Women's rights

The term women's rights refers to the putative freedoms and entitlements of women and girls of all ages. These rights may or may not be institutionalized, ignored or suppressed by law, local custom, and behavior in a particular society. These liberties are grouped together and differentiated from broader notions of human rights because they often differ from the freedoms inherently possessed by or recognized for men and boys, and because activists for this issue claim an inherent historical and traditional bias against the exercise of rights by women and girls.^[1]

Issues commonly associated with notions of women's rights include, though are not limited to, the right: to bodily integrity and autonomy; to vote (suffrage); to hold public office; to work; to fair wages or equal pay; to own property; to education; to serve in the military or be conscripted; to enter into legal contracts; and to have marital, parental and religious rights.^[2] Women and their supporters have campaigned and in some places continue to campaign for the same rights as men.^[2]

History

According to Dr. Jamal A. Badawin "the status which women reached during the present era was not achieved due to the kindness of men or due to natural progress. It was rather achieved through a long struggle and sacrifice on woman's part and only when society needed her contribution and work, more especially during the two world wars, and due to the escalation of technological change."^[3]

Ancient civilisations

In ancient India, women are believed to have enjoyed equal status with men in all fields of life.^[4] Ancient Hindu scriptures describe a good wife as follows: "a woman whose mind, speech and body are kept in subjection; who acquires high renown in this world, and, in the next, the same abode with her husband."

In Ancient Egypt, women and men were viewed as "essentially equal under the law", see the article's Social status section for the details. Also, Egyptian women enjoyed a financial equality that many women today have not yet regained, as follows:^[5] Women were paid the same pay as men, for the same job, according to the records of accounts and contracts which survive. Women could also own property, buy and sell it, choose who would inherit it, and could make wills. Women's relative freedom - compared with most countries - so shocked Herodotus, for example, that he believed the Egyptians "have reversed the ordinary practices of mankind." This and other gender equality information, including about women pharoahs such as Cleopatra, is available online in a BBC History article.^[5]

In ancient Athens women were always minors and subject to a male, such as their father, brother or some other male kin. A woman's consent in marriage was not generally thought to be necessary and a woman was obliged to submit to the wishes of her parents or husband.

Ancient Rome subjected all legitimate children, regardless of age or sex, to the authority of their Pater Familias while he lived, and they would only acquire any legal independence when he died. The Pater Familias could grant any of his children or slaves a Peculium, but that belonged to him and they were merely allowed to use it. All transactions made by a child in power regardless of age or sex had to be directly approved of by their Pater Familias. All children inherited equally from their Pater Familias regardless of age or sex; by the Imperial Period of Roman history even bastards were included as intestate heirs. Early in the Republic women were subject to Manus Marriage, but the custom died out by the Late Republic in favor of marriage without Manus which did not grant the husband any rights over his wife. When married without Manus a woman was not only free of her husband's legal authority, but could divorce him as she pleased without any reason required. Women in Ancient Rome when no longer under the control of their Pater Familias could and did contract, work for wages (usually without many other options), own property, and perform some (but not all) legal functions.

Islamic marriage contract

Early reforms under Islam

Efforts to improve the status of women in Islam occurred during the early reforms under Islam between 610 and 661, when Arab women were given greater rights in marriage, divorce and inheritance.^[6] In 622 the Constitution of Medina was drafted by the Islamic prophet Muhammad, outlining many of Muhammad's early reforms under Islam, including an improved legal status for women in Islam, who were generally given greater rights than women in pre-Islamic Arabia^[6][7] and medieval Europe.^[8] Women were not accorded with such legal status in other cultures until centuries later.^[9] Indeed according to Professor William Montgomery Watt, when seen in such historical context, Muhammad "can be seen as a figure who testified on behalf of women’s rights."^[10]

