Women’s Rights – A Fundamental Human Right

Women and girls comprise half of the world’s population and therefore also hold a significant share of its potential. Women’s full and equal social status is a fundamental human right. It is an ethical imperative for human development, and it has the added benefit of slowing down population growth – good news for people, for the planet and for all species with which we share it.

The last seven generations have witnessed staggering changes for women in family life, religion, the workplace, and politics – all of them driven by the activism of millions of women themselves. They fought for these changes through a range of democratic tactics: meetings, petition drives, lobbying, public speaking and nonviolent resistance. Women have done all this work very deliberately, and they have succeeded enormously.

But, in many countries, the fight is not over. Today 2.4 billion women are still not afforded equal economic opportunity, and 178 countries maintain legal barriers to women’s employment. Women remain more likely to live in poverty than men, and are a major source of unpaid labor in the world’s economies. In addition, 190 million women of reproductive age worldwide have no access to effective methods of contraception.

In many places around the globe, women are more vulnerable to violent conflict and often subjected to sexual violence, including rape and other forms of sexual assault. Moreover, women and girls continue to carry out disproportionately more household and care duties, which affect their participation in education, leisure activities and the political arena. In fact, women do two and a half times as much unpaid work as men do.

But these obstacles can be overcome if there is enough will and courage to stand up for what we know is true: that all of us, women and men, deserve the same opportunities and rights. This is why the majority of people in the world’s 197 nations now say it is important that women have the same rights as men in their country.

In a global poll conducted by the World Values Network, 85% of respondents in surveyed countries support an enforceable women’s rights charter that would require governments to pass laws ensuring equal treatment for all people regardless of gender or other factors. In addition, a growing number of women’s groups are advocating that the UN’s Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) be amended to include the right to an Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), which would allow courts to enforce a wide range of gender-related legislation, such as laws that prohibit discriminatory practices like child marriage and female genital mutilation. These are all important steps to achieving a world where women have all of the same rights as men. And that is a goal we at PMC share. Until all women have equal rights, we cannot achieve the world we need or desire. And that’s something that all decent people should support. Please join us.