From Rio to Johannesburg: What's Good for Women is Good for the World

From Rio to Johannesburg:
What's Good for Women is Good for the World
by Danielle Nierenberg

WASHINGTON, DC April 30, 2002 - Throughout the 1990s, several major United Nations conferences stressed the importance of including women in sustainable development. But despite these commitments on paper, there has been far too little action. True and meaningful equity between women and men will take much more than inserting a paragraph here and there in the documents issued at a United Nations convention or in national laws. Gender myopia or blindness to women's issues still distorts environmental, economic, and health policies. Today, a full decade after the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, governments, development agencies, and even some NGOs remain resolutely patriarchal. Despite the widespread belief that women