women's rights essay

138 Women’s Rights Research Questions and Essay Topics

🏆 best topics related to women’s rights, ⭐ simple & easy essay topics on women’s issues, 📌 most interesting research topics on women’s issues, 👍 good women’s rights research paper topics, ❓ research questions about women’s rights.

Women’s rights essays are an excellent way to learn about the situation of the female gender throughout the world and demonstrate your knowledge.

You can cover historical women’s rights essay topics, such as the evolution of girl child education in various countries and regions or the different waves of the feminism movement.

Alternatively, you can study more current topics, such as the status of women in Islam or the debate about whether women’s rights apply to transgender women.

In either case, there is a multitude of ideas that you can express and discuss in your paper to make it engaging and thought-provoking. However, you should not neglect the basic aspects of writing an essay, especially its structure and presentation.

The thesis statement is critical to your essay’s structure, as it has to be at the center of each point you make. It should state the overall message or question of your paper comprehensively but concisely at the same time.

Afterwards, every point you make should directly or indirectly support the claim or answer the question, and you should make the relationship explicit for better clarity.

It is good practice to make the thesis a single sentence that does not rely on context, being fully self-sufficient, but avoids being excessively long.

As such, writing a good thesis is a challenging task that requires care and practice. Do not be afraid to spend additional time writing the statement and refining it.

It is beneficial to have a framework of how you will arrange topics and formulate your points so that they flow into one another and support the central thesis before you begin writing.

The practice will help you arrange transitional words and make the essay more coherent and connected as opposed to being an assortment of loosely associated statements.

To that end, you should write an outline, which deserves a separate discussion. However, the basics are simple: write down all of the ideas you want to discuss, discard the worst or fold them into other, broader topics until you have a handful left, and organize those in a logical progression.

Here are some additional tips for your structuring process:

• Frame the ideas in your outline using self-explanatory and concise women’s rights essay titles. You can then use them to separate different points in your essay with titles that correspond to outline elements. The outline itself will effectively become a table of contents, saving you time if one is necessary.
• Try to keep the discussion of each topic self-contained, without much reference to other matters you discussed in the essay. If there is a significant relationship, you should devote a separate section to it.
• Do not forget to include an introduction and a conclusion in your paper. The introduction familiarizes the reader with the topic and ends with your thesis statement, setting the tone and direction of the essay. The conclusion sums up what you have written and adds some concluding remarks to finish. The introduction should not contain facts and examples beyond what is common knowledge in the field. The conclusion may not introduce new information beyond what has been stated in the essay.

You can find excellent women’s rights essay examples, useful samples, and more helpful tips on writing your essay at IvyPanda, so visit whenever you are having trouble or would like advice!

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• Women’s Rights and Reform Impulses The reform impulses altered women’s place in society, making them equal to men in the ability to speak publicly, pursue their liberty, and attain their goals.
• The Evolution of Women’s Rights Through American History From the property-owning women of the late 18th century to the proponents of the women’s liberation in the 1960s, women always succeeded in using the influential political theories of their time to eventually make feminist […]
• Injustices Women Faced in Quest for Equal Rights The source Alice Paul depicts the numerous contributions that she and her fellow suffragists made to the new rights of women.
• Sojourner Truth – A Women’s Rights Activist and Abolitionist Sojourner Truth believed in truth, justice, and equality for all people, which made her escape slavery and advocate for women’s rights.
• Catharine Beecher and Women’s Rights Catharine Beecher’s “An Appeal to American Women” is a discussion kind of piece that considers the power of women in office and how the issue should be approached.
• The Aftermath of the Progression of Women’s Rights Period At the end of the 1800s and the beginning of 1900s, women’s organizations and women struggled for social reforms, to gain the right to vote, and for diverse political and economic equality.
• Lucy Parsons as a Women’s Rights Advocate and Her Beliefs She was a believer in anarchism and thought that it was the means to liberty and freedom. She wanted the constitution to be amended to say that men and women are equal in all aspects.
• Women in Islam: Some Rights, No Equality Notwithstanding the principles of equality of men and women in Islamic tradition, women’s low status should be attributed not to the ideals set in the Quran but to the cultural norms of the patriarchal society.
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• Movement for Women’s Rights in Great Britain and the United States This essay analytically explores some of the conditions which helped bring about movement for women’s right in Great Britain and United States before the close of the last century. In addition, the most significant demand […]
• Women in Colonial America: Fight for Rights Wives that happily accepted their role and conformed to Puritan societal standards were openly referred to and addressed as ‘goodwife.’ However, the authoritative figure in the family and throughout all facets of Puritan society was […]
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• Women’s Fight for Their Rights Maybe, but lots of researchers are coming to various conclusions: women are not selecting to stay out of the workforce due to a change in approaches, the state.
• Women in the Struggle for Civil Rights In other instants, women in the struggle for civil rights can also file a case in a court of law demanding the lawmakers to enact some policies of which they feel when passed will protect […]
• Refugee Women and Their Human Rights According to the researches have been made by UNHCR, 1998, found that 80% of the refugees immigrating to the United States and other countries of second asylum are women or children.
• Women’s Rights Movement in the 19th Century In this paper, the peculiarities of women’s suffrage, its political and social background, and further reactions will be discussed to clarify the worth and impact of the chosen event.
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• Women’s Rights in Palestine and Neighboring Countries In a review of relevant literature, women’s rights in Palestine can be compared to women’s rights in three neighboring countries Jordan, Egypt, and Israel from the perspective of violence and discrimination, and specific differences, including […]
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• Understanding Women’s Right in Islamic World The role of women in the Islamic society during and soon after the death of Prophet Mohammed was similar to that of men.
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• Women’s Roles and Rights in the 18-19th Century America We can only do the simplest work; we cannot have a good job because that is the men’s domain, and they have the necessary training to do it.
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• Gender Studies: Women’s Rights in Saudi Arabia This paper will review the a issue of women’s rights in Saudi Arabia from the perspective of four different groups including the modern Saudi women, traditional Saudi women, Government officials, and international women’s rights organizations.
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• The Opportunity to Succeed as Women Entrepreneurs in Saudi Arabia Compared With UK In addition, it is through the small businesses that new products and services are being developed to meet the growing needs of the population in the entire Kingdom.
• Women’s Rights – Contribution of E. Cady Stanton and S.B. Anthony The first significant and most important move was made by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, on the other hand, was born in a Quaker family and her father was also quite a successful […]
• Oppression of Women’s Rights Affects the Economy of the Middle East For instance in Iceland, the high level of quality of life and health is one of the factors that lead to a GDP per capita of $54,291 On the contrary, there are situations where women […]
• Reform-Women’s Rights and Slavery The colonizers felt that the movement was threatening their business and status in the society and began to ridicule and attack the families of the abolitionists.
• Women’s Role in Contemporary Korea The effort of women to work in professional and high positions in different sectors, the government decided to boost their effort and maintain their morale.
• Non Governmental Organization of Women’s Learning Partnership for Rights Development and Peace In most cases the rights of women which are mainly suppressed include the right to own property, the right to work or hold a public office, the right of receiving education, the right to vote […]
• The Development of Women’s Rights However, she cannot agree to such distribution of the roles, and she calls upon all people to look again at the situation, connected to women’s rights, and provide all women with a chance to participate […]
• Women’s Suffrage Discussion The entrenchment of equal rights of women and men and more noticeably the right of every American woman to vote came into being after the enactment of the nineteenth amendment.
• Disclosing the Aspects of Female Authorship as Presented in Woolf’s Professions for Women and Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Right of Woman In their works called A Vindication of the Right of Woman and Professions of Women respectively, they express their vigorous desire to liberate women from the professional taboos to enter female authorship imposed by the […]
• Power of Women’s Rights How the Anti-Slavery Movement Challenge Established Notions of Manhood and Womanhood Kathryn Kish Sklar’s general idea in the book is to enlighten people on the role of women in the society during the 19th century, […]
• Women’s Rights in the Muslim World Ahmed first focuses on the gender pattern in the Middle East prior to the emergence of the Islam in order to gain ground to describe the Islamic doctrine on women that were practiced in the […]
• Afghan Women and Violation of Their Rights It is for this reason that the Taliban have been the party mostly blamed for the mistreatment of women in the country. The U.S.has the necessary resources to ensure that this is achieved therefore guaranteeing […]
• Did Flappers Have a Positive Effect on Women’s Rights in America in the 1920s?
• Abigail Adams’ Inspiring Rebellion for Women’s Rights
• The Power of the Internet and Women’s Rights in Guatemala
• Pencils and Bullets Women’s Rights in Afghanistan
• Women’s Rights in Supreme Court Decisions of the 1960’s and 1970’s
• Women’s Rights: A Path into the Society to Achieve Social Liberation
• The Taliban: Deprivers of Women’s Rights in Afghanistan
• Henrik Ibsen’s Description of Women’s Rights as Depicted in His Play, A Doll’s House
• Perceptions on The Islamic Practice of Veiling: Relevance to the Quest for Women’s Rights
• The Effects of Christianity on Women’s Rights in China
• Women’s Rights in the 1920’s and Examples in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby
• Pornography and Feminist Fight for Women’s Rights
• The Progression of Women’s Rights from the Early 20th Century
• Islamic Head Scarf: Women’s Rights and Cultural Sensibilities
• The Women’s Rights Movement in England: 18th Century and Beyond
• Comparing Cultures: the Development of Women’s Rights in China and Saudi Arabia
• Mary Wollstonecraft and the Early Women’s Rights Movement
• The Progression of Women’s Rights in the Middle East
• Elizabeth Stanton’s Impact on Women’s Rights Movement
• Women’s Rights in Latin America and the Caribbean
• Women’s Rights and Their Importance to the Development of True Democracy
• Women’s Rights Within A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
• Every Woman Has Her Day: The Women’s Rights Movement in 19th Century
• Evolution of Women’s Rights Since 19th Century
• Integrating Equality – Globalization, Women’s Rights, Son Preference and Human Trafficking
• Analysis of the View of Opinions of Authors Advocating for Women’s Rights
• Abolition of Slavery is Conducive to Women’s Rights Movement
• Women’s Rights Violations in Afghanistan
• Feminism and Women’s Rights in Post Colonial Africa and France
• Social Justice in America: Women’s Rights
• Horace Walpole and Samuel Johnson, Champions of Women’s Rights
• Muslims Women’s Rights to Practice Their Religion
• Women’s Rights and Hills Like White Elephants
• Rhetorical Analysis of Hillary Clinton’s Speech, Women’s Rights Are Human Rights
• Euripides Support of Women’s Rights
• Women’s Rights in Afghanistan 1996 to the Present
• Women’s Rights & Their Impact on the Development of Iran
• Women’s Rights Between 1750 and 1914
• Exploring The Women’s Rights Movement With Good Man Is Hard to Find by Flannery O´Conner
• Progressive Era: The Era of Immigration, Race, and Women’s Rights
• Women’s Rights in the United States in the 1700s
• Which Countries Violate Women’s Rights?
• What Was the Aim of the Women’s Movement?
• How Did the Anti-Slavery Movement Contribute to the Women’s Rights Movement?
• Who Were the 4 Main Leaders of the Women’s Rights Movement?
• How Does Gender Inequality Affect Women’s Rights?
• Who Fought for Women’s Right to Work?
• What Was the Biggest Women’s Rights Movement?
• What Are the Colors for Women’s Rights?
• Why Women’s Rights Lost Ground at the End of World War Two?
• What Is the Role of Lesbians in the Women’s Movement?
• How Far Women’s Rights Have Come?
• What Laws Help Women’s Rights?
• How Were the Abolition and Women’s Rights Movements Similar?
• What Are the Most Important Events in Women’s Rights History?
• Who Is Responsible for Women’s Rights?
• What Is the History of Women’s Rights?
• What Were 3 Major Events in the Women’s Rights Movement?
• How Margaret Fuller and Fanny Fern Used Writing as a Weapon for Women’s Rights?
• How Did Race Impact African American Women’s Experiences During the Women’s Suffrage Movement?
• What Was the Cause of the First Woman’s Rights Convention?
• Why Is Education Important for Women’s Rights?
• How Are Women’s Rights Linked to Economic Development?
• When Did the Women’s Rights Movement Start and End?
• Why Did the Women’s Rights Movement Emerge in the USA During the 1950S and 1960S?
• What Are Women’s Cultural Rights?
• Who Was the First Black Women’s Rights Activist?
• When Was the First Female Vote?
• What Was the Movement for Women’s Rights in the 1800S?
• Who Was the Black Woman Who Fought for Women’s Rights?
• Who Was the Biggest Women’s Rights Activist?
• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

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A global story

This piece is part of 19A: The Brookings Gender Equality Series . In this essay series, Brookings scholars, public officials, and other subject-area experts examine the current state of gender equality 100 years after the 19th Amendment was adopted to the U.S. Constitution and propose recommendations to cull the prevalence of gender-based discrimination in the United States and around the world.

The year 2020 will stand out in the history books. It will always be remembered as the year the COVID-19 pandemic gripped the globe and brought death, illness, isolation, and economic hardship. It will also be noted as the year when the death of George Floyd and the words “I can’t breathe” ignited in the United States and many other parts of the world a period of reckoning with racism, inequality, and the unresolved burdens of history.

The history books will also record that 2020 marked 100 years since the ratification of the 19th Amendment in America, intended to guarantee a vote for all women, not denied or abridged on the basis of sex.

This is an important milestone and the continuing movement for gender equality owes much to the history of suffrage and the brave women (and men) who fought for a fairer world. Yet just celebrating what was achieved is not enough when we have so much more to do. Instead, this anniversary should be a galvanizing moment when we better inform ourselves about the past and emerge more determined to achieve a future of gender equality.

Australia’s role in the suffrage movement

In looking back, one thing that should strike us is how international the movement for suffrage was though the era was so much less globalized than our own.

For example, how many Americans know that 25 years before the passing of the 19th Amendment in America, my home of South Australia was one of the first polities in the world to give men and women the same rights to participate in their democracies? South Australia led Australia and became a global leader in legislating universal suffrage and candidate eligibility over 125 years ago.

This extraordinary achievement was not an easy one. There were three unsuccessful attempts to gain equal voting rights for women in South Australia, in the face of relentless opposition. But South Australia’s suffragists—including the Women’s Suffrage League and the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, as well as remarkable women like Catherine Helen Spence, Mary Lee, and Elizabeth Webb Nicholls—did not get dispirited but instead continued to campaign, persuade, and cajole. They gathered a petition of 11,600 signatures, stuck it together page by page so that it measured around 400 feet in length, and presented it to Parliament.

The Constitutional Amendment (Adult Suffrage) Bill was finally introduced on July 4, 1894, leading to heated debate both within the houses of Parliament, and outside in society and the media. Demonstrating that some things in Parliament never change, campaigner Mary Lee observed as the bill proceeded to committee stage “that those who had the least to say took the longest time to say it.” 1

The Bill finally passed on December 18, 1894, by 31 votes to 14 in front of a large crowd of women.

In 1897, Catherine Helen Spence became the first woman to stand as a political candidate in South Australia.

South Australia’s victory led the way for the rest of the colonies, in the process of coming together to create a federated Australia, to fight for voting rights for women across the entire nation. Women’s suffrage was in effect made a precondition to federation in 1901, with South Australia insisting on retaining the progress that had already been made. 2 South Australian Muriel Matters, and Vida Goldstein—a woman from the Australian state of Victoria—are just two of the many who fought to ensure that when Australia became a nation, the right of women to vote and stand for Parliament was included.

Australia’s remarkable progressiveness was either envied, or feared, by the rest of the world. Sociologists and journalists traveled to Australia to see if the worst fears of the critics of suffrage would be realised.

In 1902, Vida Goldstein was invited to meet President Theodore Roosevelt—the first Australian to ever meet a U.S. president in the White House. With more political rights than any American woman, Goldstein was a fascinating visitor. In fact, President Roosevelt told Goldstein: “I’ve got my eye on you down in Australia.” 3

Goldstein embarked on many other journeys around the world in the name of suffrage, and ran five times for Parliament, emphasising “the necessity of women putting women into Parliament to secure the reforms they required.” 4

Muriel Matters went on to join the suffrage movement in the United Kingdom. In 1908 she became the first woman to speak in the British House of Commons in London—not by invitation, but by chaining herself to the grille that obscured women’s views of proceedings in the Houses of Parliament. After effectively cutting her off the grille, she was dragged out of the gallery by force, still shouting and advocating for votes for women. The U.K. finally adopted women’s suffrage in 1928.

These Australian women, and the many more who tirelessly fought for women’s rights, are still extraordinary by today’s standards, but were all the more remarkable for leading the rest of the world.

A shared history of exclusion

Of course, no history of women’s suffrage is complete without acknowledging those who were excluded. These early movements for gender equality were overwhelmingly the remit of privileged white women. Racially discriminatory exclusivity during the early days of suffrage is a legacy Australia shares with the United States.

South Australian Aboriginal women were given the right to vote under the colonial laws of 1894, but they were often not informed of this right or supported to enroll—and sometimes were actively discouraged from participating.

They were later further discriminated against by direct legal bar by the 1902 Commonwealth Franchise Act, whereby Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people were excluded from voting in federal elections—a right not given until 1962.

Any celebration of women’s suffrage must acknowledge such past injustices front and center. Australia is not alone in the world in grappling with a history of discrimination and exclusion.

The best historical celebrations do not present a triumphalist version of the past or convey a sense that the fight for equality is finished. By reflecting on our full history, these celebrations allow us to come together, find new energy, and be inspired to take the cause forward in a more inclusive way.

The way forward

In the century or more since winning women’s franchise around the world, we have made great strides toward gender equality for women in parliamentary politics. Targets and quotas are working. In Australia, we already have evidence that affirmative action targets change the diversity of governments. Since the Australian Labor Party (ALP) passed its first affirmative action resolution in 1994, the party has seen the number of women in its national parliamentary team skyrocket from around 14% to 50% in recent years.

Instead of trying to “fix” women—whether by training or otherwise—the ALP worked on fixing the structures that prevent women getting preselected, elected, and having fair opportunities to be leaders.

There is also clear evidence of the benefits of having more women in leadership roles. A recent report from Westminster Foundation for Democracy and the Global Institute for Women’s Leadership (GIWL) at King’s College London, shows that where women are able to exercise political leadership, it benefits not just women and girls, but the whole of society.

But even though we know how to get more women into parliament and the positive difference they make, progress toward equality is far too slow. The World Economic Forum tells us that if we keep progressing as we are, the global political empowerment gender gap—measuring the presence of women across Parliament, ministries, and heads of states across the world— will only close in another 95 years . This is simply too long to wait and, unfortunately, not all barriers are diminishing. The level of abuse and threatening language leveled at high-profile women in the public domain and on social media is a more recent but now ubiquitous problem, which is both alarming and unacceptable.

Across the world, we must dismantle the continuing legal and social barriers that prevent women fully participating in economic, political, and community life.

Education continues to be one such barrier in many nations. Nearly two-thirds of the world’s illiterate adults are women. With COVID-19-related school closures happening in developing countries, there is a real risk that progress on girls’ education is lost. When Ebola hit, the evidence shows that the most marginalized girls never made it back to school and rates of child marriage, teen pregnancy. and child labor soared. The Global Partnership for Education, which I chair, is currently hard at work trying to ensure that this history does not repeat.

Ensuring educational equality is a necessary but not sufficient condition for gender equality. In order to change the landscape to remove the barriers that prevent women coming through for leadership—and having their leadership fairly evaluated rather than through the prism of gender—we need a radical shift in structures and away from stereotypes. Good intentions will not be enough to achieve the profound wave of change required. We need hard-headed empirical research about what works. In my life and writings post-politics and through my work at the GIWL, sharing and generating this evidence is front and center of the work I do now.

GIWL work, undertaken in partnership with IPSOS Mori, demonstrates that the public knows more needs to be done. For example, this global polling shows the community thinks it is harder for women to get ahead. Specifically, they say men are less likely than women to need intelligence and hard work to get ahead in their careers.

Other research demonstrates that the myth of the “ideal worker,” one who works excessive hours, is damaging for women’s careers. We also know from research that even in families where each adult works full time, domestic and caring labor is disproportionately done by women. 5

In order to change the landscape to remove the barriers that prevent women coming through for leadership—and having their leadership fairly evaluated rather than through the prism of gender—we need a radical shift in structures and away from stereotypes.

