Speaker 1: Hi, This is Milan Vervier and this is Kim Azarelli.
Speaker 1: We are co authors of the book Fast Forward, How
Speaker 1: Women Can Achieve Power and Purpose. And you're listening to
Speaker 1: Seneca Women Conversations on Power and Purpose, brought to you
Speaker 1: by the Seneca Women Podcast Network and I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Prinzeli Malama Nokuka has been at the epicenter of history.
Speaker 1: She's seen how a single event can change the lives
Speaker 1: of millions of women around the world. Today, she has
Speaker 1: UN Women, the UN agency devoted to women's empowerment. Earlier
Speaker 1: in her career, she was the first woman to be
Speaker 1: appointed Deputy President of South Africa, and before that, she
Speaker 1: was a member of South Africa's first post apartheid parliament.
Speaker 1: Well sir ring in parliament, she learned about a game
Speaker 1: changing event taking place in Beijing where tens of thousands
Speaker 1: of women arrived to attend the u N World Conference
Speaker 1: on Women. At that conference, Hillary Clinton declared that human
Speaker 1: rights are women's rights and women's rights are human rights,
Speaker 1: once and for all, and a hundred and eighty nine
Speaker 1: countries signed on to a commitment to gender equality. In
Speaker 1: the decades since, hundreds of law has been passed around
Speaker 1: the world to ensure women's full participation, all because of
Speaker 1: the Beijing Conference. Plinzilli sat down with Milan at the
Speaker 1: Senega Woman Forum in Dabos to talk about the significance
Speaker 1: of Beijing, which celebrates his twenty fifth anniversary this year.
Speaker 1: Listen to their conversation and learned about how the conference
Speaker 1: put women's rights on the world agenda, the progress since,
Speaker 1: and what companies and countries can do to help accelerate
Speaker 1: women in Enjoy the conversation and stick around after for
Speaker 1: my top takeaways. Uh So from Zally, welcome, We're really
Speaker 1: thrilled to have you here. She has Uh really, if
Speaker 1: anybody has been running a marathon here, I think it
Speaker 1: is she. This is a landmark year on women's issues. Uh.
Speaker 1: In the United States, we're marking our hundredth anniversary of suffrage.
Speaker 1: It was a long time struggle to get the right
Speaker 1: to vote. Um and for the world, it is the
Speaker 1: twenty five anniversary of the u N Fourth World Conference
Speaker 1: on Beijing. But so much happened in Beijing. It's hard
Speaker 1: to believe that it was the first time that women's
Speaker 1: rights were chiseled into international human rights law. So it
Speaker 1: took that long violence against women, something we know is
Speaker 1: a global scourge, was put on the World Agenda back then,
Speaker 1: UM and Pumsali is leading a real effort for us
Speaker 1: not just to have an anniversary, but to really look
Speaker 1: at that platform for action that was adopted, to see
Speaker 1: the progress that we've made, and there has been progress,
Speaker 1: we do have a long way to go. So Tom Selle,
Speaker 1: it's just wonderful to have you here, UM, and maybe
Speaker 1: we can begin UM by hearing from you about how
Speaker 1: this was so landmark for the women's movement and and
Speaker 1: personally how you remember it. Thank you very much. It's
Speaker 1: wonderful to celebrate the many anvestories that we have. And
Speaker 1: let's see when Beijing happened to get hundreds and eighty
Speaker 1: nine countries agreeing on a set of standards, twelve teams
Speaker 1: that that we're going to implement that's to find what
Speaker 1: is right for women, that gave us a travel of direction.
