UN town hall strikes chord with Presbyterian delegates attending the Commission on the Status of Women
Secretry-General lauded for attentiveness to women's concerns
NEW YORK — The Rev. Lorna Blackford was full of emotion after attending a town hall meeting with UN Secretary-General António Guterres this week.
Blackford, pastor of A Community of Faith in Raymond, Illinois, had heard the Secretary-General’s take on why there seems to be a pushback against women and girls as they demand gender equality and justice.
“A bitter wind is blowing around the world,” Guterres said during opening remarks at UN Headquarters. “That wind is hardening attitudes and fueling a backlash against women’s rights — a backlash that thrives on disinformation, that exploits fear and insecurity, that weaponizes culture wars, and that seeks to push women into silence."
Hearing that and similar remarks from the Secretary-General made an impression on Blackford, who’s part of a Presbyterian delegation in town for the 70th session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW70).
“I was overwhelmed by it all,” she explained of the Townhall, just after exiting the crowded event. “We are in a season of discontent, and I think it's just going to escalate before it gets better because, as they said in there, masculinity is lashing out because they feel the loss of their power, and they're fighting for it and trying to hold women down.”
Lorraine Cuffie, a delegate from Presbyterian Women (PW), who hails from New Jersey, also attended the final town hall to be offered by Guterres, who is in his last year in the post.
“I’m just grateful to the Secretary-General for his commitment to human rights, women's rights, especially because that's the thread that's running through his commitment to gender equality and women’s rights,” Cuffie said. “I’m looking to see when we’re going to have a woman” as Secretary-General. "It’s not that there’s a scarcity of qualified women.”
The town hall is held in conjunction with CSW70, a gathering that is taking place through March 19, with a focus on the theme of “ensuring and strengthening access to justice for all women and girls.”
Delegates from the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and PW operate synergistically in New York, attending many of the same events and reflecting on their experiences together, though they also have the ability to choose from a host of parallel and side events to attend on their own in order to learn more about topics related to the theme.
The delegates are being accompanied by leaders from the Presbyterian Ministry at the United Nations and Presbyterian Women as well as national leaders arriving at various times during the week. Those leaders include the Rev. Jihyun Oh, Stated Clerk of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and Executive Director of the Interim Unified Agency; the Rev. CeCe Armstrong, co-moderator of the 226th General Assembly (2024); and the Rev. Jimmie Hawkins, the PC(USA)'s advocacy director.
As the town hall was taking place, Armstrong was struck by the diversity of the room as reflected in the array of colorful garments of attendees from all over the world. She herself was wearing an African dress from Kenya.
“It was a calling card for other women from the continent of Africa to come up and introduce themselves,” Armstrong said of her dress. “One woman walked up to me and … goes, ‘I am from Cameroon,’ and (I said) ‘Oh, I'm from Charleston, South Carolina,’ and then it dawned on me that she was watching my attire, and that the attire itself was a calling card and an invitation to relationship, so that was near and dear to my heart.”
Later in the day, Oh greeted delegates gathered at the Church of the Covenant for a gathering hosted by Presbyterian Women that included small group discussion, light food and a presentation by Oak Arias, a transgender person, on language sensitivity and why it matters.
Oh said she was pleased and hopeful to be in a room full of people dedicated to living out their faith. She also noted that it was an intergenerational gathering.
Earlier at the town hall, a roomful of people from around the world watched as Guterres gave remarks and took questions from the crowd while sharing space with Sima Bahous, executive director of UN Women.
In his remarks, Guterres told the audience that he looks forward to the town hall every year as a way to receive their thoughts and guidance.
Guterres also thanked participants for being on the frontlines, “defending hard-won rights for women and girls” and building coalitions, often in the face of harassment and intimidation and in many different sectors of society.
“When you push for change, you are pushing against the patriarchy, and the patriarchy is pushing back,” he said. “We still live in a male-dominated world with a male-dominated culture, and gender equality is fundamentally a question of power. We see those power gaps everywhere — from the arena of politics, to economic decision-making, to the technologies shaping our future, including AI (artificial intelligence).”
However, for the first time in history, the UN has achieved gender parity among its senior leaders at headquarters and globally, enhancing the UN’s ability to serve people, Guterres said. “To reach gender parity, you do not need to bend the rules,” he noted. “You just need to provide women the same opportunity” as men.
Among other things, Guterres discussed a possible merger of UN Women and the UN Population Fund, saying that it would create a single, powerful organization; the need for the Security Council to better reflect the composition of today’s world; the crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous women; and gender-based violence in war-torn Ukraine and elsewhere.
“The conversation was excellent,” said the Rev. Dr. Carolyn Grice, pastor of New Life Presbyterian Church in Omaha, Nebraska, who appreciated Guterres’ attentiveness and his comments about the Security Council.
Guterres also encouraged women not to give up as he noted in his remarks: “You are pushing leaders to act when they’d rather postpone. … Don’t let up. Rights can be rolled back much faster than they were won.”
Blackford added: “We have a lot of fighting yet to do, and it's just going to get a lot worse before it gets better, but women need to be strong and not lash back but still be strong to show that there is a better way of being strong than being violent.”
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