Policy & Practice
Explore in-depth resources on women’s rights issues, including sexual violence, sexual exploitation, harmful practices, and legal discrimination from our expert network of lawyers and activists.
From discrimination in the law to ending sexual violence and harmful practices, explore resources from our worldwide expert team.
In every part of the world, women and girls are prevented from fully participating in society by discrimination in the law, including in terms of economic justice and rights, personal status, family law, nationality rights, and many other areas.
Child, early, and forced marriage and unions (CEFMU) affects millions of girls globally. It deprives them of education, autonomy, health, and future opportunities.
Female genital mutilation (FGM) affects at least 230 million women and girls globally, a number that has risen sharply in recent years due to population growth and improved data collection across Asia, the Middle East, and diaspora communities worldwide.
Around the world, harmful practices rooted in gender inequality and discrimination deny millions of women and girls their fundamental rights.
The internet and digital technology have opened new possibilities for human progress and also new opportunities for harm. Perpetrators exploit limited regulation and the borderless nature of the internet to groom, harass, extort, traffic, and violate their victims within and across jurisdictions with greater ease and impunity.
The sexual exploitation and abuse of women and girls, in both physical and digital spaces, is on a disturbing upward trajectory. Recent statistics from the UN show that sex trafficking remains the most prevalent form of human trafficking globally, and that it disproportionately and increasingly affects women and girls.
Sexual violence is a human rights violation that impacts millions of people around the world. The vast majority of victims are women and girls, while almost all perpetrators are men.
The laws that restrict women’s property, marriage and inheritance rights, are among the least reformed areas of law globally, but reform is imperative for the economic and social progress of all.
Women in over 45 countries still cannot pass their nationality to children or spouses on equal terms with men.
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8 October 2025
29 pages
Child marriage remains legal across most of the US, leaving minors vulnerable. Equality Now and Unchained At Last’s report exposes legal gaps, consequences, and provides clear recommendations to address this harmful practice nationwide.
2 October 2025
29 pages
Equality Now’s policy brief with partners highlights the rise of medicalised FGM/C in South and South East Asia and calls for urgent government and health sector action to end the practice.
24 September 2025
38 pages
An in-depth report exposing how structural discrimination limits access to justice for survivors of sexual violence in Colombia, with a focus on Afro-descendant, Indigenous, and disabled girls and women.
