Equality

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Thanks to generations of feminist activism, women in many parts of the world today have more rights than ever before.

The equality gap between women and men appears to be narrowing. There are more women in the workforce than there were in 1980 – more women than men, in fact. More girls in the world are getting educated and the gap between male and female school enrolment has narrowed. There are more women in politics than there were – a quota system in Rwanda’s recent elections ensured that, at 48 per cent, that country now has the highest percentage of women parliamentarians in the world. The newly formed African Union has adopted a Protocol on the Rights of African Women, including the right to abortion – articulated for the first time in international law – and it has condemned Female Genital Mutilation.

But, in spite of these positive signs, in no country in the world today is women’s quality of life equal to men’s.

Of the 1.3 billion people living in poverty in the world today more than two-thirds are women. Women’s share of decision-making positions reached 30 per cent in only 28 countries. Even in a ‘liberated’ country like Britain average female income is only 63 per cent of the average male’s. globally, women’s health gets low priority. Each year more than 525,000 women die from complications of pregnancy and childbirth. Almost all these deaths are avoidable.

Recent years have seen a backlash against women’s emancipation in many countries. In the former Soviet Union, free-market economics has spelt an end to such benefits as maternity pay and free healthcare.

Elsewhere the backlash has been cultural and religious. In 25 countries there are now greater legal and social restrictions on women. These countries included Algeria, Nigeria, Pakistan, Turkey, Malysia and the US.

Violence against women is epidemic. In India an estimated 98 women a week are murdered by their husband or his family, often over dowry payments. In Bangladesh, 50 per cent of murdered women are killed by their husbands.

Domestic violence by men against women is astoundingly high in Pakistan, Peru, Russia and Uzbekistan, with governments doing little to intervene. In Britain, there is a call to help from victims of domestic violence every minute.

Rape is committed with relative impunity. In the conflicts in Sierra Leone, Kosovo, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Afghanistan it has been used as a weapon of war. But it is also prevalent in peacetime. In South Africa, 147 women are raped every day. In Britain, 27 per cent more women reported rape in 2002 compared with 2001, but convictions dropped to a record-breaking low. Women are more likely to get infected by HIV/AIDS than men, especially if they are raped.

As a direct result of inequalities in their countries of origin, women from Ukraine, Moldova, Nigeria, the Domenican Republic, Burma and Thailand are bought, sold and trafficked into forced prostitution, while governments do little to prevent this.

The belief that the struggle for sexual equality is all but won and that feminism is now somewhat redundant, is not borne out by global realities today.

Women still have much work to do.

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pictures of lesbian weddings and exuberant gay Mardi Gras parades suggest that equality for sexual minorities has come a long way in the past 20 years. Campaigners have fought for an won rights in Europ, Australasia and the Americas.

But the overall picture is mixed – and extreme. The UN, more than 50 years after the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was drafted, still denies these rights to the world’s estimated 40 million homosexuals. Repeated attempts at inclusion have been derailed by powerful rightwing and religious interests.

In no country in the world today do lesbians, gays and transgender people enjoy full and equal civil rights with heterosexuals – rights, for example, relating to employment, housing, parenting, partnership, inheritance and protection from abuse and discrimination.

However, many states have made significant steps towards equality in recent years. South Africa and Ecuador have written anti-discrimination clauses relating to sexual orientation in their constitutions. In the 43 states of the Council of Europe, discrimination against sexual minorities can be challenged under the European Convention of Human Rights. And in 2003 the US Supreme Court finally overturned an anti-sodomy law which had applied in 12 states.

But steps have been made in the opposite direction too. In the past three years the number of countries where homosexuality is punishable by death has risen from 7 to 10. All are Muslim-majority states, with Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan and Iran especially inclined to execute. The number of countries where homosexuality is recorded as illegal has gone up from 70 to 80. Some impose prison sentences of 20 years or more. Gays and lesbians in Uganda and Russia have been tortured and forced into exile.

Street violence towards lesbian, gay and transgender people is alarmingly high. In Brazil some 90 are murdered each year. Police often fail to investigate such killings – or are themselves involved. Some religious fundamentalists in the US preach that it is Christian duty to kill gays.

We know about these things because the issue of homosexuality is being openly discussed.

For people born with intersex conditions, their struggles remain little known. While there is public outcry over the African practice of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), Intersex Genital Mutilation is practised in the hospitals of the rich world under the name of ‘corrective surgery’. This is usually medically unnecessary, often carried out on babies of under 18 months, and may continue throughout the patients’ life.

Intersex campaigners are calling for an end to this. The child should be assigned a sex, says the Interssex Society of North America, given a name that corresponds to the sex, and raised with counselling and age-appropriate explanations of their condition.

Awareness is increasing. In 1999 the Constitutional Court of Columbia restricted the ability of parents and doctors to resort to the scalpel when children are born with atypical genitalia. It was the first time a High Court anywhere in the world had considered whether Intersex Genital Mutilation was a violation of human rights.

Colombia’s court also recognises that intersex people are a minority which enjoys the constitutional protection of the State and that every individual has a right to define his or her own sexual identity.