North America, Women and Urban SDGs: An Urban Paradigm Shift Towards Gender Equality

Urban Thinkers Campus (The City We Need NOW!)

Jan Peterson

Chair of the National Congress of Neighborhood Women (NCNW), Williamsburg NY, USA

Jan Peterson was awarded the UN-HABITAT Scroll of Honor, one of the world’s most prestigious awards presented to those working on urbanization, in 2009 for four decades of activism for grassroots women and their communities. 

She has spent her lifetime as an organizer with the mission of empowering poor and working-class women to become community leaders on housing and neighborhood development issues locally in New York City, nationally, and globally. 

Jan is also a member of the NYC/Brooklyn Community Planning Board 1, chairing the Women's Committee.

She is the founder of the National Congress of Neighborhood Women (NCNW, 1974), GROOTS International (1985), and the Huairou Commission (1995), all three of which have consultative status with the United Nations. Under her leadership, Huairou Commission’s global membership has expanded to include organizations in more than 50 countries. In addition to raising millions of dollars for work with grassroots women, Jan has pioneered methods and tools including the Leadership Support Process, the Local-to-Local Dialogue methodology, and the Grassroots Women’s Academy held at each World Urban Forum. 

In the 1980s, working with the NCNW and GROOTS International, she was successful at giving grassroots women a voice at the UN’s Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995. Through her strong advocacy, Jan has ensured that the global women’s movement incorporates grassroots women’s groups and community development priorities for sustainable human settlements. As a result of these efforts, global agencies such as UN-Habitat, UN Women, and UN DRR have included women from poor communities in advisory and planning groups. Huairou Commission is now part of the UN’s Platform for Action, leading the Economic Justice Action Coalition for the Generation Equality Cluster, following up on the platform developed in Beijing.