Other more subtle barriers, like unconscious bias and cultural stereotypes, continue to hold women back. We need to start implementing policies that prevent people from being marginalized and stop interpreting overconfidence or charisma as indicative of leadership potential. The evidence shows that it is possible for organizations to adjust their definitions and methods of identifying merit so they can spot, measure, understand, and support different leadership styles.

Taking the lessons learned from our shared history and the lives of the extraordinary women across the world, we know evidence needs to be combined with activism to truly move forward toward a fairer world. We are in a battle for both hearts and minds.

Why this year matters

We are also at an inflection point. Will 2020 will be remembered as the year that a global recession disproportionately destroyed women’s jobs, while women who form the majority of the workforce in health care and social services were at risk of contracting the coronavirus? Will it be remembered as a time of escalating domestic violence and corporations cutting back on their investments in diversity programs?

Or is there a more positive vision of the future that we can seize through concerted advocacy and action? A future where societies re-evaluate which work truly matters and determine to better reward carers. A time when men and women forced into lockdowns re-negotiated how they approach the division of domestic labor. Will the pandemic be viewed as the crisis that, through forcing new ways of virtual working, ultimately led to more balance between employment and family life, and career advancement based on merit and outcomes, not presentism and the old boys’ network?

This history is not yet written. We still have an opportunity to make it happen. Surely the women who led the way 100 years ago can inspire us to seize this moment and create that better, more gender equal future.

• December 7,1894: Welcome home meeting for Catherine Helen Spence at the Café de Paris. [ Register , Dec, 19, 1894 ]
• Clare Wright, You Daughters of Freedom: The Australians Who Won the Vote and Inspired the World , (Text Publishing, 2018).
• Janette M. Bomford, That Dangerous and Persuasive Woman, (Melbourne University Press, 1993)
• Cordelia Fine, Delusions of Gender: The Real Science Behind Sex Differences, (Icon Books, 2010)

This piece is part of 19A: The Brookings Gender Equality Series.  Learn more about the series and read published work »

About the Author

Julia gillard, distinguished fellow – global economy and development, center for universal education.

Gillard is a distinguished fellow with the Center for Universal Education at the Brookings Institution. She is the Inaugural Chair of the Global Institute for Women’s Leadership at King’s College London. Gillard also serves as Chair of the Global Partnership for Education, which is dedicated to expanding access to quality education worldwide and is patron of CAMFED, the Campaign for Female Education.

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5 Women’s Rights Essays You Can Read For Free

Women and girls are the most disenfranchised group in the world. Even in places where huge strides have been made, gaps in equality remain. Women’s rights are important within the realm of human rights. Here are five essays exploring the scope of women’s rights, which you can download or read for free online:

“A Vindication on the Rights of Woman” – Mary Wollstonecraft

Mother of Mary Shelley, who wrote the novel Frankenstein, Mary Wollstonecraft is a juggernaut of history in her own right, though for a different reason. Self-educated, Wollstonecraft dedicated her life to women’s education and feminism. Her 1792 essay A Vindication on the Rights of Woman represents one of the earliest writings on women’s equality. In the Western world, many consider its arguments the foundation of the modern women’s rights movement. In the essay, Wollstonecraft writes that men are not  more reasonable or rational than women, and that women must be educated with the same care, so they can contribute to society. If women were left out of the intellectual arena, the progress of society would stop. While most of us believe the idea that women are inherently inferior to men is very outdated, it’s still an accepted viewpoint in many places and in many minds. Wollstonecraft’s Vindication is still relevant.

“The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House” – Audre Lorde

Poet and activist Audre Lorde defied the boundaries of traditional feminism and cried out against its racist tendencies. While today debates about intersectional feminism (feminism that takes into account race, sexuality, etc) are common, Audre Lorde wrote her essay on women’s rights and racism back in 1984. In “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House,” Lorde explains how ignoring differences between women – whether its race, class, or sexuality – halts any real change. By pretending the suffering of women is “all the same,” and not defined by differences, white women actually contribute to oppression. Lorde’s essay drew anger from the white feminist community. It’s a debate that feels very current and familiar.

“How to convince sceptics of the value of feminism” – Laura Bates

Laura Bates founded the Everyday Sexism Project website back in 2012. It documents examples of everyday sexism of every degree and has become very influential. In her essay from 2018, Bates takes reader comments into consideration over the essay’s three parts. This unique format allows the essay to encompass multiple views, just not Bates’, and takes into consideration a variety of experiences people have with skeptics of feminism. Why even debate skeptics? Doesn’t that fuel the trolls? In some cases, yes, but skeptics of feminism aren’t trolls, they are numerous, and make up every part of society, including leadership. Learning how to talk to people who don’t agree with you is incredibly important.

“Why Can’t A Smart Woman Love Fashion?” – Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is one of the most influential voices in women’s rights writing. Her book, We Should All Be Feminists , is a great exploration of 21st-century feminism. In this essay from Elle, Adichie takes a seemingly “small” topic about fashion and makes a big statement about independence and a woman’s right to wear whatever she wants. There is still a lot of debate about what a feminist should look like, if wearing makeup contributes to oppression, and so on. “Why Can’t A Smart Woman Love Fashion?” is a moving, personal look at these sorts of questions.

“The male cultural elite is staggeringly blind to #MeToo. Now it’s paying for it.” – Moira Donegan

There are countless essays on the Me Too Movement, and most of them are great reads. In this one from The Guardian, Moira Donegan highlights two specific men and the publications that chose to give them a platform after accusations of sexual misconduct. It reveals just how pervasive the problem is in every arena, including among the cultural, intellectual elite, and what detractors of Me Too are saying.

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About the author, emmaline soken-huberty.

Emmaline Soken-Huberty is a freelance writer based in Portland, Oregon. She started to become interested in human rights while attending college, eventually getting a concentration in human rights and humanitarianism. LGBTQ+ rights, women’s rights, and climate change are of special concern to her. In her spare time, she can be found reading or enjoying Oregon’s natural beauty with her husband and dog.

A demonstrator raises a sign that says, "Human rights are women's rights" at the Women's March in Los Angeles in 2018. Though the concept had long been controversial, the United Nations declared that women's rights are human rights in 1995 at the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing.

• HISTORY & CULTURE

'Women's Rights are Human Rights,' 25 years on

Hillary Rodham Clinton’s speech at a UN conference propelled this idea into the mainstream after centuries of society sidelining gender equality as “women’s issues.”

When Hillary Rodham Clinton approached the podium at a United Nations conference on women in September 1995 in Beijing, she faced an uncertain audience. Only a few people had read the speech, which was a well-guarded secret even to high-ranking members of the president’s cabinet. “Nobody knew what to expect,” recalls Melanne Verveer , the then first lady’s chief of staff, who later served as the first U.S. Ambassador for Global Women’s Issues when Clinton became secretary of state.

Twenty-five years later, a single phrase from Clinton’s speech has entered mainstream parlance: “Women’s rights are human rights.” The concept wasn’t new. But the excitement and energy that Clinton’s speech generated at the Fourth World Conference on Women helped elevate the idea to one that fuels modern feminism and international efforts to achieve gender parity.

Women’s rights advocates have long argued that gender equality should be a human right—but were thwarted for years by those who claimed their rights were subordinate to those of men. During the infancy of the American feminist movement of the 1830s, abolitionists and women’s rights advocates tussled over whether it was more important to seek freedom for enslaved people or equality for women. As women pushed for their rights to vote, access educational opportunities, and own property, male abolitionists like Theodore Weld urged them to wait, arguing that they should first fight for the abolition of slavery as a matter of human rights.

Some women, such as educator Catharine Beecher , argued that women deserved rights because of their morality—as they were uniquely positioned to edify and enlighten men—not their humanity. She cautioned that their roles in public life should not extend into equality in the home. In response, abolitionist and women’s rights advocate Angelina Grimké wrote , “I recognize no rights but human rights,” noting that a society that didn’t give women power or a political voice violated their innate human rights. She was just one of a group of women who invoked the idea throughout the 19 th century. (Grimké later went on to marry Weld, who was her mentor.)

In the 1970s, the idea resurfaced as so-called second-wave feminists, who believed women should have access to full societal and legal rights, attempted to put women’s rights on the international agenda. In many countries, there was no consensus that women had a right to equal partnership in marriage, power over their finances, an equal education, or a life free of sexual assault or harassment. Between 1975 and 1995, the United Nations convened four landmark Conferences on Women that made gender parity a global priority. ( Here are the best and worst countries to be a woman. )

The first conference, held in Mexico City in 1975, recognized women’s equality. Eighty-nine of the 133 nations that participated adopted a framework to help women gain equal access to all facets of society; several western nations abstained , and the United States opposed the framework. In 1980, a follow-up conference in Copenhagen called for stronger protections for women, with an emphasis on property ownership, child custody, and a restructuring of inheritance laws. A third in Nairobi in 1985 called attention to violence against women. But though these conferences brought women’s issues to the international stage, each one fell short because of a lack of consensus and failure to implement the adopted platforms. By 1995, global women’s leaders had agreed it was time to create an action plan to guarantee equality for women.

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Slated for Beijing in September 1995, the Fourth World Conference on Women took place in an atmosphere of intense international condemnation of the host nation’s treatment of its own citizens. Human rights groups and governments criticized China’s history of political imprisonment, torture, detention, and denial of religious freedom. The nation’s one-child policy , which put family planning decisions under state control, came under particular fire.

Women watch Hillary Rodham Clinton speak to the abuse against women at the 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing. Her call for women's rights to be considered human rights has since become mainstream.

News that Clinton would attend and speak at the meeting prompted an American outcry. “There were serious efforts not to make [the speech] happen,” Verveer recalls. “You had a cacophony of voices that were trying to keep this from being meaningful or successful.” The first lady faced outrage from human rights advocates who objected to the China visit on principle, conservative politicians who disapproved of her outspoken feminism, and people who worried the speech could threaten the bilateral relationship between the U.S. and China.

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“I wanted to push the envelope as far as I could for girls and women,” Clinton said in a virtual public event hosted on September 10 by the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security , of which Verveer is the executive director. ( A century after women’s suffrage in the U.S., the fight for equality isn’t over. )

On September 5, 1995, the second day of the conference, Clinton took the podium in front of representatives from all over the world. As Clinton spoke, Verveer watched the delegates’ faces closely. The speech cited a “litany of violations against women,” including rape, female genital mutilation, dowry burnings, and domestic violence—which Clinton labeled as human rights violations. She excoriated those who forcibly sterilized women and condemned those who restricted civil liberties, a jab at China, which restricted news coverage of the event.

The room was “filled with women who were in the trenches of those issues,” says Verveer. “The audience was completely pulled into their struggle.” The mostly female delegation applauded and cheered during the 20-minute speech, sometimes even pounding their fists on the tables to underscore their approval.

“The reaction was extraordinary,” Verveer says. On September 15, the phrase “women’s rights are human rights” was unanimously adopted as part of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action , which defined 12 areas—including education, health, economic participation, and the environment—in need of urgent international action. The document still governs the global agenda for women’s issues and is credited with helping narrow the education gap, improve maternal health, and reduce violence against women. ( Around the world, women are taking charge of their futures. )

Fourth World Conference on Women participants (from left) Benedita Da Silva of Brazil, Vuyiswa Bongile Keyi of Canada, and Silvia Salley of the United States cheer at the conclusion of the "Women of Color" press briefing where they stated that racism was not adequately addressed in the declaration.

Today, the idea that human rights and women’s rights are synonymous is considered mainstream. “I have rarely seen a single message carry such [an] important meaning and have such a durable life,” former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said at the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security event commemorating the anniversary.

But the work of gender equality is not yet done—and 25 years after Beijing, women still face systemic inequities and gaps in terms of safety, economic and political mobility, and more. “Girls need to know that they stand on the shoulders of other people who struggled to gain the rights they enjoy today,” says Verveer. “They need to play a role in ensuring the work goes on. There has been progress, but there is a long journey ahead.”

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Article contents

Feminist perspectives on human rights.

• Laura Parisi Laura Parisi Department of Women's Studies, University of Victoria
• https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190846626.013.48
• Published in print: 01 March 2010
• Published online: 30 November 2017

Feminism has provided some new perspectives to the discourse on human rights over the years. Contemporary feminist scholarship has sought to critique the liberalism on which the conception of formal “equality” in the international human rights laws has been derived on a number of grounds. Two of the most pertinent critiques for this discussion are: the androcentric construction of human rights; and the perpetuation of the false dichotomy between the public and private spheres. This exploration of the relationship between liberalism and women’s human rights constitutes a significant shift in which many feminists had realized that the emphasis on “sameness” with men was limited in its utility. This shift rejected the “sameness” principle of the liberal feminists and brought gender-specific abuses into the mainstream of human rights theory and practice. By gender mainstreaming international institutions and future human rights treaties, specific women’s rights could be defined as human rights more generally. Feminists have since extended their critique of androcentrism and the public–private dichotomy to the study of gender inequalities and economic globalization, which is an important systemic component of structural indivisibility. In particular, the broader women’s human rights movement has come to realize that civil-political liberties and socioeconomic rights are inextricable, though there is disagreement over the exact nature of this relationship.

• human rights
• women’s rights
• international human rights laws
• androcentrism
• public–private dichotomy
• economic globalization
• civil-political liberties
• democratization

Introduction

Feminist critiques of human rights seek to dismantle several hierarchies present in the human rights regime. By critiquing the basic assumptions of human rights as they were formulated in 1945–8 , feminists have revealed that these definitions are inadequate, that men and women have different relationships with the state, and that rights are not fixed and immutable. Rather, they are historically, socially, culturally, and economically contingent. This essay explores feminist contributions to the human rights discourse in several ways. The first half of the essay chronicles and analyzes the evolution of the “women’s rights are human rights” discourse as well as the development of the notion of the indivisibility of rights. The second half of the essay looks the feminist debates with regards to women’s human rights in three issue areas or contexts: globalization, democratization, and culture. The essay concludes with a discussion of the current challenges with regards to data collection in measuring the achievement of women’s human rights.

Although there are multiple feminisms, the terms feminist and feminism are used in a broad sense in this essay to connote a shared goal of seeking to re-articulate human rights in an effort to achieve gender equality, even though theoretical entry points into the discourse and resulting strategies may vary widely among feminists (Tong 2008 ). Similarly, the concept of human rights has been contested in many ways, but it is beyond the scope of this essay to delve into these debates. Rather, the focus will be on what feminists have understood human rights to be in theory and in practice.

Women’s Rights Are Human Rights: Evolution of the Discourse

During the “first wave” of feminism (loosely defined as late nineteenth century to early twentieth century ), theorists and activists paid particular attention to the gendered construction of citizenship that was employed to deny civil and political liberties to women and other minority groups. Writings by theorists and activists such as Mary Wollstonecraft , John Stuart Mill and Harriet Taylor , Lucretia Mott , Elizabeth Cady Stanton , and Susan B. Anthony dominated early feminism. However, many of the debates that took place during the first wave also spilled over to the immediate post–World War II era, particularly during the process of creating the United Nations (UN) as well as the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). The central liberal feminist tenet that carried over to the post–World War II period is that men and women are the same in rational ability and capacity for individual autonomy and self-determination and therefore should be afforded full citizenship and its attendant rights, protections, and opportunities.

Yet, there were others who argued that women should be conceptualized as a group marked by sexual difference and that special protection was needed to “level the playing field”; only in this way could women advance individual self-determination and self-governance (Rupp 1997 :105; Lake 2001 :255). For many first wave liberal feminists, the primary way to achieve sexual equality (or parity) was through legislative means, i.e., suffrage, education, labor rights, etc. The liberal feminist ideal of “sameness” laid the groundwork for the future of women’s international human rights in the institutional arrangements in the United Nations as well as the drafting of the UDHR in 1948 . However, as we shall see, the theoretical tension between the competing feminist agendas of nondiscrimination and special protections had long-lasting effects in the women’s human rights movement.

The UDHR does not specifically address women’s rights but it does briefly address the idea of sexual equality in Article 2: “Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.” Those who insisted on the inclusion of “sex” in Article 2 hoped that it would address the inequality of women by putting them on an “equal footing” with men (Johnson 1998 :61). There were, of course, others who felt the inclusion of the word “sex” was unnecessary given that the UDHR explicitly states the rights delineated in the document apply to “everyone.”

Although these may seem like minor occurrences and debates, they laid the theoretical groundwork for policy making within the UN Committee on the Status of Women (CSW) and the UN High Commissioner on Human Rights (UNHCHR) for many decades. In the years that followed the creation of CSW and the ratification of the International Bill of Rights, liberal feminists paid particular attention to securing civil and political liberties for women. It is important to note that the emphasis on civil and political liberties was pervasive throughout the UN system, particularly by Western powers and those countries allied with the United States during the Cold War. Consequently, given the power of the United States in the international system during the 1950s and 1960s, it is not surprising that several other human rights conventions which specifically addressed the status of women, such as the Convention on the Political Rights of Women ( 1952 ), emphasized civil and political liberties as the way to achieve sexual equality. Like the UDHR, these covenants emphasized “sameness” and did not take into account men’s and women’s qualitatively different experiences in the public sphere nor did they tackle structures that perpetuated gender hierarchies.

Contemporary feminist scholarship has sought to critique the liberalism on which the conception of formal “equality” in the UDHR and other international human rights laws has been derived on a number of grounds. Two of the most pertinent critiques for this discussion are: the androcentric construction of human rights; and the perpetuation of the false dichotomy between the public and private spheres. The public–private split “refers to the (artificial) distinction between home (private or reproductive sphere) to which women are assigned, and the workplace (the public or productive sphere) to which men are assigned” (Peterson and Runyan 1999 :259). These concepts are connected with both the radical feminism and the socialist feminism of the 1970s that was a response to the perceived inadequacies of liberal feminism. The issue of the relationship between gender and the public and private spheres is briefly touched upon in the 1979 UN Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), which was developed during the UN Decade for Women ( 1975–85 ) in order to have a “single, comprehensive and internationally binding instrument to eliminate discrimination against women” (UNDAW n.d. ). However, it was not until the late 1980s that this relationship was fully theorized in terms of women’s human rights, development, and international law. The end result has been a major theoretical shift in both theory and practice.

Both androcentrism and the public–private split are embedded in patriarchy (another core theoretical concept of radical and socialist feminisms), understood here to mean the degree to which society is “male-dominated, male-identified, and male-centered” (Johnson 1997 :5). Many contemporary feminist analyses of human rights laws, institutions and practice are grounded in critiques of the broader construct of patriarchy. Since rights themselves are socially constructed in that they reflect a “distinctive, historically unusual set of social values and practices,” the context in which human rights were/are developed is an important analytical tool (Donnelly 1999 :81). For example, Charlesworth ( 1995 :103) suggests that

because the law-making institutions of the international legal order have always been, and continue to be, dominated by men, international human rights law has developed to reflect the experiences of men and largely to exclude those of women, rendering suspect the claim of objectivity and universality in human rights law.

The claim of androcentrism in the development of human rights is predicated on two issues that are raised by Charlesworth. The first surrounds the issue of the position of the speaker; it is important to evaluate who is making rights claims and on whose behalf (Rao 1995 ). In the case of human rights discourse, the historical record reflects that mainstream human rights has largely been influenced by masculinist liberal ideology, which reflects what is desirable or ideal, such as individual autonomy, in the social construction of human rights. Hence, the claim of objectivity must be questioned.

The second issue revolves around the liberal ideological foundations of human rights, inalienability and universality. These concepts are largely derived from John Locke ’s Second Treatise on Government ( 1690 ), in which he argues for the natural and inalienable rights of human beings – rights one has simply by virtue of being human. Cast in this light, rights of individual humans appear to be universal and should take precedence above all else (Locke 1980 ). State governance should not be guided by the “greater good” principle because it encroaches upon individual “opportunity to make fundamental choices about what constitutes the good life (for them), who they associate with, and how” (Donnelly 1999 :80). Embedded in this notion of the individual is the idea that individuals are rational enough to exercise these rights. During Locke’s era the “criteria” for rationality was ownership of private property, which excluded women, low-wage workers, and slaves from exercising rights, thereby severely undermining the notion of universality. Furthermore, since the principles of inalienability and universality were theorized in the context of elite male experience, the current traditional construction of human rights excludes the experiences of women and other marginalized groups. The male experience with, and definition of, human rights came to be accepted as the “norm,” and it is this social construction of human rights that feminists have sought to challenge and rearticulate.

