Equality Now was founded in 1992 to work for the protection and promotion of the human rights of women around the world. Working with national human rights organizations and individual activists, Equality Now documents violence and discrimination against women and adds an international action overlay to support their efforts to advance equality rights and defend individual women who are suffering abuse. Through its Women’s Action Network, Equality Now distributes information about these human rights violations to concerned groups and individuals around the world, along with recommended actions for publicizing and protesting them. The Women’s Action Network is committed to voicing a worldwide call for justice and equality for women. Issues of urgent concern to Equality Now include rape, domestic violence, reproductive rights, trafficking of women, female genital mutilation, and equal access to economic opportunity and political participation.
In 2002 Equality Now marked its tenth anniversary—an opportunity to look back on the progress that we have made, and to look forward to the challenges that lie ahead. Much has been done over the past ten years by Equality Now and many other organizations to highlight the ongoing scourge of violence and discrimination against women. But we need to do more than highlight these human rights violations—we have to stop them. Violence against women is intertwined with sex discrimination. Until women enjoy equal rights under the law, equal access to education and economic opportunity, and equal participation in political power, we will not enjoy effective protection from the violence that destroys the lives of women. This violence sometimes takes different forms in different parts of the world, but it is fundamentally universal. The theme of Equality Now’s tenth anniversary has been The Power of the Individual. Any one person in any one place can change the world around her, or change the world around him.