Women's Rights are Human Rights

(http://www.aclu.org/womens-rights/human-rights)

I've really taken interest in the primary source documents provided on the Feminine Mystique and Second Wave Feminism from this week's readings. I've taken a particular interest in these documents because the struggled recognition of women's rights as human rights is a topic I've been recently researching. In the NOW Statement of Purpose from 1966 the contention that “human rights for all are indivisible” is made. It is interesting to see that statement in writing as early as 1966, yet it was not until 1993 at the UN World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna that women’s rights were confirmed as human rights (UNFPA). Why did it take so long for women’s rights to be recognized within the confines of human rights—a.k.a. the indivisible rights of ALL human beings. It’s preposterous that it essentially took that long to affirm the fact that women were, at the least, human beings!—and should be afforded the same protections as all other human beings. I think sometimes the women’s struggle for equality is thrown to the wayside when women are fighting, still now, to be recognized equally under many facets of international law.

(March 8, 2009, Lebanese feminists in Beirut participate in a demonstration to mark International Women's Day.)