Speaker 1: Was truly historical because nothing like that had existed. It
Speaker 1: raised the bar for all countries. No one could say
Speaker 1: after paging, they kind of like don't know what is
Speaker 1: right for women in their own countries. What was also
Speaker 1: interesting was that this was for all the hundreds and
Speaker 1: eighty nine countries at least, who is diverse as you
Speaker 1: can be. And the fact that they actually agreed to
Speaker 1: implement this program, never mind that they didn't quite implement it,
Speaker 1: but that they agreed that they were going to implement
Speaker 1: it was important. Secondly, it was also a moment where
Speaker 1: the United Nations used it's convening power to bring countries
Speaker 1: together to forge a common program, forge common standards for
Speaker 1: all those countries. Because in the United Nations it might
Speaker 1: not look very united from you when you are looking
Speaker 1: from outside, but this is where you get opposing views
Speaker 1: to sit side by side. So that was also quite
Speaker 1: a historical. But also it amplified certain aspects in the
Speaker 1: women's In the Women's within the page of women's rights,
Speaker 1: for instance, the definition of a child was not just
Speaker 1: a child a girl child. In that way, we were
Speaker 1: able to amplify the wrongs that impacted the girl child
Speaker 1: child marriage. Before then, it was not discussed as a problem.
Speaker 1: We're able to amplify female genital mutilation. Before that, it
Speaker 1: was not an issue and that only affected girls. So
Speaker 1: when you talk about the rights of a child and
Speaker 1: you don't amplify these these very gruesome atrocities that happened
Speaker 1: to girls were being hidden. It also was important because
Speaker 1: in areas such as say consent, before then it was
Speaker 1: always a gray area. When do you feel violated? You
Speaker 1: couldn't say I did not give content. What Beijing did
Speaker 1: was to introduce the concept of content, which, as we
Speaker 1: know now after me too, it's very important. And of
Speaker 1: course it was also important because it just gives women
Speaker 1: a voice human rights with human rights, and that was
Speaker 1: quite important. You know. I think it's interesting, as you
Speaker 1: mentioned f GM and some of these other horrific abuses
Speaker 1: that girls and women were enduring, they were not viewed
Speaker 1: under international human rights laws. Violations of human rights hard
Speaker 1: to believe. But so it's brought us a long way,
Speaker 1: even though there's still so much work. So from Sally,
Speaker 1: what did it mean to you personal? I was a
Speaker 1: parliamentarian at that time, and it gave us the momentum
Speaker 1: to change the laws in our country at a speed
Speaker 1: that you could not believe. We were able to learn
Speaker 1: from the countries, and a very few at the time
Speaker 1: we had made progress in changing their laws, but also
Speaker 1: we had to sit down and think about what was
Speaker 1: needed in our own country, and of course for us.
Speaker 1: It was complicated also because it was also changing laws
Speaker 1: of our part it to bring them to a democratic
Speaker 1: South Africa as well as ensuring an entrenching gender equality.
Speaker 1: So it was exciting, truly, truly exciting to have an instrument,
Speaker 1: in a tool that we could actually use to drive change.
Speaker 1: And I remember the African women were really extraordinary leaders
Speaker 1: in Beijing and putting some for the girl child and
Speaker 1: the agenda. Yeah, so we know from from the web Report,
Speaker 1: and it's always good to quote it here, especially that
Speaker 1: as you heard, you know, some of the data would
Speaker 1: suggest it's going to take us forever to get to
Speaker 1: equal participation, in equality and pay in the workplace. But
Speaker 1: yet there's been a lot of progress that the West
Speaker 1: Report also points out. How do you see the status
Speaker 1: of women today, Well, it's an expect the classes have
Speaker 1: full we do have problems. That changes. Sometimes is success
Speaker 1: is exaggerated, there's illusion of progress when you have a
Speaker 1: handful of women, like of parliamentarians, it looks like this
Speaker 1: is a lot of women, but men twenty five twenty
Speaker 1: five percent, they are seventy five percent legislators who are men.
Speaker 1: Sev of the laws that govern all of us are
Speaker 1: made by men. Surely this cannot be acceptable. You only
Speaker 1: have fourteen countries that have gender equal cabinets fourteen one four.
Speaker 1: But of course we will we will take it. But
Speaker 1: we have to drive change much faster. We need to
Speaker 1: drive change much faster because if we move slow and
Speaker 1: not in scale, it is very easy for us to
Speaker 1: real back. We are seeing that and when we rel back,
Speaker 1: we lose the gains that we have already made. In Beijing,
Speaker 1: we did not have a roadmap to coordinate the changes
Speaker 1: that we're going to implement after we got in the declaration.