The individualism and egalitarianism that are crucial to Locke’s liberalism may at first seem contradictory to patriarchy, which is predicated on gender hierarchies that presume that the subordination of women to men is based on “natural” characteristics. However, as Pateman ( 1989 :33–57) observes, Locke also provides a theoretical basis for the exclusion of women from individualist arguments. Locke makes a distinction between the political power of the public sphere and paternal power in the private sphere of the family. This move is grounded in his view that women’s subordination to their husbands in the private sphere is natural and non-political, and perhaps also “pre-political” (Rao 1996 :445). This “natural” subordination of women, which is condoned and supported by the state, suggests that they cannot at the same time be free and equal individuals. Therefore, Locke’s separation between public and paternal power effectively relegates women to the private sphere (Pateman 1989 :33–57), where they have little ability to claim rights in the public sphere (Romany 1994 ). In this way, the state is able to protect both the public and private interests of men (Peterson and Parisi 1998 :147).

The public–private distinction also rests on fundamentally different conceptions of citizenship for men and women that date back to the time of the ancient Greek polis and continue to be firmly embedded in liberal thought (Grant 1991 :12–13). As a result, “human rights law was gendered male: it protected a male subject, who experienced violations primarily directed at men, in largely male spaces” (Friedman 2006 :480–1). Since the public sphere is associated with masculinity, “the duties and activities of citizenship have strongly depended on manliness” (Voet 1998 :7). As citizens, men are/were accorded certain rights that women, relegated to the private sphere, are/were not. The association of the feminine with the private sphere has historically identified and still continues to identify women as non-citizens, and, hence, as less than fully autonomous beings. For example, laws governing the nationality of children in countries such as Kenya, which deem that the citizenship of children is determined by the father’s citizenship (and not the mother’s), reinforce the concept of citizen as male. The association of the feminine with the private sphere identifies women as non-citizens, and hence, as less than fully autonomous beings unable to make claims to rights (Romany 1994 ).

The emphasis on the public sphere as the proper realm of human rights depoliticizes women’s experiences in the private and reinforces androcentric constructions of human rights. The artificial distinction between the public and the private spheres also allows for the appearance of the state as non-gendered, and masks how formal legal equality in the public sphere contributes to states’ complicity in facilitating gender hierarchies in the private sphere. In general, states are discouraged by international law from intervening in the private sphere given the primacy placed on the sanctity of the family and the right to privacy (Sullivan 1995 :127). The result is that states are held accountable only for the human rights abuses they perpetrate and not for the conduct of individuals in the private sphere, where most gender-based violence occurs. Hence, gender-based violence in the home, until recently, was not considered to be a human rights abuse (Bunch 1990 ).

For example, marital rape has historically often not been considered a criminal act by the state, and this idea is still prevalent in many countries, such as the Bahamas and Zambia, where marital rape has yet to be criminalized. Although the International Bill of Rights guarantees the right of everyone to be free from torture and enslavement by the state, and explicitly prohibits rape of and assault against women in times of conflict, it does not guarantee women freedom from domestic abuse, which for many women is a form of torture and/or enslavement (Copelon 1994 ). The subordination of women in the private sphere is justified and naturalized as the patriarchal state, in accordance with the liberal maxim of individual freedom and the protection of private property, protects the private, individual interests of men. Under international human rights laws, states have often not been held accountable for their inaction (or inadequate action) that has enabled gender-based violence in the private sphere.

Due to feminist activism and scholarship in this area, gender-specific violence is now considered a legitimate human rights issue (Bunch 1990 ; Copelon 1994 ; Keck and Sikkink 1998 ; Joachim 2003 ; Merry 2006 ). As a result, there is now the UN Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women ( 1993 ), a UN Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women, and the statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) has further codified violence against women as a punishable offense. Although these are all very positive developments, many feminists, such as Ratna Kapur ( 2005 ), worry about the implications of the framing of women as primarily victims of violence. Kapur ( 2005 :99) argues that while “the victim subject […] provides a shared location from which women from different cultural and social contexts can speak” and also “provides women with a subject that repudiates the atomized, decontextualized and ahistorical subject of liberal rights discourse, while at the same time furnishing a unitary subject that enables women to makes claims based on a commonality of experience,” the end result is a conceptualization of “women” that falls prey to gender essentialism, producing another type of “universal” subject that “resembles the uncomplicated subject of the liberal discourse, which cannot account for multi-layered existences and experiences” (Kapur 2005 :99). Kapur, and others such as Mohanty ( 1991 ) and Narayan ( 1997 ), also argue that the focus on the victim subject results in cultural essentialism, which will be explored in more detail at the end of this essay.

Another implication of the feminist critique of the public–private dichotomy is the presumed heterosexuality of the family unit in the private sphere (Rao 1996 ; Peterson and Parisi 1998 ). The UDHR’s Article 16 protects the right of adult men and women to freely and consensually marry, and the right to found a family, “without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion” (UDHR 1948 ). Article 16.3 locates the family as the “natural and fundamental group unit of society and [it] is entitled to protection by society and the state.” Although the UDHR does not specify that marriage must be between a man and a woman or that families must be heterosexual units, Article 16 specifies nondiscrimination only on the basis of race, nationality, and religion and excludes sexuality. The exclusion of sexuality as the basis for nondiscrimination in marriage reveals a hidden (or presumed) heterosexist bias, and also raises the question of what types of families should be protected. However, the Western, liberal construction of the heterosexual family has prevailed as the dominant interpretation of Article 16 because it maps neatly onto the gendered dichotomy of the public–private split, and the “family is viewed normatively as an arena for something other than rights” since it is “pre-political,” “sentimental,” and “noncontractual” (Rao 1996 :245). As a result, heterosexism has become naturalized and normalized in many mainstream international human rights documents, and this interpretation precludes protection of any other sexual identities by rendering them outside the “fundamental group unit of society” (Peterson and Parisi 1998 ). This positioning outside the protection of the human rights framework, as is well known, has had deleterious effects on sexual minorities in not only asserting their right to sexualities, but also in making claims to other individual and group rights (LaViolette and Whitworth 1994 ; Dorf and Perez 1995 ; Peterson and Parisi 1998 ).

At the Beijing conference, the issues of gender, sexual orientation, and the definition of family were hotly contested. The use of gender came under fire by conservative groups and states who rejected a social constructivist approach to the term in order to exclude sexual orientation from being read into the definition (Chappell 2007 :515). Instead, “gender” in the Platform For Action (PFA), and other international documents since then, is now understood to mean “the two sexes, male and female, within the context of society” (ibid.). While there are numerous problems with this definition of gender, for the purposes of this discussion, it is important to highlight that the intense wrangling had two significant and related impacts on the PFA. First, all explicit references to sexual orientation in the document were dropped. Second, the use of the term family, rather than families, stayed intact. Thus, the naturalized, patriarchal, heterosexual family delineated in the UDHR is preserved. It was feared that the inclusion of specific rights for sexual minorities would result in not passing the PFA at all. Although the PFA claims the right of women to freely determine their sexuality and recognizes the family in “various forms,” for many this wording is too ambiguous and hollow given that it also acknowledges that cultural, religious, national, and regional particularities must be considered in the implementation of these rights (Steans and Ahmadi 2005 :241). By invisibilizing sexualities, the PFA precluded the delineation of more explicit rights for sexual minorities with regards to property rights, children, and so forth.

Yet, at the same time, there has been considerable discussion about whether or not advancing of the agenda of sexual minorities in a rights based framework is useful and desirable (LaViolette and Whitworth 1994 ; Morgan 2001 ; Mertus 2007 ). Mertus ( 2007 ), in her study of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT) advocacy in the US, demonstrates the reluctance of many groups to adopt a rights based approach since it may require them to accept set identity categories. LaViolette and Whitworth ( 1994 ) identify a similar tension more globally. Finally, Morgan ( 2001 ) also asks whether or not it is at all desirable to fight for inclusion in a decidedly heteronormative system in the first place. This response parallels the concerns of radical feminists working to achieve women’s rights in a system that is inherently patriarchal and not worthy of being retained in their point of view (Brems 1997 ). Instead, it might be more productive to disrupt patriarchal and heteronormative systems rather than focusing on inclusion in them (Morgan 2001 ).

Ultimately, however, the exploration of the relationship between liberalism and women’s human rights constituted a significant shift in which many feminists (especially cultural feminists) realized that the emphasis on “sameness” with men was limited in its utility. The shift entailed focusing on gender relations as a category of analysis, a valuing of difference, and delineating gender-specific experiences (Brems 1997 ). This tactic rejected the “sameness” principle of the liberal feminists and brought gender-specific abuses into the mainstream of human rights theory and practice. By gender mainstreaming international institutions and future human rights treaties, specific women’s rights could be defined as human rights more generally (Bunch 1990 ).

The Structural Indivisibility of Rights

By the 1970s the limitations of the emphasis on civil and political liberties for women became increasingly clear as the UN struggled with the issues of poverty, malnutrition, and population as it began its preparations for the World Food Conference ( 1974 ) and the World Population Conference ( 1974 ). The failure of the liberal feminist assumption that the achievement of political and civil liberties would translate into economic opportunity for women prompted a re-articulation of the relationship between civil and political liberties and socioeconomic rights for women. The argument shifted to the idea that women who lack food, shelter, education, property, health services, etc. cannot fully enjoy and exercise their civil and political liberties (Parisi 2002 ). In addition, the publication of Ester Boserup’s ( 1970 ) Woman’s Role in Economic Development , in which she documented the negative consequences of modernization programs on women’s lives, influenced liberal feminists to expand their focus on rights to include economic and labor issues. This approach eventually became known as “Women in Development” (WID) and it marked the beginning of the UN Decade for Women ( 1975–85 ).

Yet, the WID approach was roundly criticized by socialist-Marxist feminists and third world feminists for its adherence to the liberal framework of “sameness” discussed earlier by promoting an “add women and stir” model of development aimed at achieving gender equality. This approach fails to examine the structures that caused and perpetuated this inequality in the first place. In response to this critique and to the lack of a more cohesive vision for women’s rights and well-being, the fledgling “global” women’s movement began to develop an explicit vision of the indivisibility of human rights. This vision was ultimately reflected in the theme of the UN Decade for Women: “Equality – Development – Peace” (FLS 1985 : paragraphs 11–13). The three objectives formed a more sophisticated basis for women’s human rights and were, and still are, viewed as “internally interrelated and mutually reinforcing, so that the advancement of one contributes to the advancement of the others” (Pietilä and Vickers 1996 :49). The first attempt at encapsulating these ideals resulted in the World Plan of Action (WPA) that in turn provided an impetus and basis for the drafting of CEDAW, which passed in the UN in 1979 , and entered into force in 1981 . (For a comprehensive history of the events leading up to the UN Decade for Women and of the drafting of CEDAW, see Fraser 1999 .)

CEDAW extends women’s rights provisions in the International Bill of Human Rights in that it created an “international bill of women’s rights” that defines and addresses all forms of discrimination against women and is guided by the principle of what Otto ( 2001 :54) calls “structural indivisibility.” Structural indivisibility stresses “interconnections between the political, economic, environmental, and security priorities of the international order and violations of human rights” (ibid.). This vision is somewhat different than Bunch’s ( 1990 ) emphasis on the necessary interconnectedness between political, civil, socioeconomic and cultural rights in that it takes into account the systemic factors which link and influence the achievement of these rights.

The majority of the 30 articles of CEDAW are concerned with social, economic, and cultural rights embedded in the liberal feminist WID and non-discrimination framework that relies heavily on the principle of equality before the law; only four articles deal explicitly with the political and civil liberties of women. However, the preamble and some of the articles of CEDAW address additional concerns important to third world feminists, Marxist feminists, and radical feminists. For example, it reiterates the call for a New International Economic Order (NIEO) to tackle global economic inequality and demands the right to cultural self-determination and the end of imperialism, colonization, and racism. CEDAW also affirms the right of women to space their children – a victory for radical feminists involved in reproductive rights movements. Finally, and perhaps most significantly, it acknowledges the contributions to society that women make in the home, thus breaking down the distinction between the public and private spheres (the personal is political) and highlighting how traditional gender roles can be a source of women’s oppression.

The mission behind CEDAW is to recast women as subjects rather than objects of development, recognizing them as fully autonomous beings entitled to human rights widely enjoyed by men, yet at the same time recognizing that there are indeed differences between men and women, such as the ability to bear children, that have historically served as justification for discrimination against women. CEDAW is thus cast in a seemingly paradoxical framework that uses both the “measure of man” as a benchmark for equal rights and correctives to move the discourse from being gender-neutral to being gender-specific (Kaufman and Lindquist 1995 ; Friedman 2006 ; Arat 2008 ). As a result, feminists challenged the patriarchal and androcentric way in which mainstream human rights treaties had been conceptualized, which largely ignored the experiences of women and other marginalized groups, but also reaffirmed some of the androcentric conceptualizations of human rights. However, in acknowledging the contributions to society that women make in the home, CEDAW breaks down the artificial distinction between the public and private spheres (the personal is political) and highlights how traditional gender roles can be a source of women’s oppression. This important claim in CEDAW has been crucial in the CEDAW committee’s ability to identify and broaden the scope of violations of women’s human rights and to redress them through their general recommendations (Arat 2008 )

Gender and Human Rights in the Context of Globalization

One important systemic component of structural indivisibility is economic globalization. Feminists have extended their critique of androcentrism and the public–private dichotomy so pervasive in the human rights discourse to the study of gender inequalities and economic globalization (Youngs 2000 ). Although there are many issues that fall under this area of study, this section will focus exclusively on the topic of the relationship between gender inequality in socioeconomic rights and economic globalization. The next section deals with democratization and will make the link between socioeconomic and civil and political rights. Feminist human rights scholars have been concerned with how the deepening of capitalism affects the state and the state’s ability to fulfill its human rights obligations. However, the crucial point of departure in this literature is its explicit focus on how this transformation is gendered and has gendered consequences (Lothian 1996 ; Sen 1997 ; Sassen 1998 ; Peratis et al. 1999 ; Bayes et al. 2001 ; Rittich 2001 ; Elson 2002 ). More explicitly, economic globalization not only produces gender inequalities, but also maintains and relies upon these inequalities in a variety of contexts in order to deepen capitalism, as well as to rearticulate the state.

As Rittich ( 2001 :96–7) notes, there are several concerns to address when assessing the relationship between the state and the achievement of women’s human rights. One issue is the recognition that the women’s rights discourse and movement was and still is deeply embedded in and reliant upon the state-centered model of human rights. Even though feminist critiques of both the human rights regime and the state have revealed both their androcentrism and their complicity in preserving the public–private split which is profoundly gendered, the solutions posed by many feminists depend on the state to change its perspective, and consequently its behavior. As such, Chappell ( 2000 :245) suggests that feminists have moved to a middle ground with regards to the state, viewing it neither as “inherently patriarchal and oppressive” nor as “gender neutral,” but rather the emphasis is now on the “interaction between the state and gender,” in which each shapes the other. For example, Weldon’s ( 2002 ) research on cross-national variations of state policy responsiveness with regards to violence against women issues shows that strong, autonomous women’s movements have significant influence on state policy change.

Regardless, the state becomes the primary agent in promoting and implementing effective strategies to eradicate gender inequalities. Yet, implicit in this design is the assumption of an economically prosperous, democratic state or, at the very least, an effectual one that subscribes to a neoliberal economic agenda. Although the international covenants on human rights allow for “progressive realization” of human rights, this concept also hinges on the notion that states will consistently and persistently search for ways to reallocate resources to further the enjoyment of human rights. For feminists, this means taking seriously the ways in which the state contributes to gender inequality through its social policies, and relying on the state to correct itself.

This perspective, of course, is not unproblematic. As Sassen ( 1998 :94) suggests, the state is still viewed as the legitimate representative of the population in the international law arena, diminishing the contributions and limiting the participation of other nonstate actors. Furthermore, access to and influence over state policies is not uniform among women’s rights and human rights groups, and states are also subject to lobbying from other special interest groups, which may or may not be supportive of human rights based initiatives (Rittich 2001 :97). In addition to these problems, as Chappell ( 2000 :246–7) notes, there is a historic disjuncture among women’s rights activists in the first and third worlds, who have quite different views regarding the utility of achieving rights through the state, given the wide variation of states with regards to resources, effectiveness, and openness/repressiveness. However, given that the Beijing PFA ( 1995 ), which now operates as the dominant referent in international women’s rights law, places responsibility with states to realize and protect women’s rights in the face of potential negative consequences of globalization (rather than challenging globalization itself), and the increasingly “economistic turn” in the gender and development literature that conceptualizes “empowerment” as economic empowerment (Marchand 1996 :580), it appears that the “national-management framework” (Bergeron 2001 :993) is the primary one in place in both the first and third worlds, as an interactive site of resource allocation and resistance.

It is important to note, however, the framework utilized by the PFA has been challenged on many fronts, most notably by indigenous women, who, in their response to the PFA, roundly criticized globalization as recolonization and responsible for environmental degradation and continued poverty in indigenous lands and nations (Vinding 1998 ). They are explicit in their rejection of the strategy of trying to mitigate the negative effects of globalization, which is embedded in the interlocking systems of oppression of capitalism, patriarchy, and colonization (Kuokkanen 2008 ). Rather, for many indigenous women, there needs to be not only recognition of the structural violence that globalization perpetuates and sustains, but also a recognition of how the PFA and the contemporary discourses on women’s rights are complicit in maintaining this system.

A second, highly interrelated issue is markets. As Elson ( 2002 :80–1) suggests, the traditional neoliberal orthodoxy that began in the 1970s and prevailed in the 1980s, “presumes that the best way to give substance to human rights is to reduce the role of the state, liberate entrepreneurial energy, achieve economic efficiency, and promote faster economic growth.” The neoliberal emphasis on the retrenchment of the state as the best way to ensure the fulfillment of human rights seems contradictory to the human rights regime’s insistence of proactive state involvement in meeting its human rights obligations. Yet, as Bayes et al. ( 2001 :3) note, both economics and politics are linked through the rhetoric if not the practice of neoliberalism, which defines the current period. They argue that in theory, neoliberal economics assumes a separation between states and markets, in which markets operate with little intervention from the state. Brodie ( 1996 :384) suggests further that this theoretical relationship between states and markets is actually one of the public and private, in which the private is made up of two realms that are presumed to be out of the “natural” purview of the state: the capitalist economy and the patriarchal family.

However, as discussed earlier, the notion of a rigid public–private divide in the human rights regime has largely been deconstructed by feminists, and in using a similar line of reasoning, feminists suggest that the globalizing neoliberal capitalist world economy rests not on a division between the state (public) and the markets (private) but rather that economic globalization, in its current form, requires an interconnection between states and markets to further its goals. That is, economic globalization requires governments to “provide for the free movement of capital, the free movement of goods, unrestricted labor markets, responsible banking systems, stable monetary policies, limited fiscal policies, attractive investment opportunities, and political stability” (Bayes et al. 2001 :3). Through these practices, the “family and other aspects of private life [are subjected to] new forms of state scrutiny, regulation, and assistance” (Brodie 1996 :385). Thus, the “boundaries” of the public–private are renegotiated, rearticulated, and blurred through the interaction of states (especially liberal democratic ones) and markets.

Although state entrenchment with regards to the economy may be a conscious and pro/re-active strategy on the part of governments as a route to economic prosperity that in theory promotes the progressive realization of socioeconomic rights through more resource allocation, the neoliberal ideology effectively shifts the responsibility away from states to markets as the guarantors of rights. Markets have little accountability and regulation in the human rights regime, insofar as multinational corporations, a major force behind globalization, have little oversight in international law and, in many cases, national law. This development poses particular challenges for feminists, who argue that the neoliberal democratic state, coupled with international human rights law, represents the best hope for the redistribution of resources guided by prioritizing the goal of gender equality. This is not to imply that feminists view the neoliberal democratic state as “gender neutral” or unproblematic. Rather, as the earlier discussion of the human rights discourse reveals, many feminists find the liberal democratic state profoundly gendered.

