women's rights research questions

138 Women’s Rights Research Questions and Essay Topics

🏆 best topics related to women’s rights, ⭐ simple & easy essay topics on women’s issues, 📌 most interesting research topics on women’s issues, 👍 good women’s rights research paper topics, ❓ research questions about women’s rights.

Women’s rights essays are an excellent way to learn about the situation of the female gender throughout the world and demonstrate your knowledge.

You can cover historical women’s rights essay topics, such as the evolution of girl child education in various countries and regions or the different waves of the feminism movement.

Alternatively, you can study more current topics, such as the status of women in Islam or the debate about whether women’s rights apply to transgender women.

In either case, there is a multitude of ideas that you can express and discuss in your paper to make it engaging and thought-provoking. However, you should not neglect the basic aspects of writing an essay, especially its structure and presentation.

The thesis statement is critical to your essay’s structure, as it has to be at the center of each point you make. It should state the overall message or question of your paper comprehensively but concisely at the same time.

Afterwards, every point you make should directly or indirectly support the claim or answer the question, and you should make the relationship explicit for better clarity.

It is good practice to make the thesis a single sentence that does not rely on context, being fully self-sufficient, but avoids being excessively long.

As such, writing a good thesis is a challenging task that requires care and practice. Do not be afraid to spend additional time writing the statement and refining it.

It is beneficial to have a framework of how you will arrange topics and formulate your points so that they flow into one another and support the central thesis before you begin writing.

The practice will help you arrange transitional words and make the essay more coherent and connected as opposed to being an assortment of loosely associated statements.

To that end, you should write an outline, which deserves a separate discussion. However, the basics are simple: write down all of the ideas you want to discuss, discard the worst or fold them into other, broader topics until you have a handful left, and organize those in a logical progression.

Here are some additional tips for your structuring process:

• Frame the ideas in your outline using self-explanatory and concise women’s rights essay titles. You can then use them to separate different points in your essay with titles that correspond to outline elements. The outline itself will effectively become a table of contents, saving you time if one is necessary.
• Try to keep the discussion of each topic self-contained, without much reference to other matters you discussed in the essay. If there is a significant relationship, you should devote a separate section to it.
• Do not forget to include an introduction and a conclusion in your paper. The introduction familiarizes the reader with the topic and ends with your thesis statement, setting the tone and direction of the essay. The conclusion sums up what you have written and adds some concluding remarks to finish. The introduction should not contain facts and examples beyond what is common knowledge in the field. The conclusion may not introduce new information beyond what has been stated in the essay.

You can find excellent women’s rights essay examples, useful samples, and more helpful tips on writing your essay at IvyPanda, so visit whenever you are having trouble or would like advice!