Speaker 1: We did not have an investment plan to finance the
Speaker 1: changes that we wanted to see. We did not also
Speaker 1: align the emptiges with Beijing. Beijing came before em digs.
Speaker 1: When emptyges came, we did not align the same. So
Speaker 1: now with the s diges, we want to align the two.
Speaker 1: Otherwise we are too spread and chances are that one
Speaker 1: of the two agendas is going to lose. We're putting
Speaker 1: them together. Two. We want to have investment plans that
Speaker 1: will clearly define what is needed, cost what is needed,
Speaker 1: and make sure that we know who has to pay that.
Speaker 1: That thing is that we must have a coordinated program
Speaker 1: that we can influence all of us. I mean that
Speaker 1: we can coordinate together. So we've worked out six domatic areas,
Speaker 1: calling them action coalitions, ending violence against women, economic justice,
Speaker 1: leaders ship and participation, Technology and innovation as our h
Speaker 1: R women in climates. These are the six areas, and
Speaker 1: it puts together the Beijing Declaration and the s digs
Speaker 1: and it will focus on this topic at the on
Speaker 1: the biggest obstacle that remains in this area. If you're
Speaker 1: thinking about it as a pyramid, the obstacle that is
Speaker 1: at the base of the pyramid, which may be the
Speaker 1: biggest one, that is what we will target so that
Speaker 1: when you correct that one, the whole pyramid can crumble.
Speaker 1: And these are the action collisions that we are going
Speaker 1: to be using to celebrate Beijing twenty five. We are
Speaker 1: going to in Mexico in May craft these action points
Speaker 1: and take them to Paris in July. And in July
Speaker 1: we will then announce these action collisions. They would have
Speaker 1: been formalized, they would have been costed, and I hope
Speaker 1: after that we will be good to go. And in
Speaker 1: September we will take that to the General Assembly to
Speaker 1: present it as a finished program, and we will be
Speaker 1: saying basically two heads of states. Most of them are dudes. Dude,
Speaker 1: this is the thing, this is the thing. So you know,
Speaker 1: com sally in this room, we have a lot of
Speaker 1: representatives of the private sector UM as well as organizations
Speaker 1: in civil society, but for companies they have a role
Speaker 1: in this. And um, you know it's interesting as you
Speaker 1: were talking about the SDGs that STG seventeen, I don't
Speaker 1: know that I would have projected this, uh ever, but
Speaker 1: the United Nations actually says in SGG seventeen we need
Speaker 1: to work collaboratively and specifically pulls out the private sector.
Speaker 1: So what can companies do give us a sense of
Speaker 1: how we can engage, particularly in moving this agenda forward. UM,
Speaker 1: in this landmark here and then beyond, let me just
Speaker 1: say in Beijing in private sector was not as active
Speaker 1: as it is now. This is one thing that we've
Speaker 1: gained along the way. Along the way, private sector has
Speaker 1: arrived and has arrived in a big way. So moving forward,
Speaker 1: we definitely are forging partnerships like just like we did
Speaker 1: in the s digis and look what it has done.
Speaker 1: It has made the stgis basically trend in divorce because
Speaker 1: private sector has come on board. So we are hoping
Speaker 1: that in the collision action collisions that we are forging
Speaker 1: going going forward, we will have private sector in each coalition.
Speaker 1: Just give you an example. The companies that have been
Speaker 1: speaking to here want to do violence against women and
Speaker 1: these are tel Costs telecommunications company who want to fight
Speaker 1: violence against women online. This is a problem crucial, crucial
Speaker 1: and critical. Companies want to fight wants to contribute to
Speaker 1: sexual rights and and and to sexual rights, social rights
Speaker 1: and health and reproductive rights. These are companies who say
Speaker 1: we need to close the gap on access to contraception
Speaker 1: and they need to be produced, they need to be distributed,
Speaker 1: They need to reach the people who do not have them.
Speaker 1: Public sector cannot do that alone. If you are looking
Speaker 1: at a climate, well you see yourselves what companies are doing.