Another major point of feminist theorizing about globalization is that economic globalization not only produces gender inequality but also requires gender inequality to flourish and to sustain itself. Indeed, there appears to be a general consensus that globalization exacerbates gender inequality, and thus the fulfillment of women’s socioeconomic rights in relation to men’s, in important ways. There are numerous other areas in which feminists have examined globalization’s impact on gender inequality and rights, such as household relations (Kromhout 2000 ; Gonzalez 2001 ; Sircar and Kelly 2001 ; Soni-Sinha 2001 ), migrants/migration (Anderson 2000 ; Chang and Ling 2000 ; Kofman 2000 ), sex work/trafficking (Pettman 1996 ; Hanochi 2001 ), informal labor (Prügl 1999 ; Benería 2003 ), resistance (Runyan 1996 ; Karam 2000 ; Lind 2000 ; Rowbotham and Linkogle 2001 ; Naples and Desai 2002 ) and identity (Peterson 1996 ; Kuokkanen 2008 ). However, these topics are beyond the scope of this project and, as such, will not be discussed in depth here.

As noted earlier, in order for states to remain economically competitive, they adopt strategies that increase the power of the private sector at the expense of the public sector. The result is the weakening of “many institutions that in the past have assumed responsibility for human welfare – while passing on to others burdens they cannot be expected to bear” (UNRISD 1995 :128). For many women, this situation is especially problematic because in order for states to uphold their obligations under CEDAW and the Beijing PFA, they must allocate resources for social welfare programs.

There have been two major responses by states facing the choice of economic competitiveness or guaranteeing socioeconomic rights. Industrialized countries such as the United States and the United Kingdom have deregulated the labor market and wages and cut social welfare programs in order to stimulate economic growth and employment (UNRISD 1995 :131). Developing countries have often adopted structural adjustment programs that implement severe economic austerity measures with the aim of jump-starting the economy at the expense of “non-profitable” public service programs. Feminist economists have shown that structural adjustment programs (SAP) have a differential impact on men and women in that women tend to absorb most of the shock of SAPs by increasing their domestic labor (through caregiving, altering the household consumption habits, subsistence farming, informal economic activities) and by entering the labor force to provide more income for the family (Elson 1991 ; Bakker 1994 ; Benería 2003 ; Çagatay 2003 ). As a result, there has been an increase in women’s poverty and economic inequality, and this constitutes a violation of women’s socioeconomic rights (Sadasivam 1997 ).

A second, interrelated issue is how economic globalization depends on a gendered sexual division of labor. The international sexual division of labor is predicated on the public–private split in which men’s work is considered to be “human” or real work, and women’s work is determined by their “nature” (Mies 1999 :46). Work is defined as a public masculine activity and women’s work (or non-work) is defined as a private sphere activity. However, women’s work in the private sphere is extremely important to the functioning of the capitalist system, yet despite this important role, women are undervalued in both the public and private spheres because of their identification as housewives, rather than as “workers” (Mies 1999 :116). Indeed, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) estimates that “the non-monetized invisible contribution of women is $11 trillion a year” (UNDP 1995 :6). This identification with the home as a site of “non-work” for women is also complicit in the violation of the rights of women who do work in the home for monetary gain, such as piecework. Because it is conducted in the “private sphere,” there is little international labor regulation around home based work, with the exception of the 1996 International Labor Organization Convention on Homework (Prügl 1999 ). However, only five countries have ratified it, which underscores the pervasiveness of the masculinized ideal of real, productive work that takes place only in the public sphere.

The sexual division of labor and its resulting sexism also helps maintain capitalism as system (Wichterich 2000 ; Campillo 2003 ). This has important consequences for women, because even when they do work outside the home they are usually cast in unequal terms. The implication is that capitalism necessarily depends on a certain amount of low-wage and unpaid labor to keep it functioning (Peterson 2003 ), as the “labor input in non-wage work ‘compensates’ the lowness of the wage-income and therefore in fact represents an indirect subsidy to the employers of wage laborers in those households” (Wallerstein 1988 :8). The identification of women with the private sphere helps keep capitalism’s costs low and at the same time provides a justification for this strategy.

The end result is limited economic opportunity for women since their labor is in the form of underpaid or unpaid labor in the capitalist system of profits and capital accumulation. Many labor sectors have become feminized, particularly the garment and electronics industries. Women are the preferred “workers” because they do not have to be paid as much as men. This is due in part to the devaluation of women’s labor (or the seeing of their paid labor as a natural extension of the private sphere) and the assumption that their wages are used for “extras” rather than to support the family (Mies 1999 :116). The state is complicit in perpetuating this sexism because of its need to stay competitive in global markets. Many women have their basic economic rights, such as the right to safe labor conditions and pay equity, denied because states would find it too costly to provide these opportunities to women. If the cost of production of goods increases, products would be less competitive on the international market. States are reluctant to hold multinational corporations accountable for their labor practices because the pressure for revenue is too great and the threat of relocation by multinational corporations (MNC) is real (Sen 1997 ).

The bottom line for many feminists is that economic globalization, operating within a neoliberal frame, both produces and exacerbates some forms of gender inequality. States are responding to globalization by shifting the burden onto women (and other marginalized sectors of society) to create their own social safety net. However, because women’s work is usually undervalued or unpaid given their identification with the private sphere, meeting basic needs requirements of food, shelter, health care, and clothing becomes especially challenging. In light of these gendered inequities, some feminist scholars, such as Elson ( 2006 :3) have suggested applying a gendered and rights based approach to the analysis of government budgets in order to “identify gender inequalities in budget processes, allocations and outcomes; and assess what States are obliged to do to address these inequalities” as a way to keep states accountable and responsive to women in the context of globalization.

Democratization

While the broader women’s human rights movement is in tacit agreement that civil-political liberties and socioeconomic rights are inextricable, there is disagreement over the exact nature of this relationship. Furthermore, if one takes the notion of structural indivisibility seriously, a rather complex picture of the relationship between the liberal democratic state, democratization processes, globalization, socioeconomic rights, and gender emerges. Utilizing Huntington ( 1991 ), some feminist analyses of democracies and democratization reveal that one important factor to consider with regards to gender equality is whether or not the state in question is in a period of democratic transition or of democratic consolidation (Jaquette and Wolchik 1998 ; Bystydzienski and Sekhon 1999 ; Hawkesworth 2001 ; Yoon 2001 ; Goetz and Hassim 2002 ). Many, but not all, of these studies show that women fare better in the transition phase (shifting from a nondemocratic type of government to a democratic one) than in the consolidation phase, which involves the establishment of rules, institutions, and political culture. However, there are also cases, such as in the post-communist states, where women have lost considerable economic and political power during the democratic transition phase (see, for example, Wolchik 1998 ).

Hawkesworth ( 2001 :223–6) suggests that the democratic consolidation phase in conjunction with liberal capitalist development has deleterious effects on gender equality, and thus the achievement of women’s rights, for two main reasons. First, developing countries, through modernization programs, are pressured to adopt a neoliberal capitalist model of development. This connects to the earlier discussion of economic development in the sense that modernization theory presumes that the adoption of capitalism will in turn produce a liberal democratic state, partially because liberal democracies are necessary to guarantee the private property rights that are crucial to global capitalism. A further assumption is that the combination of the deepening of capitalism and the consolidation of a liberal democracy will in fact elevate human rights fulfillment for the citizenry.

However, and this is Hawkesworth’s second point, the dominant model of Western liberal democracy that many countries seek to emulate has a weak record in achieving gender equality. With the exception of the Scandinavian countries, which Hawkesworth argues are more properly thought of as “social” democracies rather than liberal, women in advanced industrialized countries are still vastly underrepresented in the upper echelons of the public sphere. Although the advanced industrialized democracies guarantee equal rights for women and minorities, in reality the consolidation process has worked to produce and institutionalize a patriarchal elite class that undermines the principle of government for the people by the people. As the democratic consolidation process is coupled with the deepening of capitalism, political participation becomes the privilege of those who are economically empowered.

In her analysis, Hawkesworth ( 2001 :224) concludes that “democratization produces gendered redistribution of resources and responsibilities that make women worse off.” Given this scenario, it is not surprising that some feminists have linked the twin processes of globalization and democratization as detrimental to the achievement of human rights for women. Although one consequence of globalization is that more women are in the paid labor force, women have not been able to translate this into political empowerment because these economic “opportunities” are the result of having to make up for states’ inabilities to provide for basic needs. And, as noted earlier, gendered notions around work preclude the idea that more women in the labor force is a sign of increasing gender equality (Elson 2002 ). In short, globalization disempowers women economically, which in turn disempowers them politically by leaving little time, money, or energy to fully exercise civil and political rights.

Why, then, the insistence by the broader women’s human rights regime that the liberal democratic state remains the best hope for the achievement of gender equality in human rights? There are several answers to this conundrum that shed light on the further complexity of globalization, democratization, and women’s human rights achievement. First, no country has completed the process of democratic consolidation, and given that many of the countries do in fact guarantee civil and political rights, there are potential avenues to reshape the consolidation process to demand accountability. For example, feminist scholars have tracked the global diffusion of two notable policies: (1) the adoption of gender quotas in electoral processes, which more than fifty countries have done as a way to increase women’s participation in public life (Bauer 2008 ; Dahlerup 2008 ; Krook 2008 ; Sacchet 2008 ); and (2) the development of women’s policy agencies within the state (also known as “state feminism”) in over 165 countries (True and Mintrom 2001 ; Lovenduski 2005 ). While there are significant disagreements among feminists about the quality of women’s representation in these spheres as well as about the utility of both of these developments for the achievement of gender equality and women’s rights, they are cautiously viewed as positive developments nonetheless.

Second, and closely related to the first point, although globalization has had negative consequences, it also opens up spaces for women’s informal and formal political empowerment (Sassen 1998 ; Moghadam 1999 ; Bayes et al. 2001 ). Sassen ( 1998 :94) suggests that “globalization is creating new operational and formal openings for the participation of non-state actors and subjects,” which in turn provides for the possibility of reshaping ideas about representation, power, and authority. Third, although the role of the state appears to be diminishing or transforming in the wake of globalization, the unevenness of globalization has also ensured that human rights are a part of the permanent global agenda, and thus states are still crucial actors in this regard.

Fourth, and finally, as Rittich ( 2001 :96) observes, “human rights are now often mentioned in the same breath as market reform and development.” Some feminists have recognized this linking of human rights and markets as an opportunity to press for a refined state-management approach coupled with collective global governance to mitigate the negative effects of the global economy. However, others, such as Bergeron ( 2001 ), are skeptical of this approach because of the way feminist appeals to the state for “protection” frame the subjectivities and agency of women. Bergeron ( 2001 :995) suggests that when women are depicted as victims of globalization, an unintended consequence can be that the state will move to adopt “the traditional masculine role of protecting women and families.” This result is ultimately contrary to many feminist goals in achieving rights, and further points out the limitations of “victimization” rhetoric, as mentioned earlier, in accomplishing such goals.

Feminists have utilized the idea of indivisibility to challenge embedded gender hierarchies in the human rights regime to greatly expand the inclusiveness and, therefore, universality of rights (Otto 2001 :54–5). In particular, feminists have shown how the private and public spheres are interconnected, suggesting that economic, social, and political rights are necessarily linked – each one is key to the enjoyment of the other. Feminists have also identified international structures, such as security regimes and the global economy, as key variables to be examined, understood, and accounted for in relation to gender inequality in human rights. The “structural indivisibility” framework easily extends to all contemporary human rights regimes in that it provides an analytic tool for evaluating the impacts of globalization on gender inequality and socioeconomic rights.

The Question of Culture

The topic of cultural practice, traditions, and customary laws has occupied a central place of importance in feminist critiques and understandings of human rights. A central, well-known tension is between universal and cultural relativist positions on human rights. The universal position decrees human rights as inalienable and held by all members of the “human family,” whereas the cultural relativist position argues that “members of one society may not legitimately condemn the practices of societies with different traditions, denying that there can be valid external critiques of culturally-based practices and that no legitimate cross-cultural standards for the evaluating the treatment of rights exist” (Mayer 1995 :176). Many justifications for the denial of women’s human rights are framed in cultural relativist terms, and often positioned as an anti-Western, anti-imperialist response (Rao 1995 ; Brems 1997 ; Narayan 1998 ; Shacher 2001 ; Kapur 2005 ; Winter 2006 ; Bovarnick 2007 ). This paradoxical position frequently results in conflict between women’s individual rights and group cultural rights. Women may agree with the right of their cultural group to practice their culture, while at the same time disagreeing with how these cultural practices affect their personal autonomy and agency. Winter ( 2006 :385) notes that cultural relativist arguments are disproportionately deployed on the question of women’s rights, in that “those articles in UN treaties in favor of religious and cultural rights and the elimination of race discrimination do not appear to be as problematically ‘Western’ as those which defend women’s rights.” The literature on the topic of culture is vast and complex, and due to space constraints, there will be only a cursory and oversimplified overview of it here.

An important contribution of the feminist literature in this area is a deconstruction of the term “culture” itself. Rao ( 1995 :173) argues that culture is “a series of constantly contested and negotiated social practices whose meanings are influenced by the power and status of their interpreters and participants.” By identifying culture as a dynamic, political practice, it allows for a move away from cultural essentialism, or the idea that culture is somehow a homogeneous, static, internally consistent, natural, prediscursive given. Cultural essentialism, as such, is a form of cultural relativism in that it often positions itself as “traditional” and “authentic” and therefore not subject to critical examination. Furthermore, cultural essentialism can also mask “synecdochic substitutions” in which “‘parts’ of a practice come to come to stand in for a whole” and obscure the harmful nature of these “traditional” practices (Narayan 1998 :95). By defining culture as an ongoing process, feminist human rights scholars have revealed the gendered power dynamics embedded in the construction and perpetuation of cultural and religious practices. As Rao ( 1995 :168) notes, by understanding culture in this way, one can ask to what degree members of a cultural group are able to participate in the defining of culture as well as who benefits from a particular version of culture.

There is also considerable emphasis on the tension between universalism and cultural relativism (Brems 1997 ; Okin 1998 ; Bovarnick 2007 ; Freedman 2007 ; Steans 2007 ). Some feminist scholars suggest that the application of universal human rights has had little applicability in non-Western contexts. Bovarnick’s ( 2007 ) study of rape in Mexico and Pakistan reveals important insights into the question of cultural context and particularity when assessing whether or not universal human rights are useful in addressing violence against women. Positioning Mexico and Pakistan as non-Western countries in this study, her analysis reveals that while discourses around violence against women in both of these countries are in fact quite particularized, there are transcultural connections that can be made through the commonalities of “how traditional social mechanisms legitimize and reproduce violence against women” (Bovarnick 2007 :61). Despite their vast cultural differences, the two countries appropriate and regulate women’s bodies and sexuality in a similar fashion, highlighting the importance of addressing the global mechanism of which these different manifestations of violence against women are a part (Bovarnick 2007 ). Bovarnick seems to be suggesting that there are other transcultural universals emerging out of non-Western contexts that need to be taken into account in order to render a potentially different understanding and potential acceptance of universal rights.

Narayan ( 1998 ), however, suggests that for feminists to even use categories such as “Western” and “non-Western” is a culturally essentialist move in itself that can play right into the hands of third world fundamentalists, who often use cultural relativist and anti-imperialist justifications to deny women’s human rights, as well as of “Western cultural supremacists,” who support the idea that the West is morally and politically superior to all “Others” (Narayan 1998 :97). Furthermore, she takes issue with the notion that “equality” and “human rights” are inherently “Western values” to begin with. Narayan (ibid.) argues that “as a result of political struggles by […] various excluded groups in both Western and non-Western contexts […] doctrines of equality and rights have slowly come to be perceived as applicable to them, too.” For Narayan (ibid.), conceptualizations of rights and equality are not just products of Western imperialism but can be considered as products of struggles against internal and external forms of Western imperialism.

Many other feminist scholars are also currently engaged with trying to reconcile universalism with cultural particularism as a way to move past this polarizing dichotomy and to advance the goals of women’s human rights and gender equality. Nussbaum ( 2000 :100) argues for the capabilities approach which focuses on “what people are actually able to do and to be” rather than on what rights or resources individuals have, as one way to traverse this dichotomy. She builds a very complex argument that is oversimplified here due to space constraints, but at the crux of her work is development of the capabilities model, which is informed by the work of Amartya Sen , Marx , and Aristotle and others. Nussbaum argues that her list of basic human functional capabilities (life; bodily health; bodily integrity; senses, imagination, and thought; emotions; practical reason; affiliation; other species; play; control over one’s environment) are cross-culturally recognizable and desirable as well as necessary to the flourishing of human life ( 2000 :78–80). She suggests that by using capabilities, rather than rights, as the goals to be achieved, we will have the tools for developing a cross-cultural consensus for “determining a decent social minimum in a variety of areas” (Nussbaum 2000 :75). In her view, the capabilities approach is universal but not ethnocentric, for “ideas about activity and ability are everywhere, and there is no culture in which people do not ask themselves what they are able to do, what opportunities they have for functioning” ( 2000 :100). She further buttresses her claims by applying the capabilities criteria to the lives of two Indian women, and concludes they are already thinking, speaking, and acting in accordance with the language of capabilities ( 2000 :106–10). She also argues that capabilities can be realized in multiple ways according to context, etc., and that by positioning capabilities as the goal, the choice is left open whether or not to pursue the accompanying function ( 2000 :105). Nussbaum does not reject human rights discourse altogether, which she also suggests is not exclusively Western, even though it is often thought to be. Rather, she sees human rights frameworks as an important way to achieve capabilities because rights discourses can recognize and justify human capabilities, make claims of entitlement vis-à-vis the democratic state, and emphasize individual choice and autonomy.

To be sure, there have been many critiques of Nussbaum’s work, and I will address only a few critiques in cursory way here. Phillips ( 2001 ) worries that the capabilities approach takes us too far from an agenda of equality, which has been a central preoccupation for many feminists working in the human rights arena. Phillips warns that the capability approach is too focused on the question of freedom of choice, and this can result in unequal outcomes between the sexes. Phillips concludes as well that that there would be little redress for gendered inequalities that the capabilities approach might produce, if in fact a minimum standard of capabilities was in place for everyone. This does not imply equal capabilities but rather relational ones that could be fundamentally premised on sustaining gender inequalities.

Others, such as Quillen ( 2001 ) and Charusheela ( 2008 ), trouble Nussbaum’s attempts at developing a non-ethnocentric universal ethic by which to conceptualize the “human” in the capabilities model. Quillen ( 2001 :89) argues that Nussbaum’s adherence to liberal humanism actually undermines her project because it is an inadequate framework for understanding the intersections and sources of structural oppressions as well as for analyzing the self (see Nussbaum 2001 for her response to Quillen’s critiques). Charusheela ( 2008 ) argues that Nussbaum’s arguments for universality are in fact ethnocentric, due to their location in modernism, which posits a normative ideal based on Western liberal conceptualizations of the democratic state and capitalist system, and their attendant institutions, as the best way to deliver on capabilities. For Charusheela ( 2008 :13) the capabilities approach therefore rests on “an underlying set of assumptions about human nature that masquerades as universal – cognition expressed in particular ways, decisions made in specific ways, reason and voice deployed in ways appropriate to these institutions ” (emphasis in the original). Both Charusheela and Quillen suggest that we should be utilizing postcolonial feminist theories as the way to build a more collective response to social inequalities.

Some feminist human rights theorists are looking to social activism as a way to resolve the tensions between the particular and the universal. Ackerly ( 2001 ) argues that women’s human rights activists generate a cross-cultural theory of human rights that both invokes and contributes to the universal human rights project while at the same time being able to advocate these ideals in locally appropriate ways. Steans ( 2007 ) makes a similar point in her analysis, highlighting the role that conflict, contestation, and reflection play in feminist transnational advocacy networks in forging new understandings about the basis of collective identities and “shared” interests. She suggests that rather than challenging the notion of universal human rights for women, the conflict generated over cultural differences in feminist transnational advocacy networks serves to buttress universality as these conflicts potentially lead to resolutions that are “both more inclusive and better reflect the actual diversity of women” (Steans 2007 :17).

Reilly ( 2007 ) approaches this question through the lens of cosmopolitan feminism and argues that this theoretical perspective rejects the notion that women are united by a common identity or common experience, and can serve as a transformative political framework. Offering up the ICC NGO Women’s Caucus for Gender Justice and PeaceWomen Project focused on the passage and implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 1325 (which gender mainstreams security issues) as examples, Reilly suggests that cosmopolitan feminism is a “process-oriented framework wherein the direction and content of feminist practice is determined in cross-boundaries dialogue within and across women’s movements” ( 2007 :182). Reilly suggests that through this framework, a global feminist consciousness can be developed that challenges “false universalisms” predicated on false, but powerful, binaries that construct and maintain gender, race, and class inequalities ( 2007 :187). In challenging these binaries through an intersectional framework, cosmopolitan feminism can “critically [reinterpret] universal values such as the rule of law, human rights, and secular democratic politics” ( 2007 :193).

