In Africa, there is a saying that says, A woman’s day is never done. When she led the International Labour Organisation’s (ILO) delegation to the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing 25 years ago, she saw that the saying applied to women in every other part of the world as well.
Mrs. Mary Chinery-Hesse, née Blay, had distinguished careers in Ghana’s civil service and at the United Nations. In the UN and in numerous other organisations, she continues to be an important voice on economic development issues, an ardent defender of human rights, particularly women’s rights, as well as an active advocate for African imperatives, conflict resolution and mediation.
Chinery-Hesse holds a degree from the University of Ghana in Sociology and Economics and was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Laws (honoris causa) by her Alma Mater, the University of Ghana, in 1991. She is the first female product of the University of Ghana to be so honoured.
She undertook her Post-Graduate programmes in Development Economics at the University of Dublin and at the World Bank Institute in Washington D.C. where she was inscribed as a Fellow of the Institute.
She is an old girl of Wesley Girls’ High School and Mfantsipim School. Mary Chinery-Hesse’s first post at the UN was that of Resident Coordinator of the UN Systems and Resident Representative of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), serving in New York, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, the Seychelles and Uganda.
She was the first-ever African woman to be appointed to that position. She was then appointed as the first-ever woman Deputy Director-General of ILO, after 70 years of the founding of that UN agency, a position with the rank of Under-Secretary-General of the UN.
Again this gave her the distinction of being the first African woman to attain a position of Under-Secretary-General in the history of the UN. She also served as Chairperson of the UN’s Consultative Committee on Programme and Operational Questions for several years, and was as well the Chairperson of the Commonwealth Expert Group of Eminent Persons on Structural Adjustment and Women, which produced the landmark Report, Engendering Adjustment.
On retirement from the UN, Mary Chinery-Hesse was appointed to the Office of the Chief Advisor to the President of the Republic of Ghana in the Cabinet of former President John Agyekum Kufuor. She also was Vice-Chairperson of the National Development Planning Commission and a member of the Board of the Centre for Policy Analysis.
She was a member of the Council of the University of Ghana from 2006-2009. She currently serves on the board of the foremost African Think Tank, the Centre for Conflict Resolution in Cape Town, South Africa.
In her younger days, Mary Chinery-Hesse was Senior Principal Secretary (Chief Director) of the Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning in Ghana and a member of the National Council for Higher Education in the 1970’s. Among her myriad high-level posts was membership on the Council of African Advisors of the World Bank and on the Eminent Persons’ Advisory Panel of the Organisation of African Unity which crafted the strategy to convert the OAU to the African Union.
Her activities took her to the Chairmanship of a High-Level Panel to Review Progress in Implementing the Programme for Least Developed Countries. Other significant appointments have included membership of the Zedillo Commission of Eminent Persons on Financing for Development, and the UN Blue Ribbon Panel of 16 wise world leaders on Threats, Challenges and Change, tasked to rewrite the global security architecture and reform of the UN, especially the Security Council.
She was also a member on the board of the prestigious Global Humanitarian Forum in Geneva, Switzerland, with several Nobel Peace Prize Laureates. For many years, she was a member of the Board of Trustees of the Voluntary Fund for Technical Cooperation of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva, Switzerland, which she chaired.
Her advice continues to be actively sought and valued by many governments and international organisations on a variety of themes. She is, as a result, very busy in retirement. She is the Chair of the Goodwill Ambassadors of the Kofi Annan International Peace Keeping Training Centre, and she is the Chair of the board of the Centre for Regional Integration in Africa.
She serves, among others as Friend on the African Union Panel of the Wise and on the Pan-African Network of the Wise (PanWise), integral components of the African Peace and Security Architecture. Mary Chinery-Hesse is the current Chair of Zenith Bank, Ghana. She has received several prestigious awards and decorations, both nationally and internationally. This includes the highest National Award, the Order of the Star of Ghana. She is a Laureate of the prestigious Gusi Peace Prize for International Diplomacy and Humanitarianism, referred to as the Asian equivalent of the Nobel Peace Prize. She is the first African woman to receive this distinction.
On the Beijing women conference, she said it was an exciting time for those who were present, ‘’30,000 of us, representing 189 nations. We were from different walks of life and faced different issues but all had a common vision. This was articulated in the subsequent Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, which called for equal rights, freedom of opportunity for women everywhere, no matter what their circumstances.’’
