Advancing Legal Equality: Defending Women’s Rights in a Shifting Global Landscape

In a world where close to 40% of anti-rights governments are dismantling equal rights for women and girls, Equality Now’s mission to advance legal equality has become increasingly vital. Our efforts to ensure governments uphold international law, alongside our work with women-led movements across the globe to galvanize solidarity and collective action to withstand these risks are critical.

Discriminatory laws continue to function as invisible barriers, holding women back from reaching their full potential and achieving true independence. Our mission is clear: to dismantle these barriers through upholding the rule of law, legal reform, and enabling access to justice. Not only are equality, safety, privacy, and freedom fundamental human rights for women and girls, but they are also the foundation of a more peaceful, prosperous, and sustainable future – for everyone.

The path to equality is neither straight nor easy. When the sands shift, we must adapt to be able to move forward. Following the results of the US election last week, our expert human rights legal team has analyzed how the result, and wider global shift to conservatism, could impact women and girls. We wanted to share the summary with you.

Impact on International Human Rights Mechanisms

It is likely that we will witness a negative impact on international human rights mechanisms, with the potential of the US significantly reducing UN funding and withdrawing from the Human Rights Council. We anticipate a pushback on sexual and reproductive health and rights in global forums and a cooling of legal equality initiatives worldwide. This shift could embolden authoritarian regimes to ignore or opt out of critical international human rights mechanisms.

Our established networks across 160 countries afford the opportunity for us to maintain crucial advocacy channels and strengthen alternative pathways for advancing women’s rights.

US Policy

The domestic policy landscape presents complex challenges for legal equality. The Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) may well be delayed again while reproductive rights will be subject to a patchwork of state-level legislation that leaves millions of women unprotected. The pushback on women’s rights and bodily autonomy could extend to issues like female genital mutilation and child marriage, where state-level variations and anti-immigration sentiment could impede nationwide progress and a key pillar of our work. With our partners, we will be navigating the changing landscape to advance legal frameworks that protect women’s fundamental rights at both state and federal levels.

Digital Rights and Technology

The incoming government’s pledge to rescind Biden’s order on AI signals a shift toward deregulation, which could impact the work Equality Now has been doing with AUDRi to put human rights-based regulation in place. This could make it more difficult to tackle disinformation and tech-facilitated gender-based violence and misogyny which are already at dangerous levels, promoting violence against women and girls.

Our pioneering work and expertise in both technology policy and human rights law means we are uniquely positioned to counter emerging threats. 

Civil Society and Government Accountability

Civil society spaces in the regions we work in around the world are already shrinking because of political and funding pressures. These may be curtailed further as conservative governments feel more emboldened by the US election result to bypass democratic institutions and make the work of grassroots organizations harder. This would be compounded by any cuts to US based funding. All of which would make it harder to hold governments to account when they do not adhere to their commitments to protect women and girls’ human rights.

The Strategic Importance of Sustainable Funding

Recent trends indicate a correlation between rising social tensions and a decline in philanthropic support for women and girls. Organizations dedicated to these causes, historically underfunded, could now face a more precarious financial situation. Key philanthropic entities have been withdrawing or reducing their support for women’s rights initiatives and reallocating funds toward broader societal issues, often neglecting gender-specific approaches. Now we are preparing for the possible dismantling of previously committed funding by the new US government. Insufficient funding of this sector, currently at less than 2% of all philanthropy, seriously hampers women’s movements worldwide, which we know to be one the best methods of progressing our shared goals for democracy.

What’s Next?

Working together to keep moving forward. 

The enormous $15 billion spent on US elections this year prompts reflection on alternative investments. Strategic investment in legal equality represents one of the most effective ways to advance women’s rights and strengthen democratic institutions. Imagine redirecting such resources to women-led movements globally over the next four years to foster collective power, leadership, and resilience among women and girls worldwide. By building interconnected, agile constituencies, we could create a formidable movement for enduring legal and lived equality for women and girls that remains a constant 

We invite you to join us in creating lasting change for millions of women and girls to build more peaceful and equitable societies for the future.