Edited by: James Joseph | Managing Editor for Long-Form Content

In this article for International Women’s Day,  Alexis Boddy – JURIST UK correspondent, reports on the Equality Now report which highlights the persistence of sexist laws worldwide, thirty years after the adoption of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, with significant rollback of women’s rights in some countries. Despite some progress, such as the banning of child marriage and removal of workplace discrimination in several nations, the report calls for urgent government action to repeal discriminatory laws and strengthen protections for women’s rights globally.

Global report shows sexist laws still persist.

International women’s rights organisation, Equality Now has released a report showing that sexist laws still persist worldwide. Entitled ‘‘Words & Deeds: Holding Governments Accountable in the Beijing +30 Review Process,” the report shows that women and girls are still being denied the same legal rights as men and boys. Advancements remain slow and inconsistent, with discriminatory laws, policies and practices meaning that progress is often hindered. Most concerningly, is an increased backlash against women’s rights in some countries.

The Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action

The report comes thirty years after The Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action. The Beijing Platform, which was adopted by 189 countries in 1995, is a global framework and agenda for the empowerment of women and a move towards greater gender equality. It showed the international community’s commitment to addressing the civil, political, social, economic and cultural inequalities experienced by women worldwide. It still remains a pivotal reference point for assessing progress on women’s rights.

It is reviewed every five years by the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW). Since 2000, five reviews have been conducted. After each review, signatory countries make further commitments towards fulfilling their obligations. Each review outlines priority actions for the next five years.

Equality Now’s Report

The report from Equality Now shows that, in the thirty years since the signing of the Beijing Platform, no country has achieved full legal equality. In fact, some governments are actively undermining and revoking women’s rights.

The report uses several country-specific case studies, which detail this rollback of rights.  For example, they explore the draconian restrictions in Afghanistan, where women have been excluded from participating in public life, education, work, and leisure. In Iran, women who protest against sex-discriminatory laws are subject to arrest, detention, torture and death. LGBTQ+ rights have been rolled back in Russia, Kyrgyzstan, and Georgia, with Russia banning the promotion of a child-free lifestyle.

Since the signing of the Beijing Platform, over 60 countries have liberalised their abortion laws, but the sexual and reproductive rights of women are still being undermined worldwide. In Poland in 2021, one of the few remaining grounds for abortion access (the presence of a fetal defect or incurable disease) was removed. Furthermore, the U.S Supreme Court ruled in 2022 that the Constitution did not enshrine the right to an abortion. This led to the criminalisation of abortion in 14 states.

Report co-author Antonia Kirkland said:

“Women and girls deserve full protection of their civil, political, economic, social, and cultural rights under the Beijing Platform and other international human rights commitments. This requires repealing all sex-discriminatory legislation, enshrining gender equality in constitutions, and introducing and enforcing laws that fully protect the rights of women and girls in all their diversity.”

The report also explores sex-discriminatory laws that exist around the world. For example, in Sudan and Yemen, male family members are granted authority over female relatives. In Saudi Arabia, men have a “marital right to sexual intercourse,” and the country is also one of 45 countries with different divorce rules for women and men.

Child marriage continues to be an issue worldwide. The World Bank has reported that 139 economies do not have adequate legislation to address child marriage, and at least 12 million girls are married before the age of 18 each year.

Worldwide, discriminatory laws and policies mean that women are not able to participate fully in society, meaning that they do not have equal access to employment, fair wages, property ownership, household income, and inheritance.

Some progress being made

 The report outlines that there has been some progress made by countries in the elimination sex-discriminatory laws and practices. For example, Colombia, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Sierra Leone, and Zambia have all recently introduced laws banning child marriage under 18. The government of Sierra Leone further passed a law prohibiting gender-based discrimination at work in 2023. Restrictions on women working in particular jobs have been removed in Azerbaijan, Jordan, and Oman. In Japan, a law that prohibited women (but not men) from remarrying for 100 days after a marriage had ended was removed.

However, the report states there is still work to be done, with women enjoying less than two-thirds of the legal rights that men do. The authors have called on governments to “act immediately to repeal or amend sex-discriminatory laws and close legal loopholes that enable gender-based violence.” They have also called for better international accountability and better protection against the rollback of rights.

Kirkland concludes by saying:

“Eliminating sex and gender-based discrimination in the law is a fundamental responsibility of governments. Equality Now calls on every country to urgently review and amend or repeal its sex-discriminatory laws, prevent removal of legal rights, and establish specific constitutional or legal guarantees of equality for all women and girls.”