The feminist cosmopolitan approach is not without its critics, however. Both Kaplan ( 2001 ) and Grewal ( 2005 ) argue that the global feminism envisioned by feminist cosmopolitanism produces a new type of Orientalism that is heavily predicated on rescue discourses, which serve to maintain, rather than transform, existing power inequalities. For example, Kaplan ( 2000 :222) suggests that the “cross-cultural dialogues” central to feminist cosmopolitanism are predicated on the view that “patriarchy and other forms of oppression are […] largely overcome in the metropolitan centers of the West,” necessitating a shift “to the spaces of ‘tradition’ and ‘barbarism’ in the margins – the ‘orient’ or the Third World.” Using Hillary Rodham Clinton ’s appearance at the 1995 Beijing Conference on Women as a focal point of her analysis, Kaplan illustrates how cosmopolitan feminism and its attendant discourses on human rights (which Kaplan argues are still primarily liberal in theoretical orientation) “travel” (literally and figuratively) to “other” parts of the world to facilitate cross-cultural dialogue, which ultimately feminizes and positions the third world as space that needs to be saved, or rescued (Grewal 2005 ).

As a result, “the ‘West’ is uncritically assumed to embody ‘equality’, ‘democracy’, and ‘freedom’ despite its serious involvement and investments in […] systems of oppression and power” (Russo 2006 :573). These critiques are amply demonstrated in two case studies of the Feminist Majority Foundation’s (FMF) work in relation to Afghani women’s rights, in which the FMF relied on rescuing and saving discourses while simultaneously highlighting its work with the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) as a project of global (cosmopolitan) feminism throughout its Campaign to End Gender Apartheid (Farrell and McDermott 2005 ; Russo 2006 ).

Grewal’s ( 2005 ) and Kaplan’s ( 2001 ) contention that the cosmopolitan feminist women’s human rights framework constructs difference and produces particular discourses of power and subjects in ways that exempt the West from critical interrogation of their roots in creating and maintaining interlocking systems of oppression are important points to consider in light of Reilly’s arguments, above, in terms of intersectional frameworks. How is difference in terms of intersecting identities as well as agency understood? And, does this approach enable the transcendence of binaries, or recast them, (re)producing both old and new inequalities? Finally, assuming these binaries are contested and transformed, whose “universal” values will be reinterpreted, by whom, and for what ends?

Feminist Futures: Measuring the Achievement of Women’s Human Rights

This essay points to a number of controversies, such as issues regarding culture, sexuality, and neo-imperialism, which need further consideration by feminists. However, the essay has not addressed methodological issues, which are also important for the study and achievement of women’s human rights. Data collection is an important component for a variety of methodological approaches and, as such, deserves further scrutiny here.

During the UN Decade for Women, feminist transnational networks argued for the need to collect sex-disaggregated data. Although heralded by many feminists at the time as a major breakthrough, this has increasingly come under scrutiny. First, there are many provisions in both women’s rights and human rights documents that guarantee a wide range of civil and political liberties and socioeconomic rights but there are actually few data to measure these particular rights. As argued in this essay, feminists conceptualize human rights as something far more complex than the equitable distribution of the presumed benefits and resources of economic development, globalization, and democratization, such as individual empowerment and capacity building, which are difficult to quantify.

Second, because human rights data are often outcomes based and reflect the performance of states, they are actually defined by the public sphere (as are data focused on legally based indicators). As noted earlier in this essay, one of the key insights of feminist human rights scholarship on gender inequality has been its insistence on the interaction of the public and private spheres, and the rejection of this binary as mutually exclusive. That is to say, what happens in the public sphere has ramifications for gender ideology and roles in the private sphere. As such, these measures simply cannot capture the gendered dynamics of the private sphere, which have ideological, physical, and material consequences for the achievement of rights. Because of their inability to capture gendered interactions between the public and private spheres as well as gendered relations within those spheres, the data are at best capturing sex discrimination within the confines of the neoliberal global order rather than the structural feature of gender oppression. In this case, sex is operationalized as an empirical category and gender is an analytical one; yet the sex-disaggregated data are being used as a substitute for “gender.”

Many human rights indicators (though not all) use male experience as the norm, and the achievement of women’s human rights is seen as relative to the rights that men have already achieved. Thus, the typical human rights data show that women are discriminated against in so far as they have not achieved the same rights as men, despite the efforts put forth by many feminists to expand and reframe notions of rights that take into account the difference of women’s and men’s lived realities. Barriteau ( 2006 ), in her study of the Commonwealth Caribbean, argues that composite human rights indicators, such as the Gender Development Index (GDI) and the Gender Empowerment Measure (GEM), place too much emphasis on the material relations of power (and empowerment) to the exclusion of the social and ideological relations of power. Thus, the high score of the Commonwealth Caribbean countries on both the GDI and GEM masks the daily realities of gender based oppression in many women’s lives. Because of this, it looks as if women’s human rights have been achieved, and therefore it is very difficult to mount a critical challenge against the indicators. Many feminists are concerned that this type of outcome creates “an impression that women no longer require assistance and that men are now much more needy beneficiaries” and as a result, there will be a “re-masculinization” of both the development and human rights discourses (McIlwaine and Datta 2003 :375).

Adding to these concerns about the type of data used to measure the success or failure of gender mainstreaming human rights, Wood ( 2005 ) raises the important point that the overall ideology of gender mainstreaming human rights in fact homogenizes both men and women and that this homogenization is often mistaken for commonality. Wood argues that the cost of the homogenization of gender in the policy process, even though it is an efficient and expedient way to gender mainstream human rights and development, is the neglect of “difference” within these homogenized categories of men and women. This is a crucial point because the rationale around gender mainstreaming is to understand how certain social and economic policies impact men and women differently, and the data constructed to evaluate this difference reflect this focus. Wood argues that in order for gender mainstreaming to be more effective, more attention must be paid to the differences among women (and by extension among men) in terms of class, race, ethnicity, sexuality, etc. By this logic, data collection would have to be transformed. For example, it is not enough to point to the increased numbers of women in parliaments and call it gender mainstreaming human rights success. Additional data need to be known about which women are in these positions, which women are not, and why. This would also tell us something about how patriarchal systems can accommodate a certain amount or type of women seeking power while excluding others (hooks 2000 ).

Gender inequality is not separate from class, race, ethnicity, age, and sexual inequalities. Yet, given the current construction of data, we are forced to construct and evaluate gender equality and the achievement of human rights in very narrow and rigid ways. Though this is already happening to some degree, a future task for feminist scholars and activists is to conceptualize and advocate for human rights data that can capture gender inequality in multidimensional and intersectional ways.

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Links to Digital Materials

Association for Women’s Rights in Development. At www.awid.org , accessed May 11, 2009. Women’s Rights NGO which provides up-to-date news about women’s human rights worldwide, resources, research reports and analysis, and job listings in the field.

Center for Reproductive Law. At www.reproductiverights.org/ , accessed May 11, 2009. A non-profit legal advocacy organization for the protection of reproductive rights worldwide. Provides information on current events related to reproductive rights laws globally, in-depth analyses by region, country, and issue information about litigation, and assessments of the UN and other international organizations.

Human Rights Watch, Women’s Rights page. At www.hrw.org/en/category/topic/women%E2%80%99s-rights , accessed May 11, 2009. Provides news updates and in-depth reports on a range of women’s human rights issues, such as domestic and sexual violence, HIV/AIDS, labor, security, and migration.

MADRE. At www.madre.org , accessed May 11, 2009. A women’s human rights NGO. Provides resource information and information on current campaigns.

UN Beijing Platform for Action (1995). At www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/beijing/platform/ , accessed May 11, 2009. Provides the full text to the PFA. Includes links to information about the Beijing Conference on Women, country statements, Beijing +5, and Beijing +10.

UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). At www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/cedaw/cedaw.htm , accessed May 11, 2009. Provides the full text of the convention in all of the official UN languages. Includes a list of states, parties, and reservations to the convention, and country reports. Access to the text of the CEDAW Optional Protocol.

UN GenderInfo Database. At www.devinfo.info/genderinfo/ , accessed May 11, 2009. Searchable database of sex disaggregated statistics related to the following sectors: education, families, health and nutrition, population, public life, and work.

UN Office of the Special Advisor on Gender Issues and Advancement of Women Gender Mainstreaming Page. At www.un.org/womenwatch/osagi/gendermainstreaming.htm , accessed May 11, 2009. This page provides information on the concepts and definitions used to guide the practice of gender mainstreaming of women’s human rights in the UN system. Provides examples of good practices.

UN WomenWatch. At www.un.org/womenwatch/ , accessed May 11, 2009. Inter-agency information center on all women’s issues at the UN. Provides links to news and highlights, events, current campaigns, publications, websites and videos, statistical data, and all agencies working on issues related to women’s rights, development, and gender mainstreaming.

Women, Environment, and Development Organization (WEDO). At www.wedo.org/ , accessed May 11, 2009. A women’s human rights and development NGO which features an extensive online library on a variety of topics ranging from climate change to trade and their impact on achieving gender equality. Also provides in-depth reports and fact-sheets.

Acknowledgments

Special thanks to: Brooke Ackerly , the editor of the FTGS section’s contribution to the compendium, and Andrea Gerlak , Managing Editor of the ISA compendium, for their encouragement and support; Zehra Arat, for her helpful suggestions and coordination of the reviewers’ comments; the two anonymous reviewers, whose comments helped sharpen and deepen this essay; Shannon Mcleod , for her editorial and research assistance; and Mindy McGarrah Sharp , for her administrative assistance. All remaining errors and inaccuracies are, of course, attributable solely to the author.

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Essay On Women Rights

500 words essay on women rights.

Women rights are basic human rights claimed for women and girls all over the world. It was enshrined by the United Nations around 70 years ago for every human on the earth. It includes many things which range from equal pay to the right to education. The essay on women rights will take us through this in detail for a better understanding.

Importance of Women Rights

Women rights are very important for everyone all over the world. It does not just benefit her but every member of society. When women get equal rights, the world can progress together with everyone playing an essential role.

If there weren’t any women rights, women wouldn’t have been allowed to do something as basic as a vote. Further, it is a game-changer for those women who suffer from gender discrimination .

Women rights are important as it gives women the opportunity to get an education and earn in life. It makes them independent which is essential for every woman on earth. Thus, we must all make sure women rights are implemented everywhere.

How to Fight for Women Rights

All of us can participate in the fight for women rights. Even though the world has evolved and women have more freedom than before, we still have a long way to go. In other words, the fight is far from over.

First of all, it is essential to raise our voices. We must make some noise about the issues that women face on a daily basis. Spark up conversations through your social media or make people aware if they are misinformed.

Don’t be a mute spectator to violence against women, take a stand. Further, a volunteer with women rights organisations to learn more about it. Moreover, it also allows you to contribute to change through it.

Similarly, indulge in research and event planning to make events a success. One can also start fundraisers to bring like-minded people together for a common cause. It is also important to attend marches and protests to show actual support.

History has been proof of the revolution which women’s marches have brought about. Thus, public demonstrations are essential for demanding action for change and impacting the world on a large level.

Further, if you can, make sure to donate to women’s movements and organisations. Many women of the world are deprived of basic funds, try donating to organizations that help in uplifting women and changing their future.

You can also shop smartly by making sure your money is going for a great cause. In other words, invest in companies which support women’s right or which give equal pay to them. It can make a big difference to women all over the world.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

Conclusion of the Essay on Women Rights

To sum it up, only when women and girls get full access to their rights will they be able to enjoy a life of freedom . It includes everything from equal pay to land ownerships rights and more. Further, a country can only transform when its women get an equal say in everything and are treated equally.

FAQ of Essay on Women Rights

Question 1: Why are having equal rights important?

Answer 1: It is essential to have equal rights as it guarantees people the means necessary for satisfying their basic needs, such as food, housing, and education. This allows them to take full advantage of all opportunities. Lastly, when we guarantee life, liberty, equality, and security, it protects people against abuse by those who are more powerful.

Question 2: What is the purpose of women’s rights?

Answer 2: Women’s rights are the essential human rights that the United Nations enshrined for every human being on the earth nearly 70 years ago. These rights include a lot of rights including the rights to live free from violence, slavery, and discrimination. In addition to the right to education, own property; vote and to earn a fair and equal wage.

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How the Right to Legal Abortion Changed the Arc of All Women’s Lives

By Katha Pollitt

I’ve never had an abortion. In this, I am like most American women. A frequently quoted statistic from a recent study by the Guttmacher Institute, which reports that one in four women will have an abortion before the age of forty-five, may strike you as high, but it means that a large majority of women never need to end a pregnancy. (Indeed, the abortion rate has been declining for decades, although it’s disputed how much of that decrease is due to better birth control, and wider use of it, and how much to restrictions that have made abortions much harder to get.) Now that the Supreme Court seems likely to overturn Roe v. Wade sometime in the next few years—Alabama has passed a near-total ban on abortion, and Ohio, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, and Missouri have passed “heartbeat” bills that, in effect, ban abortion later than six weeks of pregnancy, and any of these laws, or similar ones, could prove the catalyst—I wonder if women who have never needed to undergo the procedure, and perhaps believe that they never will, realize the many ways that the legal right to abortion has undergirded their lives.

Legal abortion means that the law recognizes a woman as a person. It says that she belongs to herself. Most obviously, it means that a woman has a safe recourse if she becomes pregnant as a result of being raped. (Believe it or not, in some states, the law allows a rapist to sue for custody or visitation rights.) It means that doctors no longer need to deny treatment to pregnant women with certain serious conditions—cancer, heart disease, kidney disease—until after they’ve given birth, by which time their health may have deteriorated irretrievably. And it means that non-Catholic hospitals can treat a woman promptly if she is having a miscarriage. (If she goes to a Catholic hospital, she may have to wait until the embryo or fetus dies. In one hospital, in Ireland, such a delay led to the death of a woman named Savita Halappanavar, who contracted septicemia. Her case spurred a movement to repeal that country’s constitutional amendment banning abortion.)

The legalization of abortion, though, has had broader and more subtle effects than limiting damage in these grave but relatively uncommon scenarios. The revolutionary advances made in the social status of American women during the nineteen-seventies are generally attributed to the availability of oral contraception, which came on the market in 1960. But, according to a 2017 study by the economist Caitlin Knowles Myers, “The Power of Abortion Policy: Re-Examining the Effects of Young Women’s Access to Reproductive Control,” published in the Journal of Political Economy , the effects of the Pill were offset by the fact that more teens and women were having sex, and so birth-control failure affected more people. Complicating the conventional wisdom that oral contraception made sex risk-free for all, the Pill was also not easy for many women to get. Restrictive laws in some states barred it for unmarried women and for women under the age of twenty-one. The Roe decision, in 1973, afforded thousands upon thousands of teen-agers a chance to avoid early marriage and motherhood. Myers writes, “Policies governing access to the pill had little if any effect on the average probabilities of marrying and giving birth at a young age. In contrast, policy environments in which abortion was legal and readily accessible by young women are estimated to have caused a 34 percent reduction in first births, a 19 percent reduction in first marriages, and a 63 percent reduction in ‘shotgun marriages’ prior to age 19.”

Access to legal abortion, whether as a backup to birth control or not, meant that women, like men, could have a sexual life without risking their future. A woman could plan her life without having to consider that it could be derailed by a single sperm. She could dream bigger dreams. Under the old rules, inculcated from girlhood, if a woman got pregnant at a young age, she married her boyfriend; and, expecting early marriage and kids, she wouldn’t have invested too heavily in her education in any case, and she would have chosen work that she could drop in and out of as family demands required.

In 1970, the average age of first-time American mothers was younger than twenty-two. Today, more women postpone marriage until they are ready for it. (Early marriages are notoriously unstable, so, if you’re glad that the divorce rate is down, you can, in part, thank Roe.) Women can also postpone childbearing until they are prepared for it, which takes some serious doing in a country that lacks paid parental leave and affordable childcare, and where discrimination against pregnant women and mothers is still widespread. For all the hand-wringing about lower birth rates, most women— eighty-six per cent of them —still become mothers. They just do it later, and have fewer children.

Most women don’t enter fields that require years of graduate-school education, but all women have benefitted from having larger numbers of women in those fields. It was female lawyers, for example, who brought cases that opened up good blue-collar jobs to women. Without more women obtaining law degrees, would men still be shaping all our legislation? Without the large numbers of women who have entered the medical professions, would psychiatrists still be telling women that they suffered from penis envy and were masochistic by nature? Would women still routinely undergo unnecessary hysterectomies? Without increased numbers of women in academia, and without the new field of women’s studies, would children still be taught, as I was, that, a hundred years ago this month, Woodrow Wilson “gave” women the vote? There has been a revolution in every field, and the women in those fields have led it.

It is frequently pointed out that the states passing abortion restrictions and bans are states where women’s status remains particularly low. Take Alabama. According to one study , by almost every index—pay, workforce participation, percentage of single mothers living in poverty, mortality due to conditions such as heart disease and stroke—the state scores among the worst for women. Children don’t fare much better: according to U.S. News rankings , Alabama is the worst state for education. It also has one of the nation’s highest rates of infant mortality (only half the counties have even one ob-gyn), and it has refused to expand Medicaid, either through the Affordable Care Act or on its own. Only four women sit in Alabama’s thirty-five-member State Senate, and none of them voted for the ban. Maybe that’s why an amendment to the bill proposed by State Senator Linda Coleman-Madison was voted down. It would have provided prenatal care and medical care for a woman and child in cases where the new law prevents the woman from obtaining an abortion. Interestingly, the law allows in-vitro fertilization, a procedure that often results in the discarding of fertilized eggs. As Clyde Chambliss, the bill’s chief sponsor in the state senate, put it, “The egg in the lab doesn’t apply. It’s not in a woman. She’s not pregnant.” In other words, life only begins at conception if there’s a woman’s body to control.

Indifference to women and children isn’t an oversight. This is why calls for better sex education and wider access to birth control are non-starters, even though they have helped lower the rate of unwanted pregnancies, which is the cause of abortion. The point isn’t to prevent unwanted pregnancy. (States with strong anti-abortion laws have some of the highest rates of teen pregnancy in the country; Alabama is among them.) The point is to roll back modernity for women.

So, if women who have never had an abortion, and don’t expect to, think that the new restrictions and bans won’t affect them, they are wrong. The new laws will fall most heavily on poor women, disproportionately on women of color, who have the highest abortion rates and will be hard-pressed to travel to distant clinics.

But without legal, accessible abortion, the assumptions that have shaped all women’s lives in the past few decades—including that they, not a torn condom or a missed pill or a rapist, will decide what happens to their bodies and their futures—will change. Women and their daughters will have a harder time, and there will be plenty of people who will say that they were foolish to think that it could be otherwise.

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• A Century After Women Gained the Right To Vote, Majority of Americans See Work To Do on Gender Equality

About three-in-ten men say women’s gains have come at the expense of men

Table of contents.

• Acknowledgments
• Methodology

Pew Research Center conducted this study to understand Americans’ views of the current state of gender equality and the advancement of women around the 100th anniversary of women getting the right to vote. For this analysis, we surveyed 3,143 U.S. adults in March and April 2020, including an oversample of Black and Hispanic respondents. The adults surveyed are members of the Ipsos Public Affairs KnowledgePanel, an online survey panel that is recruited through national random sampling of residential addresses and landline and cellphone numbers. KnowledgePanel provides internet access for those who do not have it and, if needed, a device to access the internet when they join the panel. To ensure that the results of this survey reflect a balanced cross section of the nation, the data are weighted to match the U.S. adult population by gender, age, education, race and ethnicity and other categories. The survey was conducted in English and Spanish.

Here are the  questions used for this report , along with responses, and the report’s methodology .

References to white and Black adults include only those who are non-Hispanic and identify as only one race. Hispanics are of any race.

All references to party affiliation include those who lean toward that party. Republicans include those who identify as Republicans and independents who say they lean toward the Republican Party. Democrats include those who identify as Democrats and independents who say they lean toward the Democratic Party.

References to college graduates or people with a college degree comprise those with a bachelor’s degree or more. “Some college” includes those with an associate degree and those who attended college but did not obtain a degree.

