Women’s Equality Day: A moment for progress and accountability on women’s rights in the US

On 26 August, we mark Women’s Equality Day – a moment to reflect on over a century of progress since the 19th Amendment granted some women in the United States the right to vote in 1920, while also recognising the vast inequalities that remain today.

This year, Women’s Equality Day carries a heightened urgency. It coincides with the United Nations Universal Periodic Review (UPR) pre-sessions, ahead of the UPR session in November. At the UPR, the US will face international scrutiny over its human rights record, including its treatment of women and girls. The pre-sessions in Geneva are an opportunity for civil society, including Equality Now, to engage directly with UN Member States on the findings of our UPR submissions and other advocacy work on the US’s human rights violations. 

At Equality Now, we see this as a rare opportunity to hold the US accountable on the global stage and demand stronger protections for women and girls everywhere.

Why Women’s Equality Day matters at this moment 

The UPR is a peer-review mechanism of the UN Human Rights Council that examines every Member State’s human rights record every 4.5 years. For advocates, it’s an essential platform to highlight systemic failures and push for concrete reforms.

Ahead of this year’s review, Equality Now, in collaboration with partners including the ERA Coalition, Unchained At Last, the U.S. End FGM/C Network, and AUDRi, submitted evidence to support strong, evidence-based recommendations in four critical areas:

• Lack of constitutional equality under US law
• Legal loopholes which enable child marriage to persist across most states
• Inadequate protections against female genital mutilation (FGM)
• Rising threats of online sexual exploitation and abuse (OSEA)

These are not fringe issues. They represent structural inequalities that affect millions of women and girls – and demand immediate action.

Four urgent areas for action

1. Constitutional equality remains unsecured

In January 2025, President Biden affirmed the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) as the 28th Amendment to the US Constitution – a historic milestone in a century-long fight for legal equality.

Yet just days later, his statement was archived on the White House website. The reality of constitutional equality remains fiercely contested. Without explicit protections, women and girls remain vulnerable to legal rollbacks on issues such as reproductive rights, workplace protections, and freedom from discrimination.

Implementing the ERA would:

• Elevate sex equality to the same constitutional status as race and religion
• Provide a stronger legal basis to challenge discriminatory laws
• Empower Congress to take proactive measures to address systemic gender inequality

2. Child marriage is still legal in most US states

Child marriage remains a hidden crisis across the United States.

• As of 2025, only 16 states have set the minimum marriage age at 18 with no exceptions, up from just nine in 2023.
• Alarmingly, four states set no absolute minimum age at all with parental or judicial waiver, and those that do set a minimum approve marriages of children as young as 15.
• Between 2000 and 2018, at least 300,000 minors were legally married in the US, 86% of them girls, often wed to adult men.

Child marriage is not just a violation of international law – it is a form of gender-based violence. It increases the risk of sexual abuse, domestic violence, early pregnancy, and lifelong poverty.

Ending child marriage requires federal and state-level reform, clear prohibitions without exceptions, and better public education to dispel the widespread misconception that child marriage is not an issue in the United States.

3. Protections against FGM are patchy and under threat

An estimated 421,000 to 577,000 women and girls in the US are at risk of or have been subjected to female genital mutilation (FGM) – a practice globally recognised as a human rights violation.

Progress has been inconsistent:

• In April 2025, Washington, D.C., passed one of the country’s strongest anti-FGM laws, criminalising the practice, introducing civil remedies for survivors, prioritising education and outreach, and clearly representing the distinction between gender-affirming care and FGM.
• But at the federal level, a new bill seeks to conflate gender-affirming care with FGM, a dangerous and misleading approach that threatens existing protections for FGM survivors and LGBTQ+ rights.

To truly tackle FGM, the US must adopt a comprehensive, survivor-focused strategy:

• Enforce federal protections effectively
• Fund community-based prevention and support programmes
• Collect comprehensive and disaggregated data to understand the full scale of the issue
• Close state-level legislative gaps

4. Online Sexual Exploitation and Abuse (OSEA) requires urgent action

From AI-generated deepfakes to online grooming, OSEA is a fast-growing threat – yet the US has never been reviewed internationally on its response to tech-facilitated gender-based violence.

There has been progress: the Take It Down Act, passed in May 2025, requires platforms to remove non-consensual intimate images, including deepfakes, within 48 hours and introduces criminal penalties for violations.

But huge gaps remain. Without stronger, harmonised federal laws, survivors still face:

• Inconsistent protections across states
• A lack of accountability for tech platforms
• Limited resources to investigate and prosecute perpetrators

The US must align its domestic policies with international standards – including commitments made under the Global Digital Compact – to ensure safety, dignity, and justice for all women and girls.

The opportunity for international accountability 

Women’s Equality Day is about celebration, but also accountability.

The US is approaching a rare opportunity for formal international accountability: the November 2025 Universal Periodic Review (UPR) at the UN Human Rights Council. With limited treaty ratifications and a pattern of disengagement from UN mechanisms, including cutting funding and scaling back participation, opportunities to scrutinise the US in this forum are rare.

The UPR process offers an unprecedented opportunity to push the US Government to:

• Fully recognise and implement the ERA to ensure constitutional equality for all
• Address child marriage by setting a uniform minimum age of 18, without exceptions
• Strengthen legal protections against FGM
• Close legislative gaps and invest in solutions to tackle OSEA

We envision a world where all women and girls, in all their diversity, can live free from violence and discrimination. To achieve that, the US must take action – and we need your voice to help make it happen.

How you can help

• If you’re a UN Member State representative, read our full submission on human rights in the United States, including recommendations for reform. 
• If you’re part of a civil society organisation, download our advocacy toolkit to join the call for change.
• If you’re an individual looking to be a part of the movement, donate to Equality Now to support our work driving systemic change or explore other ways you can get involved.

Together, we can hold governments accountable, protect fundamental rights, and build a future where equality is a lived reality – not just a promise.