It has been another busy month here at Equality Now, and with crucial election campaigns continuing in countries around the world, holding those seeking power to account for their promises has been demanding much of our collective attention. One area of our work that has emerged as being particularly salient this month has been that involving family law.
The laws that govern the lives of our families carry with them a profound influence that begins before we are born and continues after we die. Having grown up as the youngest of three daughters in India, where the tendency for families to place a higher value on sons than daughters has manifested historically as disproportionately high rates of female feticide (gender-selective abortion), I understand all too well the consequences of discrimination in family law.
Today, the introduction of laws preventing the use of ultrasound to discover the sex of an unborn baby has dramatically reduced the prevalence of gender-selective abortion in India. However, while laws remain that discriminate against women and girls – while there are still political, economic, and social advantages to being male – ‘son preference’ will always exist.
The lived experience of sexism is rooted in legal discrimination. The only way to address structural and systematic disadvantage is through ensuring that laws prevent discrimination and violence against women.
It was therefore with great pride that I traveled to Nairobi last month, for the launch of a new report from Equality Now on gender inequality in family laws in Africa. This landmark publication, which was produced following the launch of our Global Campaign for Equality in Family Law, identifies key trends in family law across twenty African countries.
The report reveals that gender inequality in areas of law covering marriage, divorce, custody, and property rights is being perpetuated by sex discrimination institutionalized within legal systems and customary laws across the African continent. It also showed that, while some significant legal reforms have been achieved in places, progress has generally been slow, inconsistent, and hampered by setbacks, lack of political will, and weak implementation.
These findings underscore a core truth that has emerged from so much of our work over the past 30 years: achieving legal equality begins with changing the law, but does not end there.
For example, despite the huge strides made for women by the SOAWR coalition in achieving implementation of the Maputo Protocol in Africa, child marriage still exists. Female genital mutilation still exists. Sexual violence and sexual exploitation still exists. The pervasive idea that men should be allowed to control women’s bodies means there will always be pushback against progress; there will always be governments seeking to make exceptions to the rule.
In recent months we have seen attempts being made to roll back vast swathes of hard-won legislation around the world, from efforts by anti-FGM campaigners to erase decades of progress in The Gambia through a regressive repeal bill, and the proposed reinstatement in the US by the Arizona State Senate of an 1864 law to severely restrict access to abortion; to the unprecedented emergence of hard anti-trans policy and rhetoric in the UK and Europe.
All this tells me that in our efforts to achieve gender equality, we must focus not just on legislation, but on implementation. We must summon not only the collective momentum required to change laws, but the tenacity and persistence to ensure they are upheld.
While much of this work is done by holding governments and policymakers accountable for their commitments and legal obligations, we should meanwhile not neglect the importance of also holding ourselves and each other to account for the choices and assumptions we make in our daily lives. For example, it is by not only demanding, but by using progressive policies around childcare and parental leave that we can finally move away from regressively narrow definitions of men’s roles as breadwinners and heads of household. We know that where men are socially expected to take family leave, such as in some Nordic countries, there has been a genuine and palpable shift in the normative gender structure of society.
The work of Equality Now and its partners around family law is a vital reminder that the personal really is the political. We must all remember that what happens in the home can have just as much power as what transpires in the halls of state power, and that it is only through our own actions that we can imagine and create the kind of world we want to see.
Want to learn more about the importance of legal equality for women and girls? Listen now to Equality Now’s new podcast, We Change the Rules, hosted by award-winning journalist Samira Ahmed on Apple and Spotify.