A hundred years after the 19th Amendment was ratified, about half of Americans say granting women the right to vote has been the most important milestone in advancing the position of women in the country. Still, a majority of U.S. adults say the country hasn’t gone far enough when it comes to giving women equal rights with men, even as a large share thinks there has been progress in the last decade, according to a new Pew Research Center survey.

Among those who think the country still has work to do in achieving gender equality, 77% point to sexual harassment as a major obstacle to women having equal rights with men. Fewer, but still majorities, point to women not having the same legal rights as men (67%), different societal expectations for men and women (66%) and not enough women in positions of power (64%) as major obstacles to gender equality. Women are more likely than men to see each of these as a major obstacle.

Many of those who say it is important for men and women to have equal rights point to aspects of the workplace when asked about what gender equality would look like. Fully 45% volunteer that a society where women have equal rights with men would include equal pay. An additional 19% say there would be no discrimination in hiring, promotion or educational opportunities. About one-in-ten say women would be more equally represented in business or political leadership.

In terms of the groups and institutions that have done the most to advance the rights of women in the U.S., 70% say the feminist movement has done at least a fair amount in this regard. The Democratic Party is viewed as having contributed more to the cause of women’s rights than the Republican Party: 59% say the Democratic Party has done at least a fair amount to advance women’s rights, while 37% say the same about the GOP. About three-in-ten (29%) say President Donald Trump has done at least a fair amount to advance women’s rights, while 69% say Trump has not done much or has done nothing at all. These views vary considerably by party, with Republicans and Republican leaners at least five times as likely as Democrats and those who lean Democratic to say the GOP and Trump have done at least a fair amount and Democrats far more likely than Republicans to say the same about the Democratic Party.

Views of the role the feminist movement has played in advancing gender equality are positive overall, though fewer than half of women say the movement has been beneficial to them personally. About four-in-ten (41%) say feminism has helped them at least a little, while half say it has neither helped nor hurt them. Relatively few (7%) say feminism has hurt them personally. Democratic women, those with a bachelor’s degree or more education and women younger than 50 are among the most likely to say they’ve benefitted personally from feminism.

Views about how much progress the country has made on gender equality differ widely along partisan lines. About three-quarters of Democrats (76%) say the country hasn’t gone far enough when it comes to giving women equal rights with men, while 19% say it’s been about right and 4% say the country has gone too far. Among Republicans, a third say the country hasn’t made enough progress, while 48% say it’s been about right and 17% say the country has gone too far in giving women equal rights with men.

There is also a gender gap in these views, with 64% of women – compared with 49% of men – saying the country hasn’t gone far enough in giving women equal rights with men. Democratic and Republican women are about ten percentage points more likely than their male counterparts to say this (82% of Democratic women vs. 70% of Democratic men and 38% of Republican women vs. 28% of Republican men).

The nationally representative survey of 3,143 U.S. adults was conducted online from March 18-April 1, 2020. 1 Among the other key findings:

More cite women’s suffrage than other milestones as the most important in advancing the position of women in the U.S. About half of Americans (49%) say women gaining the right to vote has been the most important milestone in advancing the position of women in the U.S.; 29% cite the passage of the Equal Pay Act, while smaller shares point to the passage of the Family and Medical Leave Act (12%) or the availability of the birth control pill (8%) as the most important milestone.

A majority of Americans say feminism has had a positive impact on the lives of white, Black and Hispanic women. About six-in-ten or more U.S. adults say feminism has helped the lives of white (64%), Black (61%) and Hispanic (58%) women at least a little. But more say feminism helped white women a lot (32%) than say it’s done the same for Black (21%) or Hispanic (15%) women. About a quarter (24%) say feminism has helped wealthy women a lot; just 10% say it’s been equally helpful to poor women.

About four-in-ten Republican men think women’s gains have come at the expense of men. Most Americans (76%) say the gains women have made in society have not come at the expense of men, but 22% think these gains have come at the expense of men. That view is more common among men (28%) than women (17%). Republican and Democratic men are more likely than their female counterparts to say the gains women have made in society have come at the expense of men. About four-in-ten Republican men (38%) say women’s gains have come at the expense of men, compared with 25% of Republican women, 19% of Democratic men and 12% of Democratic women.

Democrats are more likely than Republicans to say that, when it comes to gender discrimination, the bigger problem is discrimination being overlooked. Two-thirds of U.S. adults say the bigger problem for our country today is people not seeing gender discrimination where it really does exist; 31% say people seeing gender discrimination where it really does not exist is the bigger problem. More than eight-in-ten Democrats (85%) point to people overlooking gender discrimination as the bigger problem; 46% of Republicans say the same.

Most Americans favor adding the ERA to the U.S. Constitution, even as many don’t think this would make much difference for women’s rights. About eight-in-ten U.S. adults (78%), including majorities of men and women and Republicans and Democrats alike, say they at least somewhat favor adding the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) to the U.S. Constitution. When asked about the impact they think adopting the ERA would have on women’s rights in the U.S., 44% say it would advance women’s rights, while 5% say this would be a setback for women’s rights and 49% say it would not make much of a difference. Even among those who favor adopting the amendment, 44% say doing so wouldn’t have much of an impact on women’s rights (54% say it would advance women’s rights).

A majority of Americans say the country has not gone far enough in giving women equal rights with men

The vast majority of Americans across demographic and partisan groups agree that women should have equal rights with men. More than nine-in-ten U.S. adults say it is very important (79%) or somewhat important (18%) for women to have equal rights with men in this country. Just 3% of Americans say gender equality is not too or not at all important.

Democrats and those who lean to the Democratic Party (86%) are more likely than Republicans and Republican leaners (71%) to say it is very important for women to have equal rights with men. Still, majorities of Republicans and Democrats, including at least two-thirds of men and women in each party, say this is very important.

When it comes to giving women equal rights with men, a majority of adults (57%) think our country has not gone far enough, while 32% say things have been about right; 10% of Americans say the country has gone too far in giving women equal rights with men.

Women (64%) are more likely than men (49%) to say the country hasn’t made enough progress on gender equality. However, there is also a sizable party gap. Roughly three-quarters of Democrats (76%) say the country hasn’t gone far enough when it comes to giving women equal rights with men, compared with 33% of Republicans. Instead, 48% of Republicans – compared with 19% of Democrats – say things are about right when it comes to gender equality and 17% say the country has gone too far; just 4% of Democrats say things have gone too far.

Across parties, women are more likely than men to say the U.S. has not gone far enough in giving women equal rights with men. About four-in-ten Republican women (38%) say that gender equality has not come far enough, compared with 28% of Republican men. Still, about half of Republican men (51%) and 45% of Republican women say things are about right in the country when it comes to gender equality.

Among Democrats, 82% of women, compared with 70% of men, say the country still has work to do on gender equality. About a quarter of Democratic men (24%) say things are about right in the country when it comes to giving women equal rights with men, compared with 14% of Democratic women who say the same.

Among Democrats, those with at least some college education are more likely than those with no college experience to express dissatisfaction with the current state of gender equality. About eight-in-ten Democrats with a bachelor’s degree or more education (82%) and 77% of those with some college education say the country hasn’t gone far enough when it comes to giving women equal rights with men, compared with 71% of Democrats with a high school diploma or less education. Among Republicans, there is generally more agreement across levels of educational attainment.

Overall, Americans express more dissatisfaction with the state of gender equality now than they did in 2017, when this question was last asked. Then, half said the country hadn’t gone far enough in giving women equal rights with men, while 39% said things were about right and 10% said the country had gone too far. Attitudes have shifted among men and women and Republicans and Democrats alike.

Most Democrats and Republicans say the country has made progress in giving women and men equal rights over the last 10 years

While many Americans say there’s still work to be done to achieve gender equality, most say there’s been progress over the past decade. Majorities of men and women say the U.S. has made progress in the last 10 years when it comes to giving women equal rights with men. Still, 25% of Americans say things are the same as they were 10 years ago, and one-in-ten say the country has lost ground when it comes to equal rights for women.

Majorities of Democrats (60%) and Republicans (71%) say that, in the last 10 years, the country has made progress on gender equality. However, Democratic women are the least likely to say this: 58% of Democratic women say this, compared with 63% of Democratic men and 71% of both Republican men and Republican women. Instead, 28% of Democratic women say things are about the same as they were 10 years ago (21% of Republican women say the same).

About three-in-ten U.S. men think women’s gains have come at the expense of men

When it comes to the gains that women have made in society, most Americans (76%) say the gains have not come at the expense of men, but 22% – including 28% of men – think these gains have come at the expense of men.

Republican men (38%) are twice as likely as Democratic men (19%) to say the gains women have made have come at the expense of men. A quarter of Republican women also say this, less than the share of their male counterparts but higher than the shares of Democratic men and women (12%) that hold this view.

Among women, those without a bachelor’s degree are about twice as likely as college graduates to say gains have come at the expense of men (21% vs. 10%); educational differences are less pronounced, though still significant, among men: 30% of men with some college or less education say the gains women have made in society have come at the expense of men, compared with 24% of men with at least a bachelor’s degree.

Most who say the country still has work to do on gender equality say equality is likely in the future

On the whole, the majority of Americans who say that the country has not gone far enough to give women equal rights with men think it is very or somewhat likely that women in our country will eventually have equal rights with men. More than eight-in-ten Americans who say the country hasn’t made enough progress say this is very likely (31%) or somewhat likely (53%); just 16% say they think it is not too likely or not at all likely.

Large majorities of men and women and Republicans and Democrats who say the country has not yet achieved gender equality say it is at least somewhat likely that men and women will eventually have equal rights, but men (37%) are considerably more likely than women (26%)  to say it is very likely.

Among Republicans who say the U.S. has work to do to achieve gender equality, 36% say gender equality is very likely, compared with 29% of Democrats. This difference is driven in part by Democratic women, who are among the least likely to say they expect men and women to eventually have equal rights. Among Democratic women who say the country hasn’t gone far enough to achieve gender equality, 23% say they think it is very likely that there will eventually be gender equality; 38% of Democratic men say the same.

Even among the small share of Americans who say the country has lost ground on gender equality in the last 10 years, 76% say it is very or somewhat likely that women will eventually have equal rights with men.

More cite equality in the workplace than any other example as a sign of a society where men and women are equal

When those who say it is important for women to have equal rights with men are asked what a society with gender equality might look like, about half give examples that focus on equality in the workplace: 45% specifically say equal pay, 19% cite no discrimination in hiring and promotion, 5% say men and women getting equal respect in the workplace, and 2% say better paid leave and paternity and maternity support are things they would expect to see in a society where women have equal rights with men.

About one-in-ten cite more or equal representation of women in leadership, with 6% specifically mentioning political leadership and 5% mentioning business leadership. Relatively few point to reproductive rights (4%) and less traditional gender norms (4%) as markers of a society where women have equal rights with men. (Respondents were asked to answer this question in their own words; for respondents who gave multiple examples, up to three responses were coded.)

For the most part, men and women who say equal rights are important have a similar picture of what a society with gender equality would look like, but a larger share of women than men cite equal pay (51% vs. 40%). Still, the gender pay gap tops the list for both men and women who say gender equality is important.

Among women, references to equal pay differ by age. Women ages 50 and older (56%) are more likely than women under 50 (45%) to mention equal pay when describing a society where men and women have equal rights.

Democrats who say gender equality is important are more likely than their Republican counterparts to cite equal pay when asked about a society with gender equality: 50% of Democrats say this, compared with 41% of Republicans. Democrats are also more likely than Republicans to say that more or equal representation in business and politics is a marker of equality (12% vs. 5%).

Wide party and gender gaps in views of the obstacles women face in achieving gender equality

When Americans who say the country has not gone far enough in giving women equal rights with men are asked about the obstacles to achieving equal rights, sexual harassment tops the list: 77% say this is a major obstacle for women. Roughly two-thirds say women not having the same legal rights as men (67%) and the different expectations that society has for men and women (66%) are major obstacles, and 64% say the same about not enough women in positions of power. Some 43% point to family responsibilities as a major obstacle, while fewer cite men and women having different physical abilities (19%) and women not working as hard as men (13%) as major obstacles. Roughly two-thirds (64%) of those who say the country has work to do on gender equality say women not working as hard as men is not an obstacle to gender equality.

Perceptions of the obstacles to gender equality vary across genders. For example, while 71% of women who say the country hasn’t gone far enough in giving women equal rights with men cite not enough women in positions of power as a major obstacle to gender equality, 55% of men say the same.

A majority of women who say the country hasn’t made enough progress on gender equality also point to women not having the same legal rights as men (73%) and different societal expectations for men and women (72%) as major obstacles to women having equal rights with men. Fewer men who say this see each of these as major obstacles to gender equality (59% and 58%, respectively).

When it comes to the role sexual harassment plays in men and women having equal rights, women who say the country hasn’t gone far enough when it comes to gender equality (82%) are more likely than men who say the same (72%) to cite this as a major obstacle, though large majorities of both groups say this.

Among women who say the country hasn’t made enough progress on gender equality, those with at least a bachelor’s degree are more likely than those who have attended some college or less to say different societal expectations (81% vs. 67%) and not enough women in positions of power (80% vs. 66%) are major obstacles.

Among those who say there’s work to be done on gender equality, a majority of Democrats, but fewer than half of Republicans, see not enough women in power as a major obstacle

Among those who say there’s more work to be done in giving women equal rights with men, Democrats and Republicans differ on the extent to which certain factors are holding women back. A higher share of Democrats than Republicans point to not enough women in positions of power (72% vs. 41%), women not having the same legal rights as men (73% vs. 51%), sexual harassment (81 % vs. 66%) and different societal expectations (69% vs. 57%) as major obstacles to women having equal rights with men.

Republicans who say the country has not gone far enough to give women equal rights (27%) are more likely than similarly minded Democrats (17%) to say differences in the physical abilities of men and women are a major obstacle to women having equal rights with men, although relatively small shares of each group say this is the case. Meanwhile, there are no significant partisan gaps when it comes to views of family responsibilities (44% of Democrats and 40% of Republicans see it as a major obstacle) or women not working as hard as men (13% and 15%, respectively).

Democratic women are particularly likely to see some of these as major obstacles, while Republican men tend to be the least likely to do so. For example, 78% of Democratic women say women not having the same legal rights as men is a major obstacle to equal rights, as do 65% of Democratic men and 58% of Republican women. In contrast, 42% of Republican men say this is a major obstacle.

And while 77% of Democratic women, 65% of Democratic men and 50% of Republican women say not enough women in positions of power is a major obstacle to gender equality, just 31% of Republican men say the same.

Democrats are nearly twice as likely as Republicans to say there are problems with gender discrimination being overlooked

When it comes to gender discrimination, by more than a two-to-one margin Americans say the bigger problem for the country is people not seeing discrimination where it really does exist, rather than people seeing gender discrimination where it really does not exist (67% vs. 31%).

The vast majority of Democrats (85%) say the bigger problem is people not seeing gender discrimination where it really exists. In contrast, more Republicans say the bigger problem is people seeing discrimination where it doesn’t exist (53%) than say the people overlooking discrimination is the bigger problem (46%).

There is a wide gender gap among Republicans. While a majority of Republican men (61%) say the bigger problem is people seeing gender discrimination where it doesn’t exist, fewer than half of Republican women (44%) say the same. Democratic men are also more likely than their female counterparts to say this (19% vs. 11%), but 80% of Democratic men and 89% of Democratic women agree that the bigger problem is people overlooking gender discrimination.

More cite women gaining the right to vote than other milestones as the most important in advancing the position of women

When asked about milestones they see as important in advancing the position of women in the U.S., about half of Americans (49%) point to women gaining the right to vote as the most important milestone, a view that is more common among men (52%) than women (46%). Roughly three-in-ten U.S. adults (29%) cite the passage of the Equal Pay Act, while smaller shares say passage of the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) and the availability of the birth control pill are the most important milestones in advancing the position of women (12% and 8%, respectively).

White adults, as well as those with at least a bachelor’s degree, are more likely than Black and Hispanic adults and those with less education to see women’s suffrage as the most important milestone in advancing the position of women in the U.S. Some 53% of white adults say women getting the right to vote has been a more important milestone than the passage of the Equal Pay Act, passage of the FMLA or the availability of the birth control pill. Black and Hispanic adults are about as likely to cite the passage of the Equal Pay Act as they are to cite women gaining the right to vote.

Among those with at least a bachelor’s degree, 59% see women’s suffrage as the most important milestone, compared with 48% of those with some college education and 41% of those with less education. Even so, across educational attainment, more point to women getting the right to vote than to the other milestones as the most important in advancing women’s rights in the U.S.

These differences by race and ethnicity and educational attainment are also evident when looking separately at the views of men and women. A majority of white men (57%) cite women gaining the right to vote as the most important milestone, compared with 39% of Black men and 43% of Hispanic men. And while white women are less likely than their male counterparts to say this (49% do so), even smaller shares of Black (36%) and Hispanic (38%) women point to women’s suffrage as the most important milestone.

Similarly, men with at least a bachelor’s degree (64%) are more likely than women with the same level of educational attainment (54%) to say women gaining the right to vote was the most important milestone. Both are more likely than their less educated counterparts to say this.

Views on this vary little, if at all, by age or partisanship, but Democrats and those who lean to the Democratic Party are about twice as likely as Republicans and Republican leaners to say the availability of the birth control pill has been the most important milestone in advancing the position of women in the U.S. (11% vs. 5%). Similar shares of Democratic women (12%) and men (11%) say this, compared with 6% of Republican women and an even smaller share of Republican men (3%).

A third of Americans know what year women in the U.S. gained the right to vote

When asked in an open-ended format what year women in the U.S. gained the right to vote, 47% offer a year between 1915 and 1925 (within five years of the correct answer), including 33% who correctly identify 1920 as the year women gained the right to vote. About three-in-ten Americans (31%) say women gained the right to vote in 1926 or later, while just 7% say this happened before 1915. (Some 14% didn’t provide an answer.) Men and women give similar answers.

Those who say women gaining the right to vote has been the most important milestone in advancing women’s rights in the U.S. are not necessarily more knowledgeable about the timing of this milestone. An identical share of those who cite women’s suffrage or the availability of the birth control pill as the most important milestones correctly identify 1920 as the year women gained the right to vote (38% each). Similar shares in these groups offer a year between 1915 and 1925.

Educational attainment is related to knowledge of the year women in the U.S. gained the right to vote. About six-in-ten adults with at least a bachelor’s degree (61%) give a year between 1915 and 1925, with 41% correctly identifying 1920 as the year women gained the right to vote. Smaller shares of those with some college (47%) or with a high school diploma or less education (36%) give an answer within five years of the correct year, and a third and quarter, respectively, give the correct answer.

Adults ages 65 and older are more likely than those who are younger to give an answer within five years of the correct year. More than half of those ages 65 and older (55%) say U.S. women gained the right to vote between 1915 and 1925, compared with 49% of those ages 50 to 64, 42% of those ages 30 to 49 and 47% of adults younger than 30.

Majorities say the feminist movement and the Democratic Party have done at least a fair amount to advance women’s rights in the U.S.

Seven-in-ten Americans say the feminist movement has done a great deal (22%) or a fair amount (48%) to advance women’s rights in the U.S.; 59% say the same about the Democratic Party, including 12% who say it has done a great deal. In contrast, most Americans say the Republican Party (61%) and Donald Trump (69%) have not done much or have done nothing at all to advance women’s rights.

Women (73%) are more likely than men (67%) to say the feminist movement has done at least a fair amount to advance the rights of women in the U.S., but large majorities of each group say this. Meanwhile, a larger share of men (40%) than women (34%) say the GOP has done at least a fair amount in this area.

There are far wider partisan gaps than gender gaps when it comes to these views. About three-quarters of Democrats and those who lean Democratic (73%) say the Democratic Party has done at least a fair amount to advance women’s rights in the U.S.; fewer than half of Republicans and those who lean to the Republican Party (42%) say the same. Conversely, two-thirds of Republicans – but only 13% of Democrats – say the GOP has done a great deal or a fair amount in this area. Similarly, a majority of Republicans (59%) say Donald Trump has done at least a fair amount to advance women’s rights, while just 6% of Democrats say the same.

When it comes to the feminist movement’s impact, majorities of Democrats and Republicans say it has done at least a fair amount. Still, Democrats are far more likely than Republicans to say this (80% vs. 58%).

