Advance Women’s Rights

Whether you are a woman entrepreneur, an international human rights defender or simply someone who cares about women’s well-being, you know that progress on the issue of women’s rights is slow and uneven. Women and men around the world continue to suffer from discrimination that reflects deeply held attitudes and values, as illustrated by stark gender gaps in education, labour market participation and political representation.

This inequality is everyone’s problem: Until we address women’s issues, we cannot address our own. And if we want to be a free, prosperous and sustainable global society, we must all strive for equality, starting with women’s rights.

The first step in this effort was the establishment of a commission on the condition of women by President Kennedy in 1961, led by Eleanor Roosevelt. This was followed by the UN Declaration of the Rights of Women in 1966, and more recently by a number of important international treaties, including the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) and the Beijing Platform for Action, which outlines what states have to do to realize women’s rights.

These and other efforts have created a more informed public about the issue of women’s rights, and in turn have helped to bring about changes in policy and in practice. For example, women in most countries now have the right to equal pay for work of equal value. However, many governments still restrict access to abortion, which has made women’s lives less secure.

This societal change is complex, and the implementation of women’s rights policies requires careful consideration to avoid backfire effects – such as violence against women – that can undermine the overall goals of the process. In addition, the do-no-harm principle – that empowerment must be implemented gradually and with due respect for men’s involvement in societal transformation – needs to be rigorously applied to any initiative that aims to empower women.

Taking the lead in changing these attitudes and values requires strong leadership and courageous activists, many of them women. For example, Margaret Sanger and her supporters fought for decades to overturn laws that banned birth control information because they considered it obscene. Their efforts eventually paved the way for women to have safe and legal abortions.

The goal of advancing women’s rights is to bring about deep and far-reaching changes in society, so that all people can live with dignity and freedom. This objective is set out in the United Nations’ stand-alone gender goal, Goal 5. But while the vast majority of countries have anchored some aspect of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in their constitutions, there is room for improvement on several fronts. For example, more than 2.5 billion women and girls live in countries that impose severe restrictions on their bodies – for example, by prohibiting access to safe abortion. This is a clear violation of the right to freedom of choice for every person. Amnesty International has campaigned alongside grassroots women’s rights defenders to help abolish these laws, and in many cases we have succeeded.