The general improvement of the status of Arab women included prohibition of female infanticide and recognizing women's full personhood.^[11] "The dowry, previously regarded as a bride-price paid to the father, became a nuptial gift retained by the wife as part of her personal property."^[6][7] Under Islamic law, marriage was no longer viewed as a "status" but rather as a "contract", in which the woman's consent was imperative.^[6][7][11] "Women were given inheritance rights in a patriarchal society that had previously restricted inheritance to male relatives."^[6] Annemarie Schimmel states that "compared to the pre-Islamic position of women, Islamic legislation meant an enormous progress; the woman has the right, at least according to the letter of the law, to administer the wealth she has brought into the family or has earned by her own work."^[12]

The Middle Ages

According to English Common Law, which developed from the 12th Century onward, all property which a wife held at the time of a marriage became a possession of her husband. Eventually English courts forbade a husband's transferring property without the consent of his wife, but he still retained the right to manage it and to receive the money which it produced.^[3] "French married women suffered from restrictions on their legal capacity which were removed only in 1965."^[13] In the 16th century, the Reformation in Europe allowed more women to add their voices, including the English writers Jane Anger, Aemilia Lanyer, and the prophetess Anna Trapnell. Despite relatively greater freedom for Anglo-Saxon women, until the mid-nineteenth century, writers largely assumed that a patriarchal order was a natural order that had always existed.^[14] This perception was not seriously challenged until the eighteenth century when Jesuit missionaries found matrilineality in native North American peoples.^[15]

The Enlightenment

The Debutante (1807) by Henry Fuseli; The woman, victim of male social conventions, is tied to the wall, made to sew and guarded by governesses. The picture reflects Mary Wollstonecraft's views in A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, published in 1792.^[16]

In the late 18th Century the question of women's rights became central to political debates in both France and Britain. At the time some of the greatest thinkers of the Enlightenment, who defended democratic principles of equality and challenged notions that a privileged few should rule over the vast majority of the population, believed that these principles should be applied only to their own gender and their own race. The philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau for example thought that it was the order of nature for woman to obey men. He wrote "Women do wrong to complain of the inequality of man-made laws" and claimed that "when she tries to usurp our rights, she is our inferior".^[17]

First page of the Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen

In 1791 the French playwright and political activist Olympe de Gouges published the Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen,^[18] modelled on the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen of 1789. The Declaration is ironic in formulation and exposes the failure of the French Revolution, which had been devoted to equality. It states that: “This revolution will only take effect when all women become fully aware of their deplorable condition, and of the rights they have lost in society”. The Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen follows the seventeen articles of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen point for point and has been described by Camille Naish as “almost a parody... of the original document”. The first article of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen proclaims that “Men are born and remain free and equal in rights. Social distinctions may be based only on common utility.” The first article of Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen replied: “Woman is born free and remains equal to man in rights. Social distinctions may only be based on common utility”. De Gouges expands the sixth article of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, which declared the rights of citizens to take part in the formation of law, to:

Australian women's rights were lampooned in this 1887 Melbourne Punch cartoon: A hypothetical female member foists her baby's care on the House Speaker

“All citizens including women are equally admissible to all public dignities, offices and employments, according to their capacity, and with no other distinction than that of their virtues and talents”.

De Gouges also draws attention to the fact that under French law women were fully punishable, yet denied equal rights.^[19]

Mary Wollstonecraft, a British writer and philosopher, published A Vindication of the Rights of Woman in 1792, arguing that it was the education and upbringing of women that created limited expectations.^[20][21] Wollstonecraft attacked gender oppression, pressing for equal educational opportunities, and demanded "justice!" and "rights to humanity" for all.^[22]

The 19th Century

In his 1869 essay The Subjection of Women the English philosopher and political theorist John Stuart Mill described the situation for women in Britain as follows:

"We are continually told that civilization and Christianity have restored to the woman her just rights. Meanwhile the wife is the actual bondservant of her husband; no less so, as far as the legal obligation goes, than slaves commonly so called."^[3]

During the 1800s women in the United States and Britain began to challenge laws that denied them the right to their property once they married. Under the common law doctrine of coverture husbands gained control of their wives' real estate and wages. Beginning in the 1840s, state legislatures in the United States^[23] and the British Parliament^[24] began passing statutes that protected women's property from their husbands and their husbands' creditors. These laws were known as the Married Women's Property Acts.^[25] Courts in the nineteenth-century United States also continued to require privy examinations of married women who sold their property. A privy examination was a practice in which a married woman who wished to sell her property had to be separately examined by a judge or justice of the peace outside of the presence of her husband and asked if her husband was pressuring her into signing the document.^[26]

Suffrage, the right to vote

Women standing in line to vote in Bangladesh.