For the most part, views on this don’t vary considerably by gender within each party. Republican women (62%) are more likely than Republican men (55%) to say the feminist movement has done a great deal or a fair amount to advance women’s rights, but more than half of both say this. And while Democratic men are more likely than their female counterparts to say their party has done at least a fair amount, about seven-in-ten or more of each group share this view (76% of Democratic men and 71% of Democratic women). Republican men and women give similar views when it comes to how much each of the political parties and Donald Trump have done, and there are no significant differences between Democratic men and women in views of the feminist movement, the Republican Party or Trump.

Majorities say feminism has helped white, Black and Hispanic women

In addition to saying the feminist movement has done at least a fair amount to advance women’s rights in the U.S., a majority of Americans think feminism has had a positive impact on the lives of specific groups of women. For example, about six-in-ten or more say feminism has helped the lives of white (64%), Black (61%) and Hispanic (58%) women at least a little, although there are more pronounced differences in the shares saying feminism has helped each of these groups a lot (32% vs. 21% and 15%, respectively). 2  Notably, just 41% of women say the movement has helped them personally.

A majority of Americans (57%) also think feminism has helped lesbian and bisexual women at least a little, including 23% who say it’s helped this group a lot. By comparison, 41% say feminism has helped transgender women, with just 11% saying this group has been helped a lot. About one-in-five (21%) say feminism has hurt transgender women, and 17% say the same about its impact on lesbian and bisexual women.

When asked about the impact of feminism on the lives of wealthy and poor women, 49% say it has helped each of these groups at least a little, but while 24% say feminism has helped wealthy women a lot , just one-in-ten say the same about the impact it’s had on the lives of poor women.

Opinions about how feminism has impacted each of these groups of women don’t differ significantly between men and women. In fact, the shares of men and women saying feminism has helped each of these groups at least a little vary only by 3 percentage points or less.

Majorities of white and Hispanic adults say feminism has helped white, Black and Hispanic women at least a little. Some 64% of Black adults also say feminism has helped white women, more than the shares who say it’s helped Black (49%) or Hispanic (48%) women. Black adults are the most likely to say feminism has helped white women a lot: 42% say this, compared with 34% of Hispanics and an even smaller share of white adults (29%).

Consistent with the difference in the shares of Republicans and Democrats who say the feminist movement has done at least a fair amount to advance women’s rights, Democrats are far more likely than Republicans to say feminism has helped each of these groups of women.

About four-in-ten women say feminism has helped them personally

When asked about the impact of feminism on their own lives, 41% of women say it has helped them at least a little, with one-in-ten saying feminism has helped them a lot; 7% say feminism has hurt them, while half say it has neither helped nor hurt. 3

Some 55% of women with at least a bachelor’s degree say feminism has helped them personally, compared with 41% of women with some college education and an even smaller share of those with a high school diploma or less education (30%). In turn, six-in-ten of those with no college experience and half of those with some college say feminism has neither helped nor hurt them; 36% of women with a bachelor’s degree or more education say the same.

Hispanic women (46%) are more likely than Black women (36%) to say feminism has helped them personally; white women fall somewhere in the middle (41% say feminism has helped them). There are also differences by age, with 47% of women younger than 50 saying feminism has helped at least a little, compared with 35% of those ages 50 and older.

Among Democratic women, half say feminism has helped them personally, while just 5% say it has hurt them and 43% say it has neither helped nor hurt. By comparison, 28% of Republican women say feminism has helped them, while a majority (60%) say it’s neither helped nor hurt; 9% of Republican women say feminism has hurt them.

Most Americans favor adding the ERA to the U.S. Constitution

In January 2020, Virginia became the 38th state to pass the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) , nearly half a century after it passed the Senate in 1972. While the ERA has now been ratified by three-fourths of the states, the number required for amending the U.S. Constitution, it is likely to face legal challenges as the deadline for ratification has passed.

The survey finds widespread support for adding the ERA to the U.S. Constitution: About eight-in-ten Americans (78%) say they favor it, including 35% who strongly favor it being added to the Constitution. Women are more likely than men to say they strongly favor adding the ERA to the Constitution (39% vs. 31%), but about three-quarters or more in each group say they favor it at least somewhat.

Democrats overwhelmingly favor adding the ERA to the U.S. Constitution, with roughly nine-in-ten saying they favor it strongly (51%) or somewhat (37%). There’s less support among Republicans: 66% say they favor adopting the ERA, with 16% expressing strong support for this. Republican women (75%) are far more likely than Republican men (58%) to say they favor adding the ERA to the Constitution. Views on this do not differ by gender among Democrats, but they do vary across other dimensions, including educational attainment, race and ethnicity, and age.

Large majorities of Democrats across levels of educational attainment say they favor adding the ERA to the Constitution, but those with at least a bachelor’s degree are the most likely to express strong support: 62% say they strongly favor adopting the ERA, compared with 55% of Democrats with some college and a smaller share of those of those with a high school diploma or less education (37%).

Among white Democrats, 58% say they strongly favor adding the ERA to the U.S. Constitution. About four-in-ten Black and Hispanic Democrats say the same (42% each). These gaps remain when taking differences in educational attainment into account.

And while more than eight-in-ten Democrats across age groups support adopting the ERA, those ages 65 and older are more likely than those who are younger to express strong support. About six-in-ten Democrats ages 65 and older (63%) say they strongly favor adding the ERA to the Constitution, compared with 46% of Democrats ages 18 to 29 and ages 30 to 49 and 52% of those 50 to 64.

These differences by age, educational attainment and race and ethnicity are present among Democratic men and women. Among Republicans, the only notable demographic split on views of adopting the ERA is along gender lines.

Many say adding the ERA to the Constitution wouldn’t make much difference for women’s rights

Despite widespread support for adding the ERA to the U.S. Constitution, 49% of Americans say this would not make much of a difference when it comes to women’s rights in the country; 44% say this would advance women’s rights and 5% think this would be a setback for women’s rights.

Even among those who favor adding the ERA to the Constitution, a sizable share (44%) is skeptical that this would have much of an impact, while 54% say it would advance women’s rights and just 2% see it as a potential setback. Democratic supporters of the ERA are far more likely than their Republican counterparts to say this would advance women’s rights in our country (63% vs. 38%). A majority of Republican ERA supporters (59%) say adding it to the Constitution wouldn’t make much difference.

Overall, male and female supporters of the ERA offer similar assessments of the impact adding the amendment to the Constitution would have on women’s rights; 54% of women and 53% of men who favor adopting the ERA say this would advance women’s rights in the U.S. Women ages 18 to 29 are more optimistic than women in older age groups to say adding the ERA to the Constitution would advance women’s rights. About six-in-ten women younger than 30 who support the ERA (63%) say adopting the amendment would advance women’s rights, compared with about half of older women who favor the ERA.

For the most part, adults who oppose adding the ERA to the U.S. Constitution say doing so wouldn’t make much difference for women’s rights (69% say this), while 20% think this would be a setback for women’s rights and 10% say it would advance women’s rights.

• For more details, see the Methodology section of the report. ↩
• The shares who say feminism has helped each group of women at least a little may not add to the shares who say “a lot” and “a little” as shown in the chart due to rounding. ↩
• The shares of women who say feminism has helped them personally at least a little may not add to the shares who say “a lot” and “a little” as shown in the chart due to rounding. ↩

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Essay on Women’s Rights

Students are often asked to write an essay on Women’s Rights in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Women’s Rights

Introduction.

Women’s rights are fundamental human rights that everyone should respect. They include the right to live free from violence, to be educated, to vote, and to earn a fair wage.

History of Women’s Rights

The fight for women’s rights began in the 1800s. Women protested for the right to vote, work, and receive equal pay. Their efforts led to significant changes.

Importance of Women’s Rights

Women’s rights are vital for equality. When women have the same rights as men, societies are fairer and more balanced.

There is still work to be done to ensure women’s rights worldwide. Everyone should strive to promote and protect these rights.

250 Words Essay on Women’s Rights

Women’s rights are the fundamental human rights that were enshrined by the United Nations for every human being on the planet nearly 70 years ago. These rights include the right to live free from violence, slavery, and discrimination; to be educated; to own property; to vote; and to earn a fair and equal wage.

The Historical Context

The fight for women’s rights has been a long-standing struggle. From the suffragettes of the early 20th century who fought for women’s right to vote, to the women’s liberation movement of the 1960s which sought economic and social equality, women’s rights have been a contentious issue throughout history.

Current Status

Despite significant progress, gender inequality persists in many parts of the world. Women are still underrepresented in political and corporate leadership, they are more likely to live in poverty, and they face higher levels of violence and discrimination.

Challenges and Solutions

The path to gender equality is fraught with obstacles, including deeply entrenched societal norms and institutions. However, change is possible. Education, legislation, and societal shifts in attitudes towards gender can play a significant role in promoting women’s rights.

The fight for women’s rights is a fight for human rights. As society evolves, it is crucial to continue advocating for gender equality, not just for the benefit of women, but for the betterment of society as a whole.

500 Words Essay on Women’s Rights

Women’s rights, a subject that has been at the forefront of social and political discussions for centuries, is a complex and multifaceted issue. It encompasses a wide range of topics, from the right to vote and work to reproductive rights and gender equality. This essay aims to delve into the evolution of women’s rights, the current state of these rights, and the challenges that remain.

The Evolution of Women’s Rights

Historically, women were typically relegated to roles within the domestic sphere, with limited access to education, political participation, and economic independence. The first wave of feminism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries challenged these norms, with suffragettes fighting for women’s right to vote. The second wave in the 1960s and 70s broadened the debate to include issues such as workplace equality and reproductive rights. The third wave in the 1990s and beyond has continued to challenge traditional gender norms and has expanded the conversation to include intersectionality and the rights of women in marginalized communities.

Current State of Women’s Rights

The progress made in the past century is undeniable. Women have achieved significant strides in political representation, educational attainment, and economic participation. However, the fight for equality is far from over. Globally, women still earn less than men, are underrepresented in positions of power, and are more likely to experience violence and discrimination.

Challenges and the Way Forward

The struggle for women’s rights faces numerous challenges. These include deeply entrenched patriarchal norms, religious and cultural beliefs, and structural inequalities that disadvantage women. To overcome these obstacles, it is essential to continue advocating for policy changes that promote gender equality, such as equal pay legislation, paid parental leave, and laws to prevent and punish gender-based violence.

However, policy changes alone are not enough. There must also be a cultural shift towards recognizing and valifying women’s rights. This includes challenging harmful stereotypes, promoting positive representations of women in media, and fostering a culture of respect and equality.

In conclusion, while significant progress has been made in the fight for women’s rights, there is still much work to be done. The struggle for gender equality is not just a women’s issue; it is a human issue that affects us all. By continuing to advocate for policy changes and cultural shifts, we can create a world where all women have the opportunity to live free from discrimination and violence, and to realize their full potential.

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Comprehensive argumentative essay example on the rights of women, rachel r.n..

• February 20, 2024
• Essay Topics and Ideas

What You'll Learn

Women’s rights have been a significant focal point in the ongoing discourse on social justice and equality. The struggle for women’s rights is deeply rooted in history, marked by milestones and setbacks. While progress has undeniably been made, there remain persistent challenges that necessitate continued advocacy and action. This essay argues that the advancement of women’s rights is not only a matter of justice and equality but also a fundamental imperative for societal progress.(Comprehensive Argumentative essay example on the Rights of Women)

The historical context of women’s rights is marked by a legacy of systemic discrimination, limited opportunities, and societal norms that perpetuated gender inequality. From the suffragette movement to the fight for reproductive rights, women have consistently challenged oppressive structures. The recognition of women’s rights as human rights, as articulated in international conventions, underscores the global commitment to address historical injustices and promote gender equality.(Comprehensive Argumentative essay example on the Rights of Women)

One crucial aspect of women’s rights is economic empowerment . The gender pay gap and limited access to economic resources have persisted despite advancements in the workplace. Empowering women economically not only contributes to their individual well-being but also enhances overall societal prosperity. Research consistently demonstrates that economies thrive when women actively participate in the workforce and have equal opportunities for career advancement.(Comprehensive Argumentative essay example on the Rights of Women)

Education is a powerful catalyst for social change, and ensuring equal access to education for girls and women is integral to advancing women’s rights. When women are educated, they become catalysts for positive change within their communities. Educated women are more likely to make informed decisions about their lives, contribute meaningfully to society, and break the cycle of poverty.

Rights Securing women’s rights includes safeguarding their reproductive health and rights. Access to comprehensive healthcare, including reproductive services, is essential for women to have control over their bodies and make autonomous choices about family planning. Policies that prioritize women’s health contribute to a healthier and more equitable society.(Comprehensive Argumentative essay example on the Rights of Women)

Violence Against Women Addressing and preventing violence against women is a critical component of the women’s rights agenda. Gender-based violence not only inflicts harm on individual women but also perpetuates a culture of fear and inequality. Legal frameworks, awareness campaigns, and support services are essential tools in combating violence against women and ensuring their safety and well-being.(Comprehensive Argumentative essay example on the Rights of Women)

In conclusion, the advancement of women’s rights is not only a moral imperative but also a crucial factor in fostering societal progress. A comprehensive approach that addresses historical injustices, economic disparities, educational opportunities, reproductive rights, and violence against women is essential. As we strive for a more equitable future, it is imperative that individuals, communities, and governments actively support and promote women’s rights, recognizing that the empowerment of women is synonymous with the advancement of society as a whole.(Comprehensive Argumentative essay example on the Rights of Women)

80 Topic Ideas for Your Argumentative Essay

• Universal Basic Income
• Climate Change and Environmental Policies
• Gun Control Laws
• Legalization of Marijuana
• Capital Punishment
• Immigration Policies
• Healthcare Reform
• Artificial Intelligence Ethics
• Cybersecurity and Privacy
• Online Education vs. Traditional Education
• Animal Testing
• Nuclear Energy
• Social Media Impact on Society
• Gender Pay Gap
• Affirmative Action
• Censorship in the Media
• Genetic Engineering and Designer Babies
• Mandatory Vaccinations
• Electoral College vs. Popular Vote
• Police Brutality and Reform
• School Uniforms
• Space Exploration Funding
• Internet Neutrality
• Autonomous Vehicles and Ethics
• Nuclear Weapons Proliferation
• Racial Profiling
• Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide
• Cultural Appropriation
• Socialism vs. Capitalism
• Mental Health Stigma
• Income Inequality
• Renewable Energy Sources
• Legalization of Prostitution
• Affirmative Consent Laws
• Education Funding
• Prescription Drug Prices
• Parental Leave Policies
• Ageism in the Workplace
• Single-payer Healthcare System
• Bullying Prevention in Schools
• Government Surveillance
• LGBTQ+ Rights
• Nuclear Disarmament
• GMO Labeling
• Workplace Diversity
• Obesity and Public Health
• Immigration and Border Security
• Free Speech on College Campuses
• Alternative Medicine vs. Conventional Medicine
• Childhood Vaccination Requirements
• Mass Surveillance
• Renewable Energy Subsidies
• Cultural Diversity in Education
• Youth and Political Engagement
• School Vouchers
• Social Justice Warriors
• Internet Addiction
• Human Cloning
• Artistic Freedom vs. Cultural Sensitivity
• College Admissions Policies
• Cyberbullying
• Privacy in the Digital Age
• Nuclear Power Plants Safety
• Cultural Impact of Video Games
• Aging Population and Healthcare
• Animal Rights
• Obesity and Personal Responsibility
• Reproductive Rights
• Charter Schools
• Military Spending
• Immigration and Economic Impact
• Mandatory Military Service
• Workplace Harassment Policies
• Cultural Globalization
• Criminal Justice Reform
• Immigration Detention Centers
• Antibiotic Resistance
• Internet Censorship
• Discrimination in the Workplace
• Space Colonization

Brownlee, K. (2020). Being sure of each other: an essay on social rights and freedoms. Oxford University Press, USA. https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=kTjpDwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PP1&dq=Argumentative+essay+example+on+the+Rights+of+Women&ots=oysLrPE6ux&sig=ANTnu_5AH4_3PMfGG0XdMzxBpLA

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Photo essay: Equality is our goal, access is our right

Date: 01 March 2019

A bus to get to work. A clinic for health care. A monthly pension for old age. Some people can take these for granted. But many others suffer from the lack of infrastructure, public services and social protection that affect their rights and well-being. Women and girls are often foremost among those who miss out.

Progress and real development will only be possible if all people have equal rights and opportunities to thrive. Meeting that goal requires recognizing that women and girls face particular barriers and have different needs. And then taking deliberate steps so that no woman or girl is left behind, regardless of where she lives or how much she earns, or where she comes from.

Infrastructure can provide a way out of poverty and increase the chance of a better future. When there is a lack of infrastructure, communities around the world depend on women to close the gaps with their time-consuming, back-breaking labour.

“I leave home by 7 a.m. to come here by bike. I work until 1 p.m. If there’s no bike to take me back, I walk back home. It can take 2 – 3 hours and I am usually very tired by then. Because of the distance, I cannot carry anything if I am walking back,” says Mohn Malambi, a member of SOCCOMAD, a newly formed women’s cooperative in Yoko, central Cameroon.

Women in this community have grown food for generations but didn’t have land right or access to markets to sell the food they grew. Three years ago, the Government of Cameroon started to build a 250 Km (155 mile) road that would connect rural communities like Yoko with the capital. The women farmers of Yoko seized their moment to start a cooperative, knowing that the road project would bring more people to the area and create access to larger markets for their produce.

“The cassava crop cannot be left in the ground too long, because it rots,” says 52-year-old Tukuri Marie Chantal. It’s a simple equation—with land ownership and better roads, it takes less time and costs less to transport produce, and that means more income for women farmers.

The city of Jakarta, Indonesia, gleams with new buildings and other amenities. Yet safety in public spaces is a concern for women there. Fears about harassment and assault may keep women from using urban transport and other infrastructure even if they have ready access to it. Measures such as bright lighting and visible passageways help alleviate their concerns. With UN Women’s support, the Safe Jakarta project is aimed at pinpointing and closing safety gaps.

In disaster-prone Fiji, recovery efforts after Tropical Cyclone Winston had to involve women, especially the women vendors of Rakiraki Market. “For most of us women market vendors, we focus only on coming to the market to make money. But what if there is a cyclone or flooding that makes it impossible for us to be in the market?” says Varanisese Maisamoa, President of the Rakiraki Market Vendors Association.

The women vendors’ insights informed the market reconstruction to include Category-5 cyclone resilient infrastructure, a rain water harvesting system, flood resistant drainage, and a gender-responsive design.

“I’m looking forward to a market that is safer, better ventilated, with facilities such as changing areas for babies, improved toilets and a female market attendant. Our vendors also know what to do before, during and after a disaster,” Maisamoa added . Read more ►

Communities without electrical grids are increasingly turning to solar devices to jumpstart access to modern energy. Martha Benavente learned to make simple, low-cost solar lamps through a programme supported by UN Women and the governments of Norway and Sweden in a small community in Guatemala. Selling the lamps provides a source of income. Using them in her own home has ended the days when she would race to finish chores before dark because it was too costly to burn candles. Read Martha’s full story ►

Education is a human right and an essential public service with lifelong consequences. Yet many girls still struggle to get an education. In Khayelitsha, the largest informal township in Cape Town, South Africa, girls at the Yomelela Primary School contend with severe poverty and acute risks of violence. With the backing of the UN Trust Fund to End Violence against Women, sports and peer counselling are among the methods that help them cope, feel safe and stay in school.

As the fourth industrial revolution unfolds, the future of jobs will be defined by innovation. While more girls are attending school than before, girls are significantly under-represented in STEM subjects in many settings. The first Coding Camp in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, brought together girls from 34 countries in the African continent to nurture their potential as innovators and technology creators. 

What happens when girls get equal access to technology? They build.

“We are trying to build a drone that is controlled by SMS messaging that will be able to dispense medicine in rural areas,” shared 15-year-old participant Eno Ekanem. Read more ►

In the Republic of North Macedonia, many girls and boys with disabilities are still segregated in separate schools; a very low percentage reach university. Activist Elena Kochovska is fighting for their greater inclusion in education and employment. Read her full story ►

Health-care services should reach all women and provide all the services they need. Yet, too many women still die giving birth, especially in poorer countries where services may be limited and poor in quality. With 1,072 maternal deaths for every 100,000 births, Liberia has one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the world. In the remote areas, infrastructure and facilities in clinics are often lacking; midwives and health-care workers have to deliver babies without any electricity at night.

“It’s really challenging to assist with a delivery using my phone’s light, because I can’t see clearly. I have to hold the phone in my mouth while working. Doing [medical] procedures at night is almost impossible,” explains midwife Lorina Karway.

