Behind the Scenes at the 1995 Beijing Conference on Women
An Excerpt from "In the Court of Three Popes" by Mary Ann Glendon
This week, we’re taking a break from announcing new Featured Authors to publish an excerpt from Mary Ann Glendon’s book, In the Court of Three Popes: An American Lawyer and Diplomat in the Last Absolute Monarchy of the West. Mary Ann Glendon is an emerita law professor at Harvard Law and a former US ambassador to the Holy See—and she also led the Vatican’s delegation to the UN’s Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995.
This month marks the 30th anniversary of the papal encyclical Evangelium Vitae, in which John Paul II called for “a new feminism,” making it a perfect time to reflect on the life and work of pioneering new feminist Mary Ann Glendon.
Fairer Disputations Editor in Chief Erika Bachiochi has an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal today that cites the work of Glendon and the feminism of Pope John Paul II, arguing that contemporary anti-feminist influencers misrepresent Catholic teaching.”
Behind the Scenes at the 1995 Beijing Conference on Women
Mary Ann Glendon
I returned to Harvard thinking that at least the Holy See could feel proud that it had amplified the voices of women whose concerns would otherwise have been sidelined. The Holy See was the only entity at the Beijing conference whose sphere of concern, like that of the UN, was worldwide. With over three hundred thousand educational, health care, and relief agencies serving mainly the poor in every region on the planet, it had a wealth of firsthand experience in ministering to the most basic needs of women and girls. We had called attention to the plight of women who lacked adequate primary health care, nutrition, and sanitation (all of which were given short shrift due to the conference’s fixation on reproductive health). And we had responded to what we believed was the desire of most women everywhere for a feminism that is not hostile to men, marriage, and motherhood—a feminism that treats men and women as equal partners on their journey through life.
This Week in Sex-Realist Feminism: Becoming a Wife, the Feminist Pope, and Trudeau's Feminist Hellscape
This week: Larissa Phillips on becoming a wife, Erika Bachiochi on the feminist pope, and Julie Bindel on Justin Trudeau's feminist hellscape. Plus: the erectile dysfunction-industrial complex, an ode to the vanilla wife, the billionaire, the influencer and their baby, video of our Flowers of Fire book club discussion—and more!
From the Archives:
In honor of #DetransAwarenessDay on March 12, here are stories from some detransitioners, as told to Featured Author Jennifer Lahl and Kallie Fell.
Afraid to Be Female
Jennifer Lahl & Kallie Fell
“How do we stop this internalized misogyny? How do we learn to let children live outside the boundaries of gender stereotypes without labeling them “nonbinary” and ushering them to the closest gender clinic? How do we make this world safe for girls to grow up female?”