Emmeline Pankhurst, a prominent English political activist and leader of the British suffragette movement

During the 19th Century women began to agitate for the right to vote and participate in government and law making.^[27] The ideals of women's suffrage developed alongside that of universal suffrage and today women's suffrage is considered a right (under the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women). During the 19th Century the right to vote was gradually extended in many countries and women started to campaign for their right to vote. In 1893 New Zealand became the first country to give women the right to vote on a national level. Australia gave women the right to vote in 1902, while the USA, Britain and Canada gave women the vote after the First World War.^[28] Sweden would also be a contestant as the first independent nation to grant women the right to vote. Conditional female suffrage was granted in Sweden during the age of liberty (1718–1771)^[29]

In Britain women's suffrage gained attention when John Stuart Mill called for the inclusion of women's suffrage in the Reform Act of 1867 in a petition that he presented to Parliament.^[28] Initially only one of several women’s rights campaign, suffrage became the primary cause of the British women’s movement at the beginning of the 20th Century.^[30] At the time the ability to vote was restricted to wealthy property owners within British jurisdictions. This arrangement implicitly excluded women as property law and marriage law gave men ownership rights at marriage or inheritance until the 19th century. Although male suffrage broadened during the century, women were explicitly prohibited from voting nationally and locally in the 1830s by a Reform Act and the Municipal Corporations Act.^[31] Throughout the 19th century women had organised through various groups until, by 1903, the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies and the Women's Social and Political Union had emerged. Leaders in the struggle were Millicent Fawcett and Emmeline Pankhurst with her daughter Christabel. In 1918 the British Parliament passed a bill allowing women over the age of 30 to vote, and the voting age for women was lowered to 21 in 1928.^[31]

The Seneca Falls Convention of 1848 formulated the demand for women's suffrage in the United States of America and after the American Civil War (1861–1865) agitation for the cause became more prominent. In 1869 the proposed Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which gave the vote to black men, caused controversy as women's suffrage campaigners such as Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton refused to endorse the amendment, as it did not give the vote to women. Others, such as Lucy Stone and Julia Ward Howe however argued that black men were enfranchised, women would achieve their goal. The conflict caused two organisations to emerge, the National Woman Suffrage Association, which campaigned for women's suffrage at a federal level as well as for married women to be given property rights, and the American Woman Suffrage Association, which aimed to secure women's suffrage through state legislation. In 1920 the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution gave women the right to vote.^[28]

Soviet poster celebrates women's right to vote and to be elected.

Nordic countries gave women the right to vote in the early 20th Century – Finland (1906), Norway (1913), Denmark and Iceland (1915). With the end of the First World War many other countries followed – the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the Netherlands (1917), Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland and Sweden (1918), Germany and Lunenburg (1919). Spain gave women the right to vote in 1931, France in 1944, Belgium, Italy, Romania and Yugoslavia in 1946. Switzerland gave women the right to vote in 1971, and Liechtenstein in 1984.^[28]

In Canada women's suffrage was achieved first on a provincial level in Alberta, Manitoba and Saskatchewan on 1916, with federal suffrage being granted in 1918. In Latin America some countries gave women the right to vote in the first half of the 20th Century – Ecuador (1929), Brazil (1932), El Salvador (1939), Dominican Republic (1942), Guatemala (1956) and Argentina (1946). In India, under colonial rule, universal suffrage was granted in 1935. Other Asian countries gave women the right to vote in mid of the Century – Japan (1945), China (1947) and Indonesia (1955). In Africa women generally got the right to vote along with men through universal suffrage – Liberia (1947), Uganda (1958) and Nigeria (1960). In many countries in the Middle East universal suffrage was acquired after the Second World War, although in others, such as Kuwait, suffrage is very limited.^[28] On 16 May 2005, the Parliament of Kuwait extended suffrage to women by a 35–23 vote ^[32], and women have been elected to Parliament.

