[empower] women’s activism

History behind International Women's Day: The event originated in 1908 when women garment makers in New York demonstrated to demand better working conditions. Then in 1910 an international conference of women resolved that each year a day should be set aside to press for women's demands. Since then International Women's Day has been celebrated around the world each year on 8 March. From its inception, International Women's Day has stood for equality between women and men. The United Nations Charter, signed in 1945, was the first international agreement to affirm the principle of equality between women and men.

The Beijing Conference on Women was an extraordinary moment in the history of transnational women’s movements, and its outcome document, the Platform for Action, has become a watershed in the lives of countless women and girls the world over for the past 15 years. Women’s rights advocates all over the world including us in the Global Campaign to Stop Killing and Stoning Women, continue to draw part of the legitimacy for our cause from the Beijing Platform for Action which states that … “

Over sixty years ago, countries adopting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights proclaimed that “all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.” That fundamental right has echoed for decades in conferences, treaties, and declarations. In 1995, in the Platform for Action adopted in Beijing, 189 governments agreed that laws that discriminate against women undermine equality, and pledged to “revoke any remaining laws that discriminate on the basis of sex.” Yet inequality, even in its most overt form, has not been vanquished. While discrimination against women persists around the world in many forms, laws that explicitly discriminate against women demonstrate State backing of discrimination, and symbolize governments’ clear disrespect for the fundamental right to equality for women and official endorsement of women as people of lesser worth.

Iranian women’s groups and other rights organisations are fighting a much discussed proposed law which they say would encourage polygamy by allowing a man to take a second wife without the permission of the first in certain circumstances. The proposal comes at a time when the country has been rocked by protests, in which women have played a major part, following the disputed re-election last June of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Although Sharia law permits a man to take up to four wives, polygamy is not widely practiced in Iran and women have enjoyed greater rights and freedoms than in some other Muslim countries. At present, an Iranian man needs his first wife’s permission to take a second.