A UN joint programme installed solar lighting systems in 26 health centres and in five maternal waiting rooms in rural Liberia, including the Bodowhea Clinic, where Karway works, to improve maternal and child health-care services. Read more ►

Low-cost, readily accessible legal aid upholds the rights of poorer women, in particular, to obtain justice as well as essential public services. In Kazakhstan, UN Women has trained legal advocates like Natalia Minayeva. They help women living with HIV solve legal issues and find social assistance, including to end drug dependency. Read more ►

Green, open spaces where everyone can convene, relax and take a break may be taken for granted in some parts of the world. For women and girls in Al-Shoka, a conflict affected neighbourhood in Gaza, Palestine, this was a distant dream, until now. In 2018, the only public garden in Al-Shoka, which was destroyed by the conflict, opened to the public. What’s more, it was re-designed by three female architects and a group of young people from the community to be a truly inclusive space. Read about the female architects who redesigned the garden ►

Limited access to childcare remains a major barrier for women seeking paid jobs, underscoring the importance of providing quality public childcare. Time-use surveys in Uruguay revealed that women spent two-third of their week doing unpaid work, and only one-third on paid work. For men, the reverse applied. The data made Uruguay rethink “care” as an issue that impacts the society and ultimately, led to the adoption of a new law in 2015. Under the Care Act (No. 19,353), all children, persons with disabilities and elderly persons, have the right to get care. The State not only provides care services now, but also guarantees their quality by providing training and regulations.

Soledad Rotella is one of the many mothers benefiting from the new law. Since quality and free day care is available for her 2-year-old daughter, Kiara Rotella can get a full-time job without risking the wellbeing of her daughter. Read the full story ►

Longer, healthier lives are now the norm in many countries, an indisputable sign of progress. By 2030, over 16 per cent of people will be over age 60, compared to just over 8 percent in 1970. Pension systems are expanding to support people in old age. Yet women are less likely to be covered and generally receive less than men, even as they live longer on average. In Viet Nam, Phung Thi Vinh spent a lifetime as a primary school teacher but only began contributing to social insurance late in her career. A government programme helped her catch up. “My pensions payments are small,” she says. “But they help keep body and soul together.”

This photo essay has been adapted from a UN Women photo exhibition at the UN Headquarters in New York, running from 7 March - 27 March

• ‘One Woman’ – The UN Women song
• UN Under-Secretary-General and UN Women Executive Director Sima Bahous
• Kirsi Madi, Deputy Executive Director for Resource Management, Sustainability and Partnerships
• Nyaradzayi Gumbonzvanda, Deputy Executive Director for Normative Support, UN System Coordination and Programme Results
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• Preventing violent extremism and countering terrorism
• Planning and monitoring
• Humanitarian coordination
• Crisis response and recovery
• Disaster risk reduction
• Inclusive National Planning
• Public Sector Reform
• Tracking Investments
• Strengthening young women's leadership
• Economic empowerment and skills development for young women
• Action on ending violence against young women and girls
• Engaging boys and young men in gender equality
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The advancement of women’s rights struggles against racism and inequality

Maternal mortality and the rate of teenage pregnancies have improved globally in recent decades. however, these figures have worsened ‘in an alarming number of countries,’ according to the latest report by the united nations population fund.

The progress made in women’s sexual and reproductive rights has especially benefited women who are high-income, those who belong to ethnic groups that already had better access to healthcare and those who have received more education. This is the conclusion reached by the latest report published by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), which was made public this past Wednesday. It confirms that millions of women and girls haven’t been able to enjoy these advances “because of who they are or where they were born.”

“In a period of a single generation, we’ve reduced unwanted pregnancies by a fifth, we’ve lowered the maternal mortality rate by a third and we’ve approved laws against sexist violence in more than 160 countries,” said Natalia Kanem — executive director of the UNFPA — during a meeting with journalists on Monday, April 15. However, she noted, “despite this progress, inequities in our societies and in our health systems have widened.”

This is because racism, sexism and other forms of discrimination continue to block the achievement of sexual and reproductive rights for millions of women in the world. Kanem warned that “women’s rights haven’t been prioritized” and, instead, their bodies have been “politicized” as a weapon to “divide” society.

The UNFPA document — Interwoven Lives, Threads of Hope: Ending Inequalities in Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights — is published in the year that marks the 30th anniversary of the Cairo Conference on Population and Development. This was a historic moment in which 179 governments committed — for the first time — to placing women’s rights at the center of sustainable development. Since then, the figures support many of the milestones achieved: maternal mortality has fallen by 34% since 2000, while the number of girls and young women who become mothers between the ages of 15 and 19-years-old has declined by a third during the same period. And, between 1990 and 2021, the number of women using modern contraceptive methods has doubled. The number of new HIV infections was also one-third lower in 2021 than in 2010.

However, the UNFPA cautions that women and girls who are poor, who belong to racial, ethnic, or Indigenous minorities, who live in countries in conflict, who have a disability, or who don’t identify with heteronormative paradigms are hardly part of the population that has benefited.

The data supports this conclusion. For instance, an African woman with complications during pregnancy or childbirth is 130 times more likely to die than a woman in Europe or North America. But, even if she lives in the United States, if she’s Black, the statistics don’t work in her favor, either. In fact, the possibility of her losing her life is three times higher than the national average .

About 800 women die every day in childbirth around the world. 500 of these tragedies take place in countries that are embroiled in armed conflicts. Most of these deaths could be avoided with access to adequate healthcare. Meanwhile, a woman with a disability is 10 times more likely to suffer sexist violence than a woman without one, while attacks against LGBTQ+ women are also much more frequent.

Climate crisis and conflicts

Maternal mortality is, according to the UNFPA, a reflection of the “disparity” that exists between and within territories. In recent decades, in global terms, far fewer women die during pregnancy or childbirth, although the figure has stagnated since 2016 and is worsening in “an alarming number of countries.”

“Mothers die because we haven’t prioritized their reproductive rights, even though at the Cairo conference 30 years ago, it was [understood] that they didn’t have to die in childbirth,” Kanen added during her press conference. For example, according to the UNFPA, an African-American woman is more likely to suffer obstetric abuse than a white woman. And, in Madagascar, the richest women are five times more likely to be assisted during childbirth than poor women. Among the rights to be achieved, Kanen recalled that one in four women in the world still cannot say “no” to having sex with her partner and one in 10 cannot choose the contraceptive methods she wishes to use.

The situation is even more dire in conflicts and in contexts of climate catastrophes , which are becoming more frequent because of global warming. “These are situations that leave women without healthcare,” Kenan lamented. “Whenever there are hurricanes or floods, for example, women and children are — without exception — the most disadvantaged.” The executive director of UNFPA emphasized that it’s the responsibility of the international community to ensure that, in a crisis, women can give birth safely and be protected from sexual violence. “The vulnerability of women in conflict is enormous: attacks against them are increasing.” And, at the same time, she denounced that “health workers and healthcare centers have become targets of war.”

“Women are being attacked in much of the world,” agreed Tlaleng Mofokeng — one of the authors of the report — during the meeting with journalists. “There are systems that seek to take away their rights or limit their participation in activism,” the researcher added. She advocates for “making the invisible visible” to continue putting the defense of women at the center of development.

According to the UNFPA, greater investment is the solution to bolstering women’s rights. “These investments would also generate significant economic benefits,” Kanen explained. For example, spending $79 billion on family planning and maternal health at the global level would save “one million women” from dying in childbirth by 2050. This, in turn, would mean economic benefits worth about $660 billion.

Ending sexist violence — which the U.N. estimates costs the world economy 5% of overall GDP — “would result in immediate and long-term benefits for individual productivity and earning potential with impacts cascading across generations,” the report adds. Furthermore, Kanen pointed out, “promoting gender equality in the public, private and social sectors” would add about “$12 trillion” to global GDP.

Translated by Avik Jain Chatlani.

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Background Essay: Women in the Political World Today

Directions:

Keep these discussion questions in mind as you read the background essay, making marginal notes as desired. Respond to the reflection and analysis questions at the end of the essay.

Discussion Questions

• Skim the quotes shown in Appendix B: Timeline and Quotes and select for discussion a few that most powerfully express the pathway toward legal equality for women.
• Regarding the principle of equality, have we achieved the promise of the Declaration of Independence? Are we there yet?

Before and after they won the right to vote, women have played an active role in American politics and public life. In the 1920s, the newly enfranchised women did not agree how to take the next steps towards legal equality. From the beginning of American history to the present, women of all backgrounds and political persuasions have exercised their First Amendment rights, voicing concerns that reflect their understandings of what constitutes the best way of life for a free people.

What historians call First Wave Feminism encompassed the period from the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention to 1920 when the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment guaranteed the right of American women to vote. The focus during this period was on removing legal barriers to women’s participation in political life. Even before the Nineteenth Amendment had been ratified, NAWSA President Carrie Chapman Catt founded the League of Women Voters, whose initial purpose was to provide non-partisan education for women’s new civic responsibility of voting. Just as they had advocated several different approaches to win the vote, the newly enfranchised women did not all agree on the next steps they should take in pursuit of full legal equality. State laws limiting women’s property rights, opportunity to serve on juries, education and job prospects, and other roles in society continued to be barriers to women’s civil, economic, and social goals.

Equal Rights Amendment Proposed 1923

The National Woman’s Party advocated an equal rights amendment to the Constitution, requiring that men and women would be treated exactly the same under all U.S. laws. In 1923, Alice Paul proposed an amendment stating, “Men and women shall have equal rights throughout the United States and every place subject to its jurisdiction.” The amendment had many prominent supporters among professional women.

But many others did not support this idea. In particular, many “labor feminists” disagreed, arguing for “specific bills for specific ills.” In other words, these women argued that not all laws that treated men and women differently were bad. Discriminatory laws that hurt women should be repealed, of course, but they believed others, such as laws aimed at protecting women from especially long work hours, or laws requiring maternity leave should remain. About fifty years later, another equal rights amendment proposal would again fail to gain sufficient traction and fall in defeat.

As large numbers of women entered the work force during World War II, some in Congress spoke up to ensure equal pay for equal work. Republican Representative Winifred C. Stanley proposed a bill banning wage discrimination based on sex in 1942, but the bill failed. The 1944 Republican Party platform included support for an equal rights amendment.

By the end of World War II, a generation had passed since the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment. Many women of child-bearing age who worked outside the home during the war returned home, but others remained in the workforce. According to Department of Labor statistics, the labor force participation rate of women ages 16 – 24 declined slightly and leveled off through the 1950s, but labor force participation rates of women older than that have continued to rise throughout the succeeding decades.

Photograph of President Kennedy and former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, 1962. National Archives and Records Administration.

The President’s Commission on the Status of Women 1963

Just as the suffrage movement had gained strength alongside other social and legal reforms, the women’s movement of the 1960s developed alongside a Civil Rights Movement. In 1961, President John F. Kennedy issued Executive Order 10925 directing federal contractors to “take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed and that employees are treated during employment without regard to their race, creed, color, or national origin.” This gave rise to what came to be called “affirmative action,” or taking steps to ensure greater numbers of minorities (and, later, women) were provided opportunities and access to various settings like college and the workplace.

President Kennedy was concerned about protecting equal rights for women. However, the proposed equal rights amendment stirred up fears of threats to women’s traditional roles among some conservatives across the country, and he needed to walk carefully in order to avoid angering those tradition-minded Democrats. Kennedy’s solution was the President’s Commission on the Status of Women, whose goal was to make recommendations for, “services which will enable women to continue their role as wives and mothers while making a maximum contribution to the world around them.”

Run by Esther Peterson, Assistant Secretary of Labor, and chaired by former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, the committee of 20 lawmakers and philanthropists examined employment practices, labor laws, tax regulations, and other factors that they believed contributed to inequality. The commission issued its report in 1963, calling for a number of reforms including:

• Equality of jury service
• Reform of property and family laws that disadvantaged women
• State laws guaranteeing equal pay for equal work
• Tax deductions for child care for working parents
• Expansion of widow’s benefits under Social Security
• Expanded adult education
• Taxpayer-funded maternity leave
• Taxpayer-funded universal day-care

One immediate response to the commission report was that Congress passed the Equal Pay Act (1963), prohibiting wage discrimination based on gender within the same jobs. The commission also likely heightened the sense among Americans that the national government should play an active role in promoting women’s equality.

Eleanor Roosevelt and others at the opening of Midway Hall, one of two residence halls built for female African American government employees, 1943. National Archives and Records Administration.

The Feminine Mystique and Second Wave Feminism

The express goal of the president’s commission had been to safeguard the important role of wives and mothers in the home, while expanding their opportunity to pursue additional roles and responsibilities in society. As did most of the earlier advocates for women’s equality, the commission valued the work of homemakers and wished to protect mothers’ vital role in the family. A new, “second wave” of feminism was about to gain strength and it challenged the assumption that this was necessarily the most vital role of women.

The same year that the commission released its report, Betty Friedan published The Feminine Mystique, a critique of the middle-class nuclear family structure. Friedan pointed to what she called “the problem that has no name,” or the pervasive, below-the-surface dissatisfaction of middle-class housewives that she herself had experienced. Friedan argued these homemakers whose husbands provided a comfortable living for their families had been lulled into a false consciousness, believing themselves happy when they were actually bored and unfulfilled. This delusion was the “mystique.” If Friedan believed there was a cultural “myth” of a happy housewife, she created a new, competing narrative alongside it of frustrated wives held captive in what she called “a comfortable concentration camp.” While not every woman agreed that housewives were being fooled into believing themselves happy, this landmark book drew many white, middle-class women to what was called Second Wave Feminism

Second Wave Feminists rejected the idea that gender roles or morality flowed out of natural law. They believed gender roles were purely social constructs, and that morality, especially as it related to sexual conduct, was subjective. In their view, it was generally the consent or lack of consent between adults that made an act right or wrong.

Second Wave Feminists went beyond the legal equality as defined by earlier reformers to advocate also for measures intended to bring about equality of outcome. Groups such as the National Organization for Women, which Friedan helped found, lobbied for taxpayerfunded day care, no-fault divorce, legalized abortion (including taxpayer-funded abortions through Medicaid), and other reforms.

Photograph of Betty Friedan, 1960. Library of Congress.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965

The momentum for civil rights and women’s rights would converge again a year later. President Kennedy had asked Congress to pass legislation “giving all Americans the right to be served in facilities which are open to the public—hotels, restaurants, theaters, retail stores, and similar establishments.” Congress began claiming authority under the Interstate Commerce Clause to regulate private businesses, reasoning that discriminatory practices by “public accommodations” such as restaurants and hotels affected citizens’ abilities to travel between states.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibited racial segregation in private businesses that served the public, and banned discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex and national origin. It also banned discrimination in places receiving federal funds such as public universities.

Congress passed the Voting Rights Act the next year banning racial discrimination in voting. This federal law helped protect the rights of African American men and women in places where legal barriers such as literacy tests had been erected to prevent them from voting.

The Story Continues

Social scientists debate the effects of the cultural changes brought about by Second Wave Feminism. Many point to the numerous objective measures showing women today enjoy greater autonomy than at any time in U.S. history, and perhaps that of the world: high standards of living, educational attainment, and broad career choices. Yet, the National Bureau of Economic Research found in 2009 that subjective assessments of happiness were not keeping up:

“ By many objective measures, the lives of women in the United States have improved over the past 35 years, yet we show that measures of subjective well-being indicate that women’s happiness has declined both absolutely and relative to men. [Women] in the 1970s typically reported higher subjective well-being than did men.”

Second Wave Feminism was followed in the 1990s by Third Wave Feminism, which focused on layers of oppression caused by interactions between gender, race and class. And as has happened with all social movements fought in the name of women, many women rejected the movement and held more conservative views.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, 2009. Department of State.

What effect has women’s suffrage had on politics?

It should be noted that, just as there are class, ethnic, and racial divisions among males, as well as other specific issue positions that influence an individual’s political choices, the same divisions exist among women. Women do not generally vote as a block. However, given that important caution, there are some identifiable differences between the voting trends of women compared to those of men. The Center for the American Woman and Politics (CAWP) at Rutgers

University tracks those trends. Beginning in the 1920s, women were a little more likely than men to favor the Republican Party, but that trend began to reverse by 1980, and women since then have continued to be more likely to favor the Democratic Party. In presidential elections since that time, women have preferred the Democratic candidate over other parties by four to ten percentage points. Since 1980, women’s turnout rate has been a little higher than that of men. Further, women are more likely than men to favor a more active role for the federal government in expanding health care and basic social services, to advocate restrictions on guns, to support same-sex marriage, and to favor legal abortion without restrictions.

In addition to making their mark as voters, women have gradually made their mark as successful candidates. In 1916, the first female member of Congress, Jeannette Rankin, won her bid to represent her district in Montana. In 1968, Shirley Chisholm of New York became the first African American congresswoman (though it should be noted that she did not want to be remembered by that description, but as a person who “had guts.”) According to CAWP data, in 1971 women made up three percent of people elected to U.S. Congress, seven percent of statewide elective offices, and 0 in state legislatures. In 2016, Democrat Hillary Clinton became the first female presidential candidate of a major party. In November 2018, women comprised 20% in U.S. Congress, 23.4 % in statewide elective offices, and 25.5 % in state legislatures. In the November 6 midterm elections, voter turnout across the nation was the highest in any midterm election in 100 years, with 50.1% of the voting-eligible population casting their ballots. As of January 2019, a record 121 women serve in the 116th United States Congress, 102 years after Jeannette Rankin was elected. Following the midterm election, women comprised 23.6 % in U.S. Congress, 27.6 % in statewide elective offices, 28.6 % in state legislatures.

Horace Greeley wrote in 1848, “When a sincere republican is asked to say in sober earnest what adequate reason he can give, for refusing the demand of women to an equal participation with men in political rights, he must answer, none at all. However unwise and mistaken the demand, it is but the assertion of a natural right, and such must be conceded.” Frederick Douglass in 1869 asked Susan B. Anthony whether she believed granting women the vote would truly do anything to change the inequality under the law between the sexes. She replied, “It will change the nature of one thing very much, and that is the dependent condition of woman. It will place her where she can earn her own bread, so that she may go out into the world an equal competitor in the struggle for life.” The political environment has changed considerably since the early days of women’s struggle for suffrage and equality. The participation of women in the public sphere has helped make the American republic more representative, and has removed many of the restrictions that formerly stood between individuals and the enjoyment of their natural rights.

Women of all backgrounds and political persuasions act on their understandings of what constitutes the best way of life for a free people, and suffrage is one of many important ways that they participate in public life. The principle of freedom of speech, press, and assembly, enshrined in the First Amendment, ensures the legal right to express one’s opinions freely, orally or in writing, alone or through peaceable assembly, no matter how offensive their point of view may seem to others. These First Amendment guarantees have been and will continue to be integral to the efforts of those seeking social and legal reforms in America.

REFLECTION AND ANALYSIS QUESTIONS

• What action did Alice Paul’s National Woman’s Party advocate after women won the right to vote?
• What was the goal of the President’s Commission on the Status of Women?
• In the years leading up to the Commission, most women were married in their early 20s. Families had more children during this time than any other in American history (known as the Baby Boom), but they spaced their children more closely together so mothers were finished having babies at a younger age than other generations. What effect might this have had on women’s concerns at the time?
• What is Betty Friedan’s connection to Second Wave Feminism?
• Betty Friedan wrote, “The feminist revolution had to be fought because women quite simply were stopped at a state of evolution far short of their human capacity.” How does this view compare to that of early advocates for equality and suffrage such as Abigail Adams, Angelina Grimké, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, or Carrie Chapman Catt?
• In what ways did the principle of freedom of speech, press, and assembly empower Second Wave Feminists, as well as their opponents?
• Consider the “official” and “unofficial” methods of change. Direct action aimed at winning the vote had an impact, but so did opportunity to participate more fully in the workforce. How might expanding opportunities for work outside the home have reinforced – or hindered- the movement to win the vote?
• Use the Principles and Virtues Glossary as needed and give examples of ways the varying approaches to post-1920s efforts to expand rights for women reflected any three of the constitutional principles below. Further, give examples of how such reform efforts require individuals to demonstrate any three of the civic virtues listed below.

Principles : equality, republican/representative government, popular sovereignty, federalism, inalienable rights

Virtues: perseverance, contribution, moderation, resourcefulness, courage, respect, justice