Modern movement

Iraqi-American writer and activist Zainab Salbi, the founder of Women for Women International.

In the subsequent decades women's rights again became an important issue in the English speaking world. By the 1960s the movement was called "feminism" or "women's liberation." Reformers wanted the same pay as men, equal rights in law, and the freedom to plan their families or not have children at all. Their efforts were met with mixed results.^[33]

In the UK, a public groundswell of opinion in favour of legal equality had gained pace, partly through the extensive employment of women in what were traditional male roles during both world wars. By the 1960s the legislative process was being readied, tracing through MP Willie Hamilton's select committee report, his Equal Pay For Equal Work Bill, the creation of a Sex Discrimination Board, Lady Sear's draft sex anti-discrimination bill, a government Green Paper of 1973, until 1975 when the first British Sex Discrimination Act, an Equal Pay Act, and an Equal Opportunities Commission came into force.^[34][35] With encouragement from the UK government, the other countries of the EEC soon followed suit with an agreement to ensure that discrimination laws would be phased out across the European Community.

In the USA, the National Organization for Women (NOW) was created in 1966 with the purpose of bringing about equality for all women. NOW was one important group that fought for the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). This amendment stated that "equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any state on account of sex."^[36] But there was disagreement on how the proposed amendment would be understood. Supporters believed it would guarantee women equal treatment. But critics feared it might deny women the right be financially supported by their husbands. The amendment died in 1982 because not enough states had ratified it. ERAs have been included in subsequent Congresses, but have still failed to be ratified.^[37]

In the last three decades of the 20th century, Western women knew a new freedom through birth control, which enabled women to plan their adult lives, often making way for both career and family. The movement had been started in the 1910s by US pioneering social reformer Margaret Sanger^[38] and in the UK and internationally by Marie Stopes.

Over the course of the 20th century women took on greater roles in society such as serving in government. In the United States some served as U.S. Senators and others as members of the U.S. Cabinet. Many women took advantage of opportunities in higher education. In the United States at the beginning of the 20th century less than 20% of all college degrees were earned by women. By the end of the century this figure had risen to about 50%.^[39]

Progress was made in professional opportunities. Fields such as medicine, law, and science opened to include more women. At the beginning of the 20th century about 5% of the doctors in the United States were women. As of 2006, over 38% of all doctors in the United States were women, and today, women make almost 50% of the medical student population. While the numbers of women in these fields increased, many women still continued to hold clerical, factory, retail, or service jobs. For example, they worked as office assistants, on assembly lines, or as cooks.^[39][40]

The United Nations and women's rights

In 1946 the United Nations established a Commission on the Status of Women.^[41][42] Originally as the Section on the Status of Women, Human Rights Division, Department of Social Affairs, and now part of the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC). Since 1975 the UN has held a series of world conferences on women's issues, starting with the World Conference of the International Women's Year in Mexico City. These conferences created an international forum for women's rights, but also illustrated divisions between women of different cultures and the difficulties of attempting to apply principles universally^[43]

Four World Conferences have been held, the first in Mexico City (International Women's Year, 1975), the second in Copenhagen (1980) and the third in Nairobi (1985). At the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing (1995), The Platform for Action was signed. This included a commitment to achieve "gender equality and the empowerment of women".^[44][45]

International and regional law

Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women

Participation in the CEDAW

Signed and ratified     Acceded or succeeded     Unrecognized state, abiding by treaty

