In 1995 at an NGO forum, Hillary Clinton declared that ‘women's rights are humans rights’ [1]. A mere 25 years ago the idea that women everywhere shared the same fundamental rights as men was a shocking idea. We do not have to look very far back into history to see that human rights are actually men's rights with clauses for women. If it is necessary to clarify that a right also applies to women, that is not prima facie a ‘human' right. A brief history of women’s rights in the UK [2]:
1922: the Law of Property Act allowed both husband and wife to inherit property equally.
1928: women receive the same voting rights as men.
1929: women become ‘persons’ in their own right.
1964: the Married Women’s Property Act entitles a woman to keep half of any savings she has made from the allowance she is given by her husband (most of your parents were born by this time).
1980: women can apply for a loan or credit in their own names.
1994: rape within marriage is made a crime.
2004: the Domestic Violence, Crime and Victims Act makes common assault an arrestable offence.
2016: male graduates continue to earn more (£24 – 27k) than female graduates (£21 – £24k) even when compared to women who did the same subject, went to a similar university and went into the same industry. The pay gap now stands at 13.9% for full-time work. At the current rate of progress, it will take 50 years to close the gender pay gap. Occupational segregation remains common– for example, women constitute 77% of secretaries but only 13% of QCs [3].
2018: under equal pay legislation, employers with more than 250 staff are required to report salary figures for men and women to promote equal pay.
It will not be until 2028 that we can truly celebrate 100 years since women got the same right to vote as men. In those 100 years we have seen leaps of positive change for women. Until there is true equality amongst the sexes, women’s rights cannot be considered human rights. Human rights are the basic rights we have as human beings from gestation to death. If there is a distinction needed to clarify when you are talking about women, then the assumption must be that women are not fully included in human rights and thus not fully human.
Hillary Clinton, ‘Women’s Rights are Human Rights’ (Speech at Fourth World Conference on Women by the United Nations Development Programme, Beijing, 5 September 1995) <https://www.un.org/esa/gopher-data/conf/fwcw/conf/gov/950905175653.txt> accessed 1 December 2020
Mark Molloy, 'How Far Have Women’s Rights Advanced in a Century?' (The Telegraph, 2020) <https://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/life/far-have-womens-rights-advanced-century/> accessed 14 October 2020.
Fawcett Society, 'Equality – It’s About Time: Timeline Of Women’s Rights 1866-2016' (Fawcett Society, 2020) <https://www.fawcettsociety.org.uk/equality-its-about-time-timeline-of-womens-rights-1866-2016> accessed 14 October 2020.
