Book Description

Anne S Walker grew up in the dormitories of a boarding school in the suburbs of Melbourne. Her initial career was as an early childhood teacher, then she sailed to England and worked as a community activist in London. Accepting an offer to work in Fiji, she became deeply involved for 11 years in early childhood education, women’s human rights, and public affairs advocacy, including the fight against nuclear testing in the Pacific. Those years led her to undertake graduate study in development communications in the USA, following which she was asked to help establish the International Women’s Tribune Centre in New York. This thrust her into the centre of a global campaign for women’s human rights that spanned the next three decades. From the IWTC headquarters opposite the United Nations, Anne and her colleagues met and worked alongside women from every world region on issues affecting their lives and the lives of their communities. Anne and the IWTC were involved in the historic series of UN world conferences on women held in various countries from 1975 to 1995. As well as writing of her work and the role of the IWTC in those momentous decades, Anne tells the powerful stories of some of the women she met at meetings, workshops and other events in Africa, Asia, the Pacific, the Caribbean and Latin America. She also tells of witnessing and living through some of the toughest times in New York’s history, from the moments when planes crashed into the World Trade Centre towers on September 11, 2001. This is an important memoir that takes readers inside the world of women fighting for justice and for an equal place at the tables where global policies and programs are developed and implemented.