Only signed     Non-signatory

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted in 1948, enshrines "the equal rights of men and women", and addressed both the equality and equity issues.^[46] In 1979 the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). Described as an international bill of rights for women, it came into force on 3 September 1981. The seven UN member states that have not signed the convention are Iran, Nauru, Palau, Somalia, Sudan, Tonga, and the United States. Niue and the Vatican City have also not ratified it. The United States has signed, but not yet ratified.^[47]

The Convention defines discrimination against women in the following terms:

Any distinction, exclusion or restriction made on the basis of sex which has the effect or purpose of impairing or nullifying the recognition, enjoyment or exercise by women, irrespective of their marital status, on a basis of equality of men and women, of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural, civil or any other field.

It also establishes an agenda of action for putting an end to sex-based discrimination for which states ratifying the Convention are required to enshrine gender equality into their domestic legislation, repeal all discriminatory provisions in their laws, and enact new provisions to guard against discrimination against women. They must also establish tribunals and public institutions to guarantee women effective protection against discrimination, and take steps to eliminate all forms of discrimination practiced against women by individuals, organizations, and enterprises.

Maputo Protocol

The Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa, better known as the Maputo Protocol, was adopted by the African Union on 11 July 2003 at its second summit in Maputo^[48], Mozambique. On 25 November 2005, having been ratified by the required 15 member nations of the African Union, the protocol entered into force.^[49] The protocol guarantees comprehensive rights to women including the right to take part in the political process, to social and political equality with men, and to control of their reproductive health, and an end to female genital mutilation^[50]

Reproductive rights

Reproductive rights are rights relating to sexual reproduction and reproductive health.^[51] "Reproductive rights" are not recognised in international human rights law and is used as an umbrella term that may include some or all of the following rights: the right to legal or safe abortion, the right to control one's reproductive functions, the right to access quality reproductive healthcare, and the right to education and access in order to make reproductive choices free from coercion, discrimination, and violence.^[52] Reproductive rights may also be understood to include education about contraception and sexually transmitted infections, and freedom from coerced sterilization and contraception, protection from gender-based practices such as female genital cutting, or FGC, and male genital mutilation, or MGM.^{[51][52][53][54]}

Reproductive rights are understood as rights of both men and women, but are most frequently advanced as women's rights. The United Nations Population Fund (UNPF) and the World Health Organization (WHO) advocate for reproductive rights with a primary emphasis on women's rights. The idea of these rights were first discussed as a subset of human rights at the United Nation's 1968 International Conference on Human Rights. The sixteenth article of the Proclamation of Teheran recognises reproductive rights as a subset of human rights and states, "Parents have a basic human right to determine freely and responsibly the number and the spacing of their children."^[53]

Abortion

Women's access to legal abortions is restricted by law in most countries in the world.^[55] Even where abortion is permitted by law, women may only have limited access to safe abortion services. Only a small number of countries prohibit abortion in all cases. In most countries and jurisdictions, abortion is allowed to save the pregnant woman's life, or where the pregnancy is the result of rape or incest.^[56]

Human Rights Watch considers abortion within the context of human rights, arguing:

"Abortion is a highly emotional subject and one that excites deeply held opinions. However, equitable access to safe abortion services is first and foremost a human right. Where abortion is safe and legal, no one is forced to have one. Where abortion is illegal and unsafe, women are forced to carry unwanted pregnancies to term or suffer serious health consequences and even death. Approximately 13% of maternal deaths worldwide are attributable to unsafe abortion—between 68,000 and 78,000 deaths annually."^[56]

Furthermore, they argue that "...international human rights legal instruments and authoritative interpretations of those instruments compel the conclusion that women have a right to decide independently in all matters related to reproduction, including the issue of abortion."^[56] Human Rights Watch argues that "the denial of a pregnant woman's right to make an independent decision regarding abortion violates or poses a threat to a wide range of human rights." Basing its analysis on the authoritative interpretations of international human rights instruments by UN expert bodies Human Rights Watch states that where women's access to safe and legal abortion services are restricted, the following human rights may be at risk: the right to life, the right to health (or health care), right to freedom from discrimination, right to security of person, the right to liberty, the right to privacy, the right to information, the right to be free from cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment , the right to decide the number and spacing of children (reproductive rights), the right to freedom of thought, and the right to freedom of religion.^[57][58]

Other groups however, such as the Catholic Church, the Christian right and most Orthodox Jews, regard abortion not as a right but as a 'moral evil'.^[59]

Rape and sexual violence

A young ethnic Chinese woman who was in one of the Imperial Japanese Army's "comfort battalions" is interviewed by an Allied officer (see Comfort Women).

