Women’s Day 2024: The Fight to Protect And Improve Women’s Rights All Over The World
It’s Women’s Day once again but this time, we’re not going to be talking about sunshine, rainbows, and nail polish. No. This time, we’re fighting to protect and to ensure that we do not lose what we currently have – our rights!
In recent years, there’s been a trend going on. Patriarchal systems have been devising means to strip women of their much-needed rights all over the world. This women’s day, we’ll be addressing some of these rights in this article.
Keep reading to stay abreast with what is happening to your fellow women all over the world!
3 Women’s Rights Issues Today
1. Reproductive Rights
Around the world, many women are struggling with exercising the right to protect their bodies from unwanted pregnancies.
In June 2022, the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, thereby ending a 50-year federal protection of women’s abortion rights. The Supreme Court’s ruling had ended by allowing each state to decide how it wanted to legislate the issue.
While 17 states moved to continue protecting abortion rights, 14 states refused to continue the practice, with some even refusing to give allowance for cases of incest and rape.
Crazy, isn’t it?
If women cannot protect themselves freely and with the best healthcare services to prevent fatal complications during abortions, how can such a nation ever hope to progress?
When women are forced to carry unwanted pregnancies, they either abandon the child after birthing them or put distance between themselves and the child while raising them. Those children will then grow to exhibit numerous psychological and behavioral issues, thereby increasing the number of delinquents in society.
All this because they grew up without love and proper parental care.
This issue is most rampant in underdeveloped countries like Nigeria where abortion is considered illegal with a prison term of 14 years if caught.
Women’s reproductive rights may not be a fundamental human right but it is an essential one that must not be stripped off women. If anything, the government needs to enforce laws and implement policies guiding safer means to exercise such rights by women.
Women’s Day 2024 is all about fighting for these rights!
2. Domestic Violence
Another important discussion that cannot be overlooked as we celebrate Women’s Day 2024 is the fight to protect the rights that safeguard women all over the world from domestic violence.
The scary thing about domestic violence is the fact that the victim has to continue living with her assailant. One can only imagine the physical, emotional, and psychological trauma women have to deal with at the hands of their abusive spouses. And there aren’t many laws that protect these women.
This needs to change!
The phenomenal case study of Kiranjit Ahluwalia is a great example of how proper representation of abused women can either make or mar their entire lives.
Kiranjit Ahluwalia is an Indian woman who suffered ten years of domestic violence at the hands of her husband Deepak. For ten years, her husband abused her physically, psychologically and sexually.
One night she decided to give him a feel of how much pain she had been enduring in the past decade and set fire to his feet under the covers while he was sleeping. Her action resulted in severe burns that covered about 40% of his body. Deepak later died in the hospital ten days after her attack. The court then ruled her case as murder and sentenced her to life imprisonment.
Ahluwalia would have lost everything if she hadn’t written to the director of the charitable organization, Southall Black Sisters, to help her plead her cause against the court’s life imprisonment sentence after she killed her husband who had been abusing her for over a decade.
The non-profit organization which aimed to protect Black women and other minority ethnic women, from gender-based violence fought hard to protect Ahluwalia and won her appeal case in 1992. This was three years into Ahluwalia’s life sentence.
They were able to get the appeal court to rule her case as manslaughter and she was released immediately since her new sentence was three years and four months. A sentence she had already served.
Thanks to Ahluwalia’s victory, countless women now have a precedent to fight with when faced with life imprisonment after taking action against their abusive partners.
This is of course not a movement to encourage killings. It’s all just to protect women from continually enduring pain and fear because they don’t want to retaliate against their predatory spouses.
3. Violence Against Women and Girls
Violence against women and girls manifests in various ways. Below you’ll find the different types of violence against women and girls in today’s society.
Types of Violence Against Women and Girls
- Forced Marriage/ Child Marriage
- Sexual Violence
- Intimate-partner violence
- Femicide.
- Human trafficking.
- Female genital mutilation.
- Online or technology-facilitated violence.
A very recent case of violence against women and how the government’s inability to implement systems to protect women efficiently can lead to the death of many is Giulia Cecchettin’s death.
Violence against women is so rampant that statistics from WHO dictate that globally, 1 in 3 women have experienced some form of physical and/or sexual violence in their lifetime.
There are so many other women’s rights issues today that need to be addressed. Women are still struggling to find their footing in marriage rights (especially in underdeveloped countries), economic empowerment rights, education rights, and even gender pay gap rights. The list is endless!
Now, while we can’t discuss everything here, we can do something. We can fight to protect these rights!
This Women’s Day, I urge you to take to your keypads. Don’t be silent. Give your thoughts a voice by finding any women’s rights organizations around you to join so we can all fight together to protect what’s ours.
Final Thoughts
We cannot end this powerful Women’s Day article without highlighting the theme for this year’s International Women’s Day.
The theme for International Women’s Day 2024 is ‘Invest in women: Accelerate progress’. By encouraging inclusion and investing in women’s healthcare, education, leadership development, and economic empowerment, we are laying the foundations for a healthy and progressive society for all humans.
Women’s Day 2024 is a call to invest in the physical, mental, and psychological well-being of women all over the world. We hope to see positive feedback as the years come.
More power to the women!
All images are sourced from istockphotos.com
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