Twenty years ago, when the Beijing Declaration was developed, I was 18 years old. A few years prior, I had been fired from a garment factory in retaliation for trying to form a union in my factory. I had attended only five years of primary school before entering the workforce at age twelve. In the beginning I earned $6 a month working for companies like Walmart. It wasn’t enough to feed my mom, my younger siblings and my disabled father. At 18, I had already been married, in what became an abusive relationship, and left the relationship.