An unprecedented 17,000 participants and 30,000 activists streamed into Beijing for the opening of the Fourth World Conference on Women in September 1995. They were remarkably diverse, coming from around the globe, but they had a single purpose in mind: gender equality and the empowerment of all women, everywhere.
Two weeks of political debate followed, heated at times, as representatives of 189 governments hammered out commitments that were historic in scope. Thirty thousand non-governmental activists attended a parallel Forum and kept the pressure on, networking, lobbying and training a global media spotlight.
By the time the conference closed, it had produced the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, the most progressive blueprint ever for advancing women’s rights.
As a defining framework for change, the Platform for Action made comprehensive commitments under 12 critical areas of concern. Even 20 years later, it remains a powerful source of guidance and inspiration.
The Platform for Action imagines a world where each woman and girl can exercise her freedoms and choices, and realise all her rights, such as to live free from violence, to go to school, to participate in decisions and to earn equal pay for equal work.
The Beijing process unleashed remarkable political will and worldwide visibility for women. ‘’It connected and reinforced the activism of women’s movements on a global scale. Conference participants went home with great hope and clear agreement on how to achieve equality and empowerment.
‘’Since then, governments, civil society and the public have translated the Platform for Action’s promises into concrete changes in individual countries. These have ushered in enormous improvements in women’s lives.
‘’More women and girls than at any previous point in time serve in political offices, are protected by laws against gender-based violence, and live under constitutions guaranteeing gender equality. Regular five-year reviews of progress on fulfilling Beijing commitments have sustained momentum’’, she says.
Still, the Platform for Action envisioned gender equality in all dimensions of life—and no country has yet finished this agenda. Women earn less than men and are more likely to work in poor-quality jobs. A third suffer physical or sexual violence in their lifetime. Gaps in reproductive rights and health care leave 800 women dying in childbirth each day.
For Mary Chinery-Hesse, ‘’the 20th anniversary of Beijing opens new opportunities to reconnect, regenerate commitment, charge up political will and mobilize the public. Everyone has a role to play—for our common good. The evidence is increasingly in that empowering women empowers humanity. Economies grow faster, for example, and families are healthier and better-educated.
‘’The Beijing Platform for Action, still forward-looking at 20, offers important focus in rallying people around gender equality and women’s empowerment. Its promises are necessarily ambitious. But over time, and with the accumulating energy of new generations, they are within reach.
‘’Many of the delegates brought their children and babies to the conference. The babies wore tee-shirts with the message I am a full-time job. It was very funny but it was to make a point.
‘’That point was, and still is, that all women are working women and their work should be valued. Women do housework, care work, looking after children but none of this is reflected in the statistics. Outside of the home, their work tends to be low paid and in segregated areas. I am an economist. We at the ILO were looking at how women’s work could be counted, because what is not counted is not valued.
‘’Much of what we are seeing now as the militant work of women had its genesis in Beijing. Women found a bigger voice and the courage to speak out. Also, one important lesson that we learned was that women could support each other. So, the Declaration created a lot of excitement.
‘’The situation for women has improved since then. We see laws on gender equality, maternity leave and equal opportunity. Since Beijing a number of countries embraced the concept of the girl child and several have adopted policies to ensure that girls go to school. At the University of Ghana, where I am Chancellor, there are more women students than men.
‘’Since Beijing, women have had the courage to venture into areas formerly preserved for men. They are encouraged not to think that things are outside of their reach. In the workplace, legislation in many countries has made it easier for women to work.
‘’However, while there has been progress in terms of laws in many parts of the world, it has not changed the mindset about how women are expected to behave and what their role is in society. If there was a flaw in Beijing, it was that the focus was on the policymakers rather than on changing attitudes. I see a lot of fine words and statements about gender equality but society has not moved on with them. Women still bear the largest share of care responsibilities. There is still a significant gender pay gap.
‘’My own fear is that the COVID-19 pandemic will reverse some of the gains that we have made over the last 25 years. I fear that the loss of jobs because of the crisis will ignite the ‘male breadwinner syndrome’, which may push women out of the workplace.
‘’We have to look deeply at how we can make permanent change. Beijing was good. It gave impetus to a process of change but the pace has been too slow. What I have learnt is that as soon as you take your eye off the ball that there is a roll back.
‘’I know that women in the world I grew up in did not have a voice. The truth is that at the high table we still do not have enough women. The policymakers are still mainly men. We need to woo enlightened men to back our quest for equality because unless we make men champions for gender equality there will never be a permanent change.’’
