If you defend human rights, you defend women’s’ rights. (2024)

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We are all entitled to human rights. These include the right to live free from violence and discrimination; to enjoy the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health; to be educated; to own property; to vote; and to earn an equal wage.

But across the globe many women and girls still face discrimination on the basis of sex and gender. Gender inequality underpins many problems which disproportionately affect women and girls, such as domestic and sexual violence, lower pay, lack of access to education, and inadequate healthcare.

For many years women’s rights movements have fought hard to address this inequality, campaigning to change laws or taking to the streets to demand their rights are respected. And new movements have flourished in the digital age, such as the #MeToo campaign which highlights the prevalence of gender-based violence and sexual harassment.

Through research, advocacy and campaigning, Amnesty International pressures the people in power to respect women’s rights.

On this page we look at the history of women’s rights, what women’s rights actually are, and what Amnesty is doing.

What do we mean when we talk about women’s rights? What are we fighting for? Here are just some examples of the rights which activists throughout the centuries and today have been fighting for:

Women’s Suffrage

During the 19th and early 20^thcenturies people began to agitate for theright of women to vote. In 1893 New Zealand became the first country to give women the right to vote on a national level. This movement grew to spread all around the world, and thanks to the efforts of everyone involved in this struggle, today women’s suffrage is a right under the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (1979).

However, despite these developments there are still many places around the world where it is very difficult for women to exercise this right. TakeSyriafor example, where women have been effectively cut off from political engagement, including the ongoing peace process.

In Pakistan, although voting is a constitutional right, in some areas women have been effectivelyprohibited from votingdue to powerful figures in their communities using patriarchal local customs to bar them from going to the polls.

And in Afghanistan, authorities recently decided to introducemandatory photo screeningat polling stations, making voting problematic for women in conservative areas, where most women cover their faces in public.

Amnesty International campaigns for all women to be able to effectively participate in the political process.

Sexual and Reproductive Rights

Everyone should be able to make decisions about their own body.

Every woman and girl has sexual and reproductive rights . This means they are entitled to equal access to health services like contraception and safe abortions, to choose if, when, and who they marry, and to decide if they want to have children and if so how many, when and with who.

Women should be able to live without fear of gender-based violence, including rape and other sexual violence, female genital mutilation (FGM), forced marriage, forced pregnancy, forced abortion, or forced sterilization.

But there’s a long way to go until all women can enjoy these rights.

For example, many women and girls around the world are still unable to access safe and legal abortions. In several countries, people who want or need to end pregnancies are often forced to make an impossible choice: put their lives at risk or go to jail.

InArgentina, Amnesty International has campaigned alongside grassroots human rights defenders to change the country’s strict abortion laws. There have been some major steps forward, but women and girls are still being harmed by laws which mean they cannot make choices about their own bodies.

We have also campaigned successfully inIreland and Northern Ireland, where abortion was recently decriminalized after many decades of lobbying by Amnesty and other rights groups.

InPolandalong with more than 200 human and women’s rights organisations from across the globe, Amnesty has co-signed a joint statement protesting the ‘Stop Abortion’ bill.

South Koreahas recently seen major advances in sexual and reproductive rights after many years of campaigning by Amnesty and other groups, culminating in a ruling by South Korea’s Constitutional Court that orders the government to decriminalize abortion in the country and reform the country’s highly restrictive abortion laws by the end of 2020.

In Burkina Faso, Amnesty International has supported women and girls in their fight againstforced marriage, which affects a huge number of girls especially in rural areas.

And in Sierra Leone, Amnesty International has been working with local communities as part of our Human Rights Education Programme, which focuses on a number of human rights issues, includingfemale genital mutilation.

In Zimbabwe, we found that women and girls were left vulnerable to unwanted pregnancies and a higher risk of HIV infection because of widespread confusion around sexual consent and access to sexual health services. This meant that girls would face discrimination, the risk of child marriage, economic hardship and barriers to education.

InJordanAmnesty International has urged authorities to stop colluding with an abusive male “guardianship” system which controls women’s lives and limits their personal freedoms, including detaining women accused of leaving home without permission or having sex outside marriage and subjecting them to humiliating “virginity tests”.

Freedom of Movement

Freedom of movement is the right to move around freely as we please – not just within the country we live in, but also to visit others. But many women face real challenges when it comes to this. They may not be allowed to have their own passports, or they might have to seek permission from a male guardian in order to travel.

For example, recently in Saudi Arabia there has been a successful campaign to allow women to drive, which had previously been banned for many decades. But despite this landmark gain, the authorities continue topersecute and detainmany women’s rights activists, simply for peacefully advocating for their rights.