Rape, sometimes called sexual assault, is an assault by a person involving sexual intercourse with or sexual penetration of another person without that person's consent. Rape is generally considered a serious sex crime as well as a civil assault. When part of a widespread and systematic practice rape and sexual slavery are now recognised as crime against humanity and war crime. Rape is also now recognised as an element of the crime of genocide when committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a targeted group.

Rape as an element of the crime of genocide

In 1998, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda established by the United Nations made landmark decisions that rape is a crime of genocide under international law. The trial of Jean-Paul Akayesu, the mayor of Taba Commune in Rwanda, established precedents that rape is an element of the crime of genocide. The Akayesu judgement includes the first interpretation and application by an international court of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. The Trial Chamber held that rape, which it defined as "a physical invasion of a sexual nature committed on a person under circumstances which are coercive", and sexual assault constitute acts of genocide insofar as they were committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a targeted group, as such. It found that sexual assault formed an integral part of the process of destroying the Tutsi ethnic group and that the rape was systematic and had been perpetrated against Tutsi women only, manifesting the specific intent required for those acts to constitute genocide.^[60]

Judge Navanethem Pillay said in a statement after the verdict: “From time immemorial, rape has been regarded as spoils of war. Now it will be considered a war crime. We want to send out a strong message that rape is no longer a trophy of war.”^[61] An estimated 500,000 women were raped during the 1994 Rwandan Genocide.^[62]

Rape and sexual enslavement as crime against humanity

The Rome Statute Explanatory Memorandum, which defines the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court, recognises rape, sexual slavery, enforced prostitution, forced pregnancy, enforced sterilization, "or any other form of sexual violence of comparable gravity" as crime against humanity if the action is part of a widespread or systematic practice.^[63][64]

Rape was first recognised as crime against humanity when the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia issued arrest warrants based on the Geneva Conventions and Violations of the Laws or Customs of War. Specifically, it was recognised that Muslim women in Foca (southeastern Bosnia and Herzegovina) were subjected to systematic and widespread gang rape, torture and sexual enslavement by Bosnian Serb soldiers, policemen, and members of paramilitary groups after the takeover of the city in April 1992.^[65] The indictment was of major legal significance and was the first time that sexual assaults were investigated for the purpose of prosecution under the rubric of torture and enslavement as a crime against humanity.^[65] The indictment was confirmed by a 2001 verdict by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia that rape and sexual enslavement are crimes against humanity. This ruling challenged the widespread acceptance of rape and sexual enslavement of women as intrinsic part of war.^[66] The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia found three Bosnian Serb men guilty of rape of Bosniac (Bosnian Muslim) women and girls (some as young as 12 and 15 years of age), in Foca, eastern Bosnia-Herzegovina. Furthermore two of the men were found guilty of the crime against humanity of sexual enslavement for holding women and girls captive in a number of de facto detention centres. Many of the women subsequently disappeared.^[66]

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See also

• Female education
• Feminism in 1950s Britain
• History of feminism
• Legal rights of women in history
• List of suffragists and suffragettes
• List of women's rights activists
• Pregnant patients' rights
• Sex workers' rights
• Timeline of women's rights (other than voting)
• Women's Social and Political Union

References

External links

• UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women
• Human Rights Watch: Women's Rights
• World Organization Against Torture: No Violence Against Women
• Women's History Month by History.com
• Women's Human Rights Resources Programme

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