United Nations Report By:  Susan O’Malley, IFBPWC UN Representative, NGO CSW/NY, Chair ex officio Professor Emerita, City University of New York, UNChair@nfbpwc.orgsusanomalley4@gmail.com  

On August 23, 2023, a number of NGO CSW/NY executive committee members past and present travelled by train to a Nature Preserve and Trail named for Esther Hymer in Shrewsbury, New Jersey where she lived with her family from 1941 to 2001 when she died at age 102.  It is a lovely place as you can see from the photos.  Esther Hymer was an important foremother for IFBPW, the first chair of NGO CSW/NY, and important for the formation of the UN.  We have been working on writing the 50-year history of NGO CSW/NY.  It should be completed in September.  To read more about Esther Hymer's life I recommend Esther Hymer A Bus to 42nd Street by Sylvia G. Perry and Livia M. Ricci. 

Pictured Left:  Houry Geudelekian, Ivy Koeck, Pamela Morgan, Susan O'Malley, Devan Zingler

Pictured Right: Esther Hymer Nature Preserve and Trail

 

Below is the draft of the Esther Hymer Chapter 1972-1982 for the NGO CSW/NY History.

1972-1982 | ESTHER HYMER

In 1998 on the occasion of Esther Wanner Hymer’s 100th birthday UN Secretary General Kofi Annan wrote, “For half a century, as the representative of the International Federation of Business and Professional Women (IFBPW) at the UN, you actively promoted the concerns of women. Your untiring efforts influenced almost all of the resolutions of the General Assembly and its subsidiary bodies which affect the status of women.” The previous year SG Annan had also  honored Hymer: “Still active in promoting women’s equality, Mrs. Hymer represents the best tradition of NGO activism in the United Nations.”

Born in Chicago in 1898, Hymer marched for the ratification of the 19th Amendment which gave women the right to vote in 1920.  Her involvement with the work of the National Committee for Lasting Peace (1942-1951) led her to the June 1945 conference in San Francisco that established the United Nations. At the conference Hymer became aware of the potential influence of NGOs. She became Director of International Relations for IFBPW and its NGO Representative to the UN for 60 years. IFBPW was granted ECOSOC consultative status in 1947.

Interestingly, there is no reference to NGO CSW/NY and Esther Hymer in Esther W. Hymer, A Bus to 42nd St. by Sylvia G. Perry & Livia M Ricci. Nor is there a reference to NGO CSW/NY in the descriptions of the contents in the 50 boxes of Hymer’s papers housed in the Schlesinger Library at the Radcliffe Institute in Cambridge, MA.

When the International Women’s Year was set for 1975, Esther Hymer was elected Chairperson of the NGO Committee of the International Women’s Year, a position she held from 1972-1982 (Perry & Ricci, 34). In 1972 Helvi Sipila from Finland was appointed the first woman UN Assistant Secretary-General. Hymer chaired the 85-member NGO Committee on the Decade of Women. In 1975 the first UN World Conference on Women was held in Mexico City, and A World Plan of Action was adopted. INSTRAW, an Institute for Training and Research for Women, was established after the Mexico City Conference; in 1976 UNIFEM, a Voluntary Fund to Support the Decade for Women, was established. 

In 1980 at the second UN World Conference on Women in Copenhagen, which Hymer attended, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) was signed by 75 Member States making it legally binding. CEDAW had been unanimously adopted by the 34th session of the UN General Assembly. 

During Esther Hymer’s 10-year term as Chair of NGO CSW/NY, she was an integral part of the NGO women’s movement to increase the representation and participation of women in the UN. From 1972-1982 NGO CSW/NY was not a membership organization with monthly meetings and the yearly NGO CSW Forum with hundreds of parallel events. NGO CSW/NY was just getting started. Esther Hymer died on April 1, 2001, at age 102.

There is a Nature Preserve and trail named for Esther Hymer in Shrewsbury, New Jersey, where Esther and her family lived from 1941.