At UN summit, empowering women on all fronts

Huang Huijuan, deputy director of Public Communication Department of China Women's Development Foundation, speaks at the 2017 Empowering Women and Sustainable Development Summit at the United Nations in New York on Monday. [Photo by Hong Xiao/China Daily]

While Chinese women have all kinds of the opportunities to make their dreams come true, they are making efforts in accelerating the global women's movement and promoting gender equality in the world.

"Empowering women is empowering the whole human race," Huang Huijuan, deputy director of the public communication department of the China Women's Development Foundation, said at the 2017 Empowering Women and Sustainable Development Summit at the United Nations in New York on Monday.

Zhang Meifang, Chinese deputy consul general in New York; Huang Hongying, vice-president of China's popular brand discount site vip.com and more than 100 women in leadership roles from all walks of life attended.

The half-day conference was divided into international forum and symposiums, focusing on the issues of empowering women and sustainability; promoting women's development through cooperation among government organizations and enterprises.

Huang said empowering women not only means eliminating poverty, but achieving sustainable development. She said NGOs have become one of the "propellers of social transformation". An important way for women's development in the future will be state, enterprise and society's co-operation.

To support women's development worldwide and the work of UN Women, China donated $10 million to UN Women for the implementation of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action and the realization of the related goals in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development in 2015.

During the Global Leaders' Meeting in September 2015 during the general assembly, President Xi Jinping said: "China will do more to enhance gender equality as its basic State policy, give play to women's important role as 'half of the sky' and support them in realizing their own dreams and aspirations in both career and life.

The conference, which is its third year, was jointly hosted by CWDF and the Sino-American Friendship Association.

Founded in 1988, China Women's Development Foundation (CWDF) is a nationwide non-profit social welfare organization that has been dedicated to improving women's overall quality, maintaining women's legal rights, promoting the development of women and women's initatives, and raising funds.

xiaohong@chinadailyusa.com