Ms Cheryl Carolus was outside Robben Island when Nelson Mandela was freed. She was one of the two women on his first negotiating team to "talk about talks" with the South African government, and became acting general secretary of the ANC in 1997. She is now South African High Commissioner to London.
At the first world women lawyers' conference, organised by the International Bar Association and attended by 900 delegates from 90 countries in London last week, she was one of the speakers. She said the political process in countries like Northern Ireland would be moving faster towards a solution if more women were involved.
"When the formal negotiating process began [in South Africa] the women organised across the political parties to ensure that women were represented," she said. "The result was that at least 50 per cent of the negotiating teams had to be women." The outcome would not have been possible otherwise.
"We achieved a consensus. If half of our negotiators had not been women we would have dealt with the conflict differently. The talks would have suffered from what I call `testosterone poisoning'. Women are used to dealing with conflicts, in the family, in the community. When they find an obstacle, they find a way to overcome it."
She said at least half the heads of South Africa's diplomatic missions now were women, and they were well represented in the parliament.
The involvement of women as lawmakers is having an impact on international law, according to Prof Judith Resnik from Yale University. She said the recent War Crimes Tribunal judgment on the rape of Bosnian women was hugely significant. She pointed out that this judgment was given by Judge Florence Mumba from Zambia, on foot of a prosecution by another woman. It made sexual slavery a war crime for the first time.
The judgment "shows that women are now lawmakers, and that they still remain the recipients of brutal attacks such as those discussed in The Hague".
A large group of women from Islamic countries provoked one of the liveliest discussions, as they debated how Islamic teaching could be interpreted to the benefit of women.
Dr Shaheen Sardar, chairwoman of the Women's Commission of Pakistan, said women in Islam, as in all the world's religions, were kept away from the right to interpret religion.
The Women's Commission has been pushing to have outlawed practices that discriminate against women, such as "honour killings" of women held to have violated the family honour, she said.
"Last year we went on the record as saying that killings in the name of honour are murder, and must be treated as such," she said. "The government dragged its feet on this. It did not want to upset the feudals.
"How do you enforce the law in places where there are no roads, where there are no police? But now there is a directive that any police officer who does not register such a killing will face disciplinary action."
Ms Shazadi Beg is a barrister in London who advises the British government on a number of issues, including forced marriages in Britain. She said that, of all the world religions, Islam was the most misunderstood, because it had become politicised and was used by political extremists.
Others spoke of the need to ensure that privatisation of public utilities in developing countries did not take them beyond the means of most women and their communities, while yet others, inhabiting another world, discussed the legal challenges facing in-house lawyers in big corporations.
Inevitably the conference featured some self-congratulation, and the problems discussed ranged from the life-threatening to the trivial, but it was the first world conference of women lawyers, and future events are likely to be more focused.