Women’s Rights and Economic Freedom
In the United States, 64% of women believe their country has not gone far enough in giving them equal rights with men; 32% say they have, and 10% believe we have gone too far. The truth is that it will take a huge effort to get to where we want to be: a world in which everyone enjoys full legal rights and is free from fear of physical violence, economic abuse and discrimination. And that world can only happen when women and girls are well-protected and able to work for their own safety and self-reliance, with decent jobs, education and health care.
That means working together to push governments for progressive laws that ensure that women have access to good, affordable and quality healthcare, education, social support services, safe housing and other essentials. It also means ensuring that those laws are robustly enforced, and that the systems, institutions and structures that hold up women’s rights, such as legal equality, a functioning judiciary, strong unions and civil society organisations, are in place.
A major component of this is realising women’s rights to political participation. For this, we need to address the fact that women are still often left out of the process and excluded from decision making in the workplace and in public life. Then we need to create a level playing field that allows women to be effective contributors to the economy and the community, so that we can all benefit from their talents and skills.
The road to this is not always easy: it has taken more than seventy years for the rights of women to birth control to become a recognised human right in all countries, thanks in part to tireless activists such as Margaret Sanger, who braved the denials and opprobrium that greeted her efforts at every turn. Even so, it has only been in the past decade that we have seen the beginnings of a shift in attitudes towards women’s rights, culminating in the 2012 gang rape of a young woman in India and the global outrage that followed it.
Increasing the rights of women can have a powerful ripple effect, reducing poverty and vulnerability in communities worldwide, as well as providing greater opportunities for economic development. That is why promoting gender equality must go hand in hand with advancing economic freedom, since the two are interlinked.
Almost half of all married women have no decision-making power over their reproductive lives, while more than one in three women has experienced physical or sexual intimate partner violence, and many women are subject to harmful practices such as female genital mutilation/cutting, which increases the risk of infection (including HIV), childbirth complications and death. Governments must also make it easier for women to escape abusive marriages, and provide the financial support and other resources they need to rebuild their lives. And they must work to end restrictions that prevent women from travelling or seeking asylum, either within their own country or across borders.