• What Causes Women’s Rights Violation? Most women have been abused in modern societies due to illiteracy and lack of exposure to their rights. Most developing nations are struggling to adopt democratic policies and forget that women deserve the right to […]
• “Women’s Rights Are Human Rights” by Hillary Clinton Hillary Clinton’s speech about women’s rights effectively convinces her audience that women rights are an indispensable part of human rights through the use of logical argument, repetition, historical facts, and emotional stories.
• Women’s Rights in the 21st Century: Education and Politics The lack of equity in the specified areas affect women’s lives on range of levels, depriving them of the opportunities that they are supposed to be entitled to and posing a tangible threat to the […]
• Women’s Rights and the Advancement of Democracy The degree of citizen involvement in the political process, including the participation of various social groups in political parties and decision-making bodies, determines the quality of democracy in addition to the structure of current political […]
• Women’s Rights and Gender Inequality in Saudi Arabia Indeed, it is crucial to understand the importance of women’s rights, see the connections between the past, the present, the local, and the global, and realize how political and media discourse represents the social issue […]
• Foot Binding in China in Terms of Women’s Rights The practice of foot binding in China can be traced back to the Sung Dynasty that prevailed between 960-1280 AD, supposedly as an imitation of an imperial concubine who was required to perform a dance […]
• Utilitarian Permissive Concept for Women’s Right to Choose Abortion Utilitarians believe that the right to choose abortion should be protected under the law as a matter of justice since a woman should have the right to make decisions concerning her own body and health.
• Women’s Rights: Democratic Perceptions Therefore, it is proper to claim that women would not be able to exercise their rights and freedoms as frequently without the efforts of Democrats.
• Abortion and Women’s Right to Control Their Bodies However, the decision to ban abortions can be viewed as illegal, unethical, and contradicting the values of the 21st century. In such a way, the prohibition of abortion is a serious health concern leading to […]
• The Women’s Rights Movement and Indigenous People In this article, the author addresses the differences between the Euro-American and Native American societies and the role of women in them.
• The Texas Abortion Law: A Signal of War on Women’s Rights and Bodies The purpose of this paper is to examine the structure and implications of the Texas Abortion Law in order to demonstrate its flaws.
• Women’s Rights and Reform Impulses The reform impulses altered women’s place in society, making them equal to men in the ability to speak publicly, pursue their liberty, and attain their goals.
• The Evolution of Women’s Rights Through American History From the property-owning women of the late 18th century to the proponents of the women’s liberation in the 1960s, women always succeeded in using the influential political theories of their time to eventually make feminist […]
• Invisible Southern Black Women Leaders in the Civil Rights Movement Based on 36 personal interviews and multiple published and archived sources, the author demonstrates that black women in the South have played a prominent role in the struggle for their rights.
• Injustices Women Faced in Quest for Equal Rights The source Alice Paul depicts the numerous contributions that she and her fellow suffragists made to the new rights of women.
• Catharine Beecher and Women’s Rights Catharine Beecher’s “An Appeal to American Women” is a discussion kind of piece that considers the power of women in office and how the issue should be approached.
• The Aftermath of the Progression of Women’s Rights Period At the end of the 1800s and the beginning of 1900s, women’s organizations and women struggled for social reforms, to gain the right to vote, and for diverse political and economic equality.
• Lucy Parsons as a Women’s Rights Advocate and Her Beliefs She was a believer in anarchism and thought that it was the means to liberty and freedom. She wanted the constitution to be amended to say that men and women are equal in all aspects.
• Women in Islam: Some Rights, No Equality Notwithstanding the principles of equality of men and women in Islamic tradition, women’s low status should be attributed not to the ideals set in the Quran but to the cultural norms of the patriarchal society.
• Primary Source on Women’s Voting Rights The combination of statements that degrade the image of suffragettes and suffrage and quotes of leaders’ opinions is a way for the editor to influence the audience.
• Syrian Conflict and Women Rights: Way to Equality or Another Discrimination The main reason for a low percentage of women in the workforce is Syrian social norms, which stereotypically reflect the role of women in homes serving their husbands and in the private sector.
• Movement for Women’s Rights in Great Britain and the United States This essay analytically explores some of the conditions which helped bring about movement for women’s right in Great Britain and United States before the close of the last century. In addition, the most significant demand […]
• Shirin Ebadi’s Perspective on Women’s Human Rights Activism and Islam It is worth noting that Shirin Ebadi’s self-identity as an Iranian woman and a Muslim empowers her experience and perspective in women’s rights activism.
• Women in the Struggle for Civil Rights In other instants, women in the struggle for civil rights can also file a case in a court of law demanding the lawmakers to enact some policies of which they feel when passed will protect […]
• The Success of Women’s Rights Movement They sought the equal treatment of women and men by law and fought for voting rights. The women’s rights movement was successful because they were united, had a strong ideological foundation, and organized campaigns on […]
• Refugee Women and Their Human Rights According to the researches have been made by UNHCR, 1998, found that 80% of the refugees immigrating to the United States and other countries of second asylum are women or children.
• Women’s Rights Movement in the 19th Century In this paper, the peculiarities of women’s suffrage, its political and social background, and further reactions will be discussed to clarify the worth and impact of the chosen event.
• Women Rights: New Data and Movements For example, whereas the women’s health rights movement is a global affair, the fact that events related to the movement are mainly held in the US means that other countries do not feel the impact […]
• Planned Parenthood and Women’s Rights It took decades for the government to acknowledge the necessity of the services offered in these clinics and even longer for the public to accept a woman’s right to reproductive health care, the establishment of […]
• Understanding Women’s Right in Islamic World The role of women in the Islamic society during and soon after the death of Prophet Mohammed was similar to that of men.
• Saudi Arabian Women’s Right to Drive: Pros and Cons The objective of this paper is to present the arguments from both sides of the discussion on the issue of whether women should be able to drive legally in Saudi Arabia.
• Arab Spring’s Impact on Women’s Rights and Security The aim of the research is to define the effects that the Arab Spring has had on the perception of women in the Arab society.
• Women’s Rights Since Pre-History to 1600 A.D In this regard, most women from the medieval times could determine their social and political destiny, but the responsibility to others mainly rested on the men.
• Women’s Fight for Equal Human Rights According to the readings assigned, the term feminist could be used to refer to people who fought for the rights of women.
• Women in New France: Rights, Freedoms and Responsibilities However, the development of New France was quite distinct due to peculiarities of the gender roles in the North America and France.
• Women’s Family and Social Responsibilities and Rights The uniqueness of Addams and Sanger’s approach to discussing the rights of females is in the fact that these authors discuss any social responsibilities of women as the key to improving their roles in the […]
• Women’s Rights in the Great Depression Period The pursuit of the workplace equality and the protection of women from unfair treatment by the employers were quite unsuccessful and slow due to the major division in the opinions.
• Women’s Roles and Rights in the 18-19th Century America We can only do the simplest work; we cannot have a good job because that is the men’s domain, and they have the necessary training to do it.
• Debate Over Women’s Rights At times, the problem is that there is bias and discrimination about the strength of the woman and no chance has ever been given to them to prove if the allegation is wrong.
• The Women of the Veil: Gaining Rights and Freedoms The author chides the activities of the Western colonies in Afghanistan in restoring the rights of the women of the veil.
• The Role of African American Women in the Civil Right Movement The role of women in the Civil Rights Movement started to change in the 1960s. Women in the Civil Rights Movement: Trailblazers and Torchbearers.
• Hip-Hop Music and the Role of Women in It: Fight for Women’s Rights in Society While looking at the various roles of women in hip hop and rap, it is also important to note that the way women are presented has various effects on society.
• Gender Studies: Women’s Rights in Saudi Arabia This paper will review the a issue of women’s rights in Saudi Arabia from the perspective of four different groups including the modern Saudi women, traditional Saudi women, Government officials, and international women’s rights organizations.
• African-American Women and the Civil Rights Movement The key factors that left the Black women unrecognized or led to recognition of just a few of them as leaders are class, race and gender biases.
• Temperance, Women’s Rights, Education, Antislavery and Prison Reform: New Objectives, New Concerns Among the most memorable reforms of that time, the innovations in the system of treating the convicts and the prisoners must be the reform that reflected the very essence of the XIX-century social ideas.
• Women’s Rights – Contribution of E. Cady Stanton and S.B. Anthony The first significant and most important move was made by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, on the other hand, was born in a Quaker family and her father was also quite a successful […]
• Oppression of Women’s Rights Affects the Economy of the Middle East For instance in Iceland, the high level of quality of life and health is one of the factors that lead to a GDP per capita of $54,291 On the contrary, there are situations where women […]
• Reform-Women’s Rights and Slavery The colonizers felt that the movement was threatening their business and status in the society and began to ridicule and attack the families of the abolitionists.
• Women’s Role in Contemporary Korea The effort of women to work in professional and high positions in different sectors, the government decided to boost their effort and maintain their morale.
• Non Governmental Organization of Women’s Learning Partnership for Rights Development and Peace In most cases the rights of women which are mainly suppressed include the right to own property, the right to work or hold a public office, the right of receiving education, the right to vote […]
• The Development of Women’s Rights However, she cannot agree to such distribution of the roles, and she calls upon all people to look again at the situation, connected to women’s rights, and provide all women with a chance to participate […]
• Jane Cunningham Croly: Fighting for Women Rights The problem of women inequality with men had been considered in the society and Jane Cunningham Croly was one of those who wanted to contribute to the movement, and her journalistic activity was that measure.
• Women’s Suffrage Discussion The entrenchment of equal rights of women and men and more noticeably the right of every American woman to vote came into being after the enactment of the nineteenth amendment.
• Disclosing the Aspects of Female Authorship as Presented in Woolf’s Professions for Women and Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Right of Woman In their works called A Vindication of the Right of Woman and Professions of Women respectively, they express their vigorous desire to liberate women from the professional taboos to enter female authorship imposed by the […]
• Power of Women’s Rights How the Anti-Slavery Movement Challenge Established Notions of Manhood and Womanhood Kathryn Kish Sklar’s general idea in the book is to enlighten people on the role of women in the society during the 19th century, […]
• Women’s Rights in the Muslim World Ahmed first focuses on the gender pattern in the Middle East prior to the emergence of the Islam in order to gain ground to describe the Islamic doctrine on women that were practiced in the […]
• Afghan Women and Violation of Their Rights It is for this reason that the Taliban have been the party mostly blamed for the mistreatment of women in the country. The U.S.has the necessary resources to ensure that this is achieved therefore guaranteeing […]
• Did Flappers Have a Positive Effect on Women’s Rights in America in the 1920s?
• Abigail Adams’ Inspiring Rebellion for Women’s Rights
• The Power of the Internet and Women’s Rights in Guatemala
• Pencils and Bullets Women’s Rights in Afghanistan
• Women’s Rights in Supreme Court Decisions of the 1960’s and 1970’s
• Women’s Rights: A Path into the Society to Achieve Social Liberation
• The Taliban: Deprivers of Women’s Rights in Afghanistan
• Henrik Ibsen’s Description of Women’s Rights as Depicted in His Play, A Doll’s House
• Perceptions on The Islamic Practice of Veiling: Relevance to the Quest for Women’s Rights
• The Effects of Christianity on Women’s Rights in China
• Women’s Rights in the 1920’s and Examples in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby
• Pornography and Feminist Fight for Women’s Rights
• The Progression of Women’s Rights from the Early 20th Century
• Islamic Head Scarf: Women’s Rights and Cultural Sensibilities
• The Women’s Rights Movement in England: 18th Century and Beyond
• Comparing Cultures: the Development of Women’s Rights in China and Saudi Arabia
• Mary Wollstonecraft and the Early Women’s Rights Movement
• The Progression of Women’s Rights in the Middle East
• Elizabeth Stanton’s Impact on Women’s Rights Movement
• Women’s Rights in Latin America and the Caribbean
• Women’s Rights and Their Importance to the Development of True Democracy
• Women’s Rights Within A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
• Every Woman Has Her Day: The Women’s Rights Movement in 19th Century
• Evolution of Women’s Rights Since 19th Century
• Integrating Equality – Globalization, Women’s Rights, Son Preference and Human Trafficking
• Analysis of the View of Opinions of Authors Advocating for Women’s Rights
• Abolition of Slavery is Conducive to Women’s Rights Movement
• Women’s Rights Violations in Afghanistan
• Feminism and Women’s Rights in Post Colonial Africa and France
• Social Justice in America: Women’s Rights
• Horace Walpole and Samuel Johnson, Champions of Women’s Rights
• Muslims Women’s Rights to Practice Their Religion
• Women’s Rights and Hills Like White Elephants
• Rhetorical Analysis of Hillary Clinton’s Speech, Women’s Rights Are Human Rights
• Euripides Support of Women’s Rights
• Women’s Rights in Afghanistan 1996 to the Present
• Women’s Rights & Their Impact on the Development of Iran
• Women’s Rights Between 1750 and 1914
• Exploring The Women’s Rights Movement With Good Man Is Hard to Find by Flannery O´Conner
• Progressive Era: The Era of Immigration, Race, and Women’s Rights
• Women’s Rights in the United States in the 1700s
• Which Countries Violate Women’s Rights?
• What Was the Aim of the Women’s Movement?
• How Did the Anti-Slavery Movement Contribute to the Women’s Rights Movement?
• Who Were the 4 Main Leaders of the Women’s Rights Movement?
• How Does Gender Inequality Affect Women’s Rights?
• Who Fought for Women’s Right to Work?
• What Was the Biggest Women’s Rights Movement?
• What Are the Colors for Women’s Rights?
• Why Women’s Rights Lost Ground at the End of World War Two?
• What Is the Role of Lesbians in the Women’s Movement?
• How Far Women’s Rights Have Come?
• What Laws Help Women’s Rights?
• How Were the Abolition and Women’s Rights Movements Similar?
• What Are the Most Important Events in Women’s Rights History?
• Who Is Responsible for Women’s Rights?
• What Is the History of Women’s Rights?
• What Were 3 Major Events in the Women’s Rights Movement?
• How Margaret Fuller and Fanny Fern Used Writing as a Weapon for Women’s Rights?
• How Did Race Impact African American Women’s Experiences During the Women’s Suffrage Movement?
• What Was the Cause of the First Woman’s Rights Convention?
• Why Is Education Important for Women’s Rights?
• How Are Women’s Rights Linked to Economic Development?
• When Did the Women’s Rights Movement Start and End?
• Why Did the Women’s Rights Movement Emerge in the USA During the 1950S and 1960S?
• What Are Women’s Cultural Rights?
• Who Was the First Black Women’s Rights Activist?
• When Was the First Female Vote?
• What Was the Movement for Women’s Rights in the 1800S?
• Who Was the Black Woman Who Fought for Women’s Rights?
• Who Was the Biggest Women’s Rights Activist?
• Civil Rights Movement Questions
• Gender Inequality Research Topics
• Women’s Suffrage Essay Ideas
• Childbirth Titles
• Gender Discrimination Research Topics
• Motherhood Ideas
• Personal Identity Paper Topics
• Reproductive Health Essay Titles
• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

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277 Feminism Topics & Women’s Rights Essay Topics

• Icon Calendar 18 May 2024
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Feminism topics encompass a comprehensive range of themes centered on advocating for gender equality. These themes critically address the social, political, and economic injustices primarily faced by females, aiming to dismantle patriarchal norms. Feminism topics may span from intersectional feminism, which underscores the diverse experiences of women across various intersections of race, class, and sexuality, to reproductive rights that advocate for women’s bodily autonomy and healthcare accessibility. They also involve the examination of workplace discrimination through concepts, such as the gender wage gap and the glass ceiling. Violence against women, including work and domestic abuse, sexual assault, and harassment, is a hot aspect, providing many discussions. In turn, one may explore the representation of women in media, politics, and STEM fields. Explorations of gender roles, gender identity, and the significance of male feminism are integral parts of these discussions. As society continues to evolve, feminism topics persistently adapt to confront and address emerging forms of gender inequality.

Best Feminism & Women’s Rights Topics

• Achievements of Women in Politics: A Global Perspective
• Emphasizing Gender Equality in the 21st-Century Workplace
• Evolving Representation of Women in Media
• Fight for Women’s Voting Rights: The Historical Analysis
• Intersectionality: Examining its Role in Feminism
• Unpacking Feminism in Third-World Countries
• Dissecting Misogyny in Classical Literature
• Influence of Religion on Women’s Rights Worldwide
• Unveiling Bias in STEM Fields: Female Experiences
• Gender Pay Gap: Global Comparisons and Solutions
• Probing the Historical Evolution of Feminism
• Reshaping Beauty Standards Through Feminist Discourse
• Importance of Reproductive Rights in Women’s Health
• Exploring Women’s Role in Environmental Activism
• Glass Ceiling Phenomenon: Women in Corporate Leadership
• Trans Women’s Struggles in Feminist Movements
• Empowering Girls: The Role of Education
• Intersection of Race, Class, and Feminism
• Effects of Feminism on Modern Art
• Impacts of Social Media on Women’s Rights Movements
• Deconstructing Patriarchy in Traditional Societies
• Single Mothers’ Challenges: A Feminist Perspective
• Dynamics of Feminism in Post-Colonial Societies
• Queer Women’s Struggles for Recognition and Rights
• Women’s Contributions to Scientific Discovery: An Underrated History
• Cybersecurity: Ensuring Women’s Safety in the Digital Age
• Exploring the Misrepresentation of Feminism in Popular Culture
• Repositioning Sexuality: The Role of Feminism in Health Discourse
• Women’s Economic Empowerment: The Impact of Microfinance
• Investigating Sexism in Video Gaming Industry
• Female Leadership During Global Crises: Case Studies

Easy Feminism & Women’s Rights Topics

• Power of Women’s Protest: A Historical Study
• Feminist Movements’ Role in Shaping Public Policy
• Body Autonomy: A Key Aspect of Feminist Ideology
• Cyber Feminism: Women’s Rights in Digital Spaces
• Violence Against Women: International Legal Measures
• Feminist Pedagogy: Its Impact on Education
• Depiction of Women in Graphic Novels: A Feminist Lens
• Comparing Western and Eastern Feminist Movements
• Men’s Roles in Supporting Feminist Movements
• Impacts of Feminism on Marriage Institutions
• Rural Women’s Rights: Challenges and Progress
• Understanding Feminist Waves: From First to Fourth
• Inclusion of Women in Peace Negotiation Processes
• Influence of Feminism on Modern Advertising
• Indigenous Women’s Movements and Rights
• Reclaiming Public Spaces: Women’s Safety Concerns
• Roles of Feminist Literature in Social Change
• Women in Sports: Overcoming Stereotypes and Bias
• Feminism in the Context of Refugee Rights
• Media’s Roles in Shaping Feminist Narratives
• Women’s Rights in Prisons: An Overlooked Issue
• Motherhood Myths: A Feminist Examination
• Subverting the Male Gaze in Film and Television
• Feminist Critique of Traditional Masculinity Norms
• Rise of Female Entrepreneurship: A Feminist View
• Young Feminists: Shaping the Future of Women’s Rights

Interesting Feminism & Women’s Rights Topics

• Roles of Feminism in Promoting Mental Health Awareness
• Aging and Women’s Rights: An Overlooked Dimension
• Feminist Perspectives on Climate Change Impacts
• Women’s Rights in Military Service: Progress and Challenges
• Achieving Gender Parity in Academic Publishing
• Feminist Jurisprudence: Its Impact on Legal Structures
• Masculinity in Crisis: Understanding the Feminist Perspective
• Fashion Industry’s Evolution through Feminist Ideals
• Unheard Stories: Women in the Global Space Race
• Effects of Migration on Women’s Rights and Opportunities
• Women’s Land Rights: A Global Issue
• Intersection of Feminism and Disability Rights
• Portrayal of Women in Science Fiction: A Feminist Review
• Analyzing Post-Feminism: Its Origins and Implications
• Cyberbullying and Its Impact on Women: Measures for Protection
• Unveiling Gender Bias in Artificial Intelligence
• Reimagining Domestic Work Through the Lens of Feminism
• Black Women’s Hair Politics: A Feminist Perspective
• Feminist Ethical Considerations in Biomedical Research
• Promoting Gender Sensitivity in Children’s Literature
• Understanding the Phenomenon of Toxic Femininity
• Reconsidering Women’s Rights in the Context of Climate Migration
• Advancing Women’s Participation in Political Activism

Feminism Argumentative Essay Topics

• Intersectionality’s Impact on Modern Feminism
• Evolution of Feminist Thought: From First-Wave to Fourth-Wave
• Gender Wage Gap: Myths and Realities
• Workplace Discrimination: Tackling Unconscious Bias
• Feminist Theory’s Influence on Contemporary Art
• Intersection of Feminism and Environmental Activism
• Men’s Roles in the Feminist Movement
• Objectification in Media: A Feminist Perspective
• Misconceptions about Feminism: Addressing Stereotypes
• Feminism in the Classroom: The Role of Education
• Feminist Analysis of Reproductive Rights Policies
• Transgender Rights: An Extension of Feminism
• Intersection of Feminism and Racial Justice
• Body Shaming Culture: A Feminist Viewpoint
• Feminism’s Influence on Modern Advertising
• Patriarchy and Religion: A Feminist Critique
• Domestic Labor: Feminist Perspectives on Unpaid Work
• Sexism in Sports: The Need for Feminist Intervention
• The MeToo Movement’s Influence on Modern Feminism
• Feminism and the Fight for Equal Representation in Politics
• Women’s Rights in the Digital Age: A Feminist Examination
• Feminist Critique of Traditional Beauty Standards
• Globalization and Its Effects on Women’s Rights
• The Role of Feminism in LGBTQ+ Rights Advocacy
• Popular Culture and Its Reflection on Feminist Values

