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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9 September 2025
64 pages
A ground-breaking legal analysis of rape laws in 22 Arab States, calling for consent-based legal reforms and justice-centred accountability for survivors.
8 September 2025
3 pages
Equality Now and AUDRi, in partnership with the Southern Africa Youth Forum, co-hosted a side event on Technology-Facilitated Gender-Based Violence (TFGBV) at the Southern Africa People’s Summit on 16 August 2025 in Antananarivo, Madagascar. The discussion centred on how advancing digital rights for women, girls, and other marginalised groups through legal reforms can help end TFGBV, with a particular focus on tackling online sexual exploitation and abuse.
28 August 2025
3 pages
Equality Now, together with the Stop Violence – Stop Child Marriage Project, YWCA Madagascar, Plan International, SADC Parliamentary Forum (SADC PF), and the African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child (ACERWC), convened a side event at the Southern Africa People’s Summit on 15 August 2025 under the theme “Strengthening Protection and Support Mechanisms for Survivors of Child Marriage.”
