Women’s rights

What are women’s rights?

Woman, Ghana

Womankind works to empower women to know and claim their rights with the aim of increasing their well-being and their status in a sustainable way.

We promote a women’s rights-based approach to development that is guided by the principles and standards set out in the main international instruments on women’s rights and that underlines the importance of women’s full and meaningful involvement in development processes.

Throughout history, women have been discriminated against and have generally enjoyed fewer political, legal, social and economic rights and opportunities than men.

Today, discrimination against women continues to be widespread and can be found in every country and region of the world. Some of the challenges women face today are new and not experienced by previous generations, such as:

• HIV/AIDS, and
• new trends in macro-economic policies that worsen women’s poverty.

But many of them, such as the pervasive problem of violence against women and girl’s lack of access to education, are not.

Over the years, women’s organisations and individual activists – many of them linked to broader movements for social and political change — have fought hard to:

• address these gaps,
• have women’s rights recognised as human rights
• have their vision of a world in which women can enjoy the same freedom and status as men realised.

Amongst other things, their activism has:

• triggered the United Nation’s efforts to formalise women’s rights and to document the situation of women in different parts of the world
• led to changes in the laws and policies of governments on everything from the environment to conflict resolution, not only on so-called ‘women’s issues’
• raised public awareness of the causes and consequences of a range of discriminatory practices against women

While conventions and declarations may seem a million miles away from the communities in which we work, our partners are making these rights real for thousands of women.

Rights frameworks give disadvantaged women the knowledge that international structures exist to protect them. They also provide levers for working with governments, judges, police and communities to create allies in working towards gender equality.

Read about key dates in the history of women’s rights And  find out what you can do to help Womankind’s work to support women’s rights.