 2024, female students constitute more than half of higher education enrollment.

In the new era, Chinese women, more confident and vibrant than ever before, are taking part in the whole process of state and social governance, fully playing their role as “half the sky” in economic and social development. 

This is also a grand event for shaping the future of the global cause of women. Women in every corner of the world are bound together by a shared future.

Participants of the meeting emphasised that women play an irreplaceable role in human civilisation and social progress.

The pursuit of gender equality and women’s development is a noble ideal of human society, an important measure of social civilisation, a key factor for sustainable development, and a shared responsibility of the international community

President Xi proposed four key recommendations: jointly fostering an enabling environment for women’s growth and development, jointly cultivating powerful momentum for the high-quality development of women’s cause, jointly developing governance frameworks to protect women’s rights and interests, and jointly writing a new chapter in promoting global cooperation on women.

President Xi also made the following announcement: in the next five years, China will donate another $10m [€8.62m] to UN Women; earmark a quota of $100m in China’s Global Development and South-South Cooperation Fund for implementing development cooperation projects for women and girls in collaboration with international organizations; launch 1,000 “small and beautiful” livelihood programmes with Chinese assistance that take women and girls as priority beneficiaries; invite 50,000 women to China for exchange and training programs; and establish a Global Center for Women’s Capacity Building, which is aimed at conducting capacity building and other development cooperation with relevant countries and international organizations to train more female talent.

Europe has been an important promoter of the global cause of women.

China is willing to work with Europe, building on the strong cooperation achieved so far, to jointly explore new paths for revitalising multilateralism, advancing global women’s causes, carrying out more cooperation on new fronts, and contributing greater wisdom and strength to the progress of human civilisation.