Our vision is a world in which women and men have equal rights under the law, and full enjoyment of their human rights.
Our mission is to achieve legal and systemic change that addresses violence and discrimination against women and girls around the world.
At Equality Now we know that the law has historically been used to marginalize, disenfranchise, and oppress and that women and girls have been especially impacted by discriminatory laws that treat them as second-class citizens. But we envision a world where the law is used to promote equality rather than codify misogyny, where constitutions respect human rights rather than embed discrimination, and where the criminal justice system arbitrates with integrity rather than perpetuates harmful gender and racial stereotypes.
We aim to live our mission through the feminist principles of equality, anti-discrimination, inclusion, autonomy, and dignity.
Our Values
Integrity
Equality Now engages with the world and each other with the honesty, professionalism, accountability, and transparency needed to earn the credibility and trust required to bring about the changes needed to achieve justice for women and girls
Inclusiveness
Equality Now opposes discrimination and exclusion in any form and fosters inclusion, collaboration, trust, and respectfulness through our actions
Tenaciousness
Equality Now has the courage to do the right thing and speak out even in the face of strong opposition, and promote positive, hopeful messages of change
Perseverance
Equality Now knows that people and institutions take time to change and that bringing people to new ways of thinking requires creativity, determination, and resilience, so we persevere
Our commitment to Anti-Racism
Equality Now aspires to be a truly anti-racist, intersectional, and feminist organization that actively challenges racism and all forms of discrimination in our own organizational culture and through our work.
Equality Now’s Anti-Racism Task Force (ART Force) was established to facilitate reflection and analysis of Equality Now’s policies, practices, and culture and make recommendations to ensure the aspiration is realized.
We believe that discrimination against women based on sex and gender is inextricably linked with other factors that affect women, such as race, ethnicity, religion or belief, health status, age, class, caste, sexual orientation, and gender identity. Discrimination on the basis of sex or gender may affect women belonging to such groups to a different degree or in different ways to men. The ART Force recognizes and recommends measures to address intersecting forms of discrimination, with a specific focus on race.
Our commitment to all women & girls: Sex and Inclusivity
Equality Now is committed to being inclusive in our human-rights focused legal analysis and actions to fulfill our mission of achieving legal and systemic change that addresses violence and discrimination against women and girls in all their diversity.
Inclusiveness is one of Equality Now’s core organizational values. Equality Now opposes discrimination and exclusion in any form – including on the basis of sex, gender, sexual orientation, marital status, pregnancy, race, ethnicity, caste, disability, age, health, religion, class or any other socio-economic status – and fosters inclusion, collaboration, trust and respectfulness through our actions.
Thus, we ensure that our ways of advocating and working to fulfill our mission genuinely take into account women and girls in all their diversity; No one should be subjected to patriarchal power, violence and discrimination because of their sex and / or gender identity; We believe everyone should enjoy their full human rights.
The UN Independent Expert on protection against violence and discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity (UN SOGI) has noted that, “the work to address and ultimately eradicate violence and discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity is not in opposition to the human rights of women; on the contrary, these areas of concern are largely overlapping and conceptually, socioeconomically, politically and legally reinforce each other.”
Equality Now believes it is the duty of the State to undertake all relevant intersectional analyses in the formulation of law and policy and supports the UN SOGI’s recommendation that, “States provide access to legal recognition of gender identity in a manner consistent with the rights to freedom from discrimination, equal protection of the law, privacy, identity and freedom of expression.…”
As Equality Now stated in 2020, we will “build solidarity with a diversity of other actors as we each seek to end sexual exploitation and sexual violence against girls, women and other marginalized genders” and will continue to do so as we stand up for the rights of all women and girls in all their diversity.
The law of inclusion, Report of the Independent Expert on protection against violence and discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity (2021), A/HRC/47/27, ¶84.
Id. at ¶91.