Speaker 1: So in these partnerships will definitely have a private sector
Speaker 1: leading and participating. And will they be protu operating on
Speaker 1: some of the events, whether in Mexico or France or
Speaker 1: later at Anger next September. Yes, they will participate in Mexico,
Speaker 1: they will participate in Paris, and we need them to
Speaker 1: accompany us to younger so that we can all speak
Speaker 1: with one voice when we're speaking two heads of state,
Speaker 1: and I must emphasize that this is an intergenerational campaign.
Speaker 1: It is called generation equality. Basically, what we are saying
Speaker 1: is that we are the generation that will have to
Speaker 1: put this to an end. We will also focus on
Speaker 1: young people, specially ages fifteen to five, because this is
Speaker 1: the age that is very vulnerable. If we do not
Speaker 1: engage and supports them, we will not be able to
Speaker 1: make significant progress because they are the largest population on
Speaker 1: f right now. If you make progress with that population,
Speaker 1: it supports the young people, the younger, the children because
Speaker 1: they look after the children. It supports the older because
Speaker 1: they carry the older. So it's important that they become
Speaker 1: a strengthened population. And of course they have no recollection
Speaker 1: of Beijing because they weren't even born. Uh So, it's
Speaker 1: also interesting when pum Zeli laid out those six areas
Speaker 1: that technology and climate were not part of the platform
Speaker 1: for action, because those are challenges that have developed since.
Speaker 1: So it's coming together in so many different ways. Well,
Speaker 1: let me just ask you one one final question, pum Zeli,
Speaker 1: because we're here dealing with all of these global challenges
Speaker 1: and sometimes it can be a very heavy weight and
Speaker 1: I'm sure you feel that keenly, particularly with respect to women.
Speaker 1: But what makes you optimistic? You know what makes me optimistic.
Speaker 1: It's the young people. They are truly, truly amazing these days.
Speaker 1: They start to be activists at seven years old, and
Speaker 1: I think this is the function of technology. They see
Speaker 1: so much. It's a very early age and they know
Speaker 1: so much of the options that they have to work
Speaker 1: around the changes. I am very, very optimistic that if
Speaker 1: we empower, if we give them space, they're unstoppable. They
Speaker 1: are truly truly unstoppable, as are you. Uh, and so
Speaker 1: we will follow you as we do as you go forward,
Speaker 1: because Pomsli truly not only talks to talk, she walks
Speaker 1: the walk. So thank you for calling us to action
Speaker 1: as walk A tuned for our takeaways after this break.
Speaker 1: I hope you enjoyed Milan's conversation with Pinzili. To learn
Speaker 1: about generation equality, go to you and women dot org
Speaker 1: our top takeaways. First, it's important to remember that until Beijing,
Speaker 1: women's rights were not squarely on the world's agenda. That
Speaker 1: summit chiseled women's rights into international law for the first
Speaker 1: time in history. It also provided a roadmap for equality
Speaker 1: as Punzili says after Beijing, no one can say they
Speaker 1: don't know what's right for women in their countries. Second,
Speaker 1: we can no longer rely solely on governments to create change.
Speaker 1: Companies have an important role to play, and through public
Speaker 1: private partnerships, they can help us complete that journey to equality. Finally,
Speaker 1: as we continue the work to advance progress for women
Speaker 1: and girls, there is great reason for optimism, and that's
Speaker 1: the young people of today. They know how to engage
Speaker 1: and they're not afraid to speak up. Now it's up
Speaker 1: to us to help guide and support them in order
Speaker 1: to bring about the world we all want to see.
Speaker 1: You're listening to Seneca Women Conversations on Power and Purpose,
Speaker 1: brought to you by the Seneca Women podcast Network and
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio with support from founding partner PNGNG. Listen
Speaker 1: to Seneca Women Conversations on Power and Purpose on the
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
Speaker 1: your podcasts, and please support this podcast by telling your friends,
Speaker 1: subscribing and rating us. For more information on Seneca Women,
Speaker 1: follow us on social media, visit our website Seneca Women
Speaker 1: dot com, and check out the Seneca Women app free
Speaker 1: in the app Store. Have a great day.