Can women’s leadership make a difference in the current global environment? A resounding ‘YES!’ was the response of the one thousand women from around the world who met in Brisbane, Australia for the World Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA) World Council from 5th – 10th July 2003. Women from more than 100 countries and 50 partner organizations, including WACC, attended the meeting “Leading Change: The Power to Act”. As part of this event the World YWCA convened a two-day International Women’s Summit to review the status of women within the framework of the women’s global agenda adopted at the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing 1995.  To do this the World YWCA brought women leaders, women activists and women from grassroots areas to tell their stories from their perspective. Testimonies from women experiencing economic injustices, violence, the effects of HIV/AIDS, and women living in conflict situations formed the central part of the Summit. To give these issues a global perspective there were plenary keynote speeches from prominent women leaders.

In November 2001, representatives of the Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA) and Media Women's Associations from the Southern African Development Corporation (SADC) region, met in Windhoek at a MISA Gender Policy workshop that was facilitated by Gender Links. The meeting noted that gender equality was implicit in the notions of a “pluralistic press", "reflecting the widest possible range of opinion within the community", "the fulfillment of human aspirations", "freedom of the press" and "freedom of association" as espoused in the 1991 Windhoek Declaration on Promoting an Independent and Pluralistic African press. However, the failure to state this explicitly led to inadequate attention being paid to the gross gender disparities in the media. Coupled with this a number of gaps such as the lack of research on gender in the media content were identified at this meeting.