First United Nations Conference on the Status of Women (1995)

Equality, Development and Peace was the theme of the United Nation's women's conference held in Beijing in September 1995. The UN General Assembly called for the Fourth World Conference on Women to review the Forward Looking Strategies which has been formulated ten years earlier at the third conference in Nairobi. The Beijing conference was at the time the largest UN conference ever held with over 17,000 total registrants. This included 5,000 delegates from 189 member states, 4,000 non-governmental organization (NGO) representatives, and over 3,200 representatives from media outlets. The week prior to the main conference there was an NGO forum in nearby Huairou in which there were nearly 30,000 participants.

According to Noeleen Heyzer, the Director of UNIFEM, Beijing was "not so much a conference about women, but a women's conference about the state of the world." The conference's mission statement said the aim was:

"Removing all the obstacles to women's active participation in all spheres of public and private life through a full and equal share in economic, social, cultural and political decision-making. This means that the principle of shared power and responsibility should be established between women and men at home, in the workplace and in the wider national and international communities."