Controversial Feminist Research Paper Topics

• Intersectionality in Modern Feminist Movements: An Analysis
• Representation of Women in High-Powered Political Roles
• Cultural Appropriation Within the Feminist Movement: An Inquiry
• The Role of Feminism in Defining Beauty Standards
• Women’s Reproductive Rights: A Debate of Autonomy
• Feminism and Religion: The Question of Compatibility
• Male Allies in the Feminist Movement: An Evaluation
• Shift in Traditional Gender Roles: Feminist Perspective
• Impacts of Media on Perceptions of Feminism
• Dissecting the Wage Gap: A Feminist Examination
• Menstrual Equity: A Battle for Feminist Activists
• Feminism in Popular Music: Power or Appropriation?
• Climate Change: The Unseen Feminist Issue
• Education’s Role in Shaping Feminist Beliefs
• Power Dynamics in the Workplace: A Feminist Scrutiny
• Cyber-Feminism: Harnessing Digital Spaces for Activism
• Healthcare Disparities Faced by Women: An Analysis
• Transgender Women in Feminist Discourse: An Exploration
• Feminist Perspectives on Monogamy and Polyamory
• Feminist Analysis of Modern Advertising Campaigns
• Exploring Sexism in the Film Industry through a Feminist Lens
• Debunking Myths Surrounding the Feminist Movement
• Childcare Responsibilities and Their Feminist Implications
• Women’s Sports: Evaluating Equity and Feminist Advocacy

Feminist Research Paper Topics in Feminism Studies

• Evaluating Feminist Theories: From Radical to Liberal
• Women’s Health Care: Policies and Disparities
• Maternal Mortality: A Global Women’s Rights Issue
• Uncovering Sexism in the Tech Industry
• Critique of Binary Gender Roles in Children’s Toys
• Body Positivity Movement’s Influence on Feminism
• Relevance of Feminism in the Fight Against Human Trafficking
• Women in Coding: Breaking Stereotypes
• The Role of Women in Sustainable Agriculture
• Feminism in the Cosmetics Industry: A Dual-Edged Sword
• The Influence of Feminism on Modern Architecture
• Bridging the Gap: Women in Higher Education Leadership
• The Role of Feminism in Advancing LGBTQ+ Rights
• Menstrual Equity: A Key Women’s Rights Issue
• Women in Classical Music: Breaking Barriers
• Analyzing Gendered Language: A Feminist Approach
• Women’s Rights and Humanitarian Aid: The Interconnection
• Exploring the Role of Women in Graphic Design
• Addressing the Lack of Women in Venture Capitalism
• Impact of Feminism on Urban Planning and Design
• Maternal Labor in the Informal Economy: A Feminist Analysis
• Feminism’s Influence on Modern Dance Forms
• Exploring the Role of Women in the Renewable Energy Sector
• Women in Esports: An Emerging Frontier
• Child Marriage: A Grave Violation of Women’s Rights

Feminist Topics for Discussion

• Feminist Criticism of the Fashion Modelling Industry
• Domestic Violence: Feminist Legal Responses
• Analyzing the Success of Women-Only Workspaces
• Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting: A Human Rights Issue
• Women’s Role in the Evolution of Cryptocurrency
• Women and the Right to Water: A Feminist Perspective
• Gender Stereotypes in Comedy: A Feminist View
• Intersection of Animal Rights and Feminist Theory
• Roles of Feminism in the Fight Against Child Labor
• Representation of Women in Folklore and Mythology
• Women’s Rights in the Gig Economy: Issues and Solutions
• Revisiting Feminism in Post-Soviet Countries
• Women in the Space Industry: Present Status and Future Trends
• The Influence of Feminism on Culinary Arts
• Unraveling the Impact of Fast Fashion on Women Workers
• Feminist Perspectives on Genetic Engineering and Reproduction
• Assessing the Progress of Women’s Financial Literacy
• Sex Work and Feminism: A Controversial Discourse
• Women in Cybernetics: An Untapped Potential
• Uncovering the Women Behind Major Historical Events
• The Impact of the #MeToo Movement Globally
• Women’s Rights in the Cannabis Industry: Challenges and Progress
• Redefining Motherhood: The Intersection of Feminism and Adoption
• Roles of Feminist Movements in Combatting Child Abuse

Women’s Rights Essay Topics for Feminism

• Evolution of Women’s Rights in the 20th Century
• Roles of Women in World War II: Catalyst for Change
• Suffrage Movement: Driving Force Behind Women’s Empowerment
• Cultural Differences in Women’s Rights: A Comparative Study
• Feminist Movements and Their Global Impact
• Women’s Rights in Islamic Societies: Perceptions and Realities
• Glass Ceiling Phenomenon: Analysis and Impacts
• Pioneering Women in Science: Trailblazers for Equality
• Impