International Women’s Day is celebrated every year on 8th March. It is a day when women, the UN and the world at large celebrate all women for their achievements and their role as agents of change to advance gender equality.
“Rights. Justice. Action. For ALL Women and Girls,” the theme for this year’s International Women’s Day, emphasises the urgent need to address entrenched inequalities and accelerate progress toward gender justice. This global call to action highlights the enduring legal gaps, discriminatory systems, and persistent forms of violence that continue to hamper women’s and girls’ rights.
Women still enjoy only 64 per cent of the legal rights of men worldwide. This includes all areas of life, such as business, family, mobility, money, property, safety, work and retirement. If progress continues at its current pace, it will take 286 years to close access to justice gaps for women and girls in legal protection, economic participation and bodily autonomy. Structural and institutional barriers, including harmful social norms and discriminatory laws, have been the main obstacles to women’s and girls’ equal access to justice historically and today.
Laws and practices that discriminate against women and girls have allowed for child marriage and female genital mutilation. Women are disproportionately affected by various forms of gender-based violence, including sexual violence, and often lack adequate legal protection and support services and, in times of conflict, weakened judicial institutions, displacement and insecurity have further decreased victims’ access to justice.
Poverty, lack of access to education, limited resources and the unavailability of legal aid have prevented women from seeking legal redress and asserting their rights. Gender stereotypes, social and cultural norms, as well as multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination have hampered access to justice for women and girls belonging to ethnic, racial, indigenous or minority group, because of their colour, caste, language, religion or belief, political opinion, marital status, maternity, parental status, age, urban or rural location, health status, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, and sex characteristics and illiteracy, among others.
For women and girls of African descent, these barriers are often rooted in the legacies of enslavement and colonialism, alongside sexism, patriarchy, misogyny, xenophobia, ableism and other systems of oppression. Equal justice for women and girls means that their rights are protected and defended and laws enforced, for everyone. To achieve this, countries must reform their justice systems, align them with international human rights norms and principles and take steps to guarantee equal access to justice.
This can be done by protecting access to education for girls and ending child marriage and forced marriage; enabling women to choose to work, participate, and lead in society, including in political and justice systems; ending gender-based violence in all its forms and having justice systems that are free of bias, centred on survivors, and backed by zero tolerance for abuse and impunity; dismantling systemic racism for women and girls of African descent, including through a gender – transformative approach to reparatory justice for legacies of enslavement and colonialism; upholding gender equality, including by taking steps towards the full realisation of women’s economic, social and cultural rights; supporting survivors of gender-based violence, including in conflict affected areas; and collecting disaggregated data on women and girls, and additionally by other factors, including race or ethnic origin, to capture the full spectrum of experiences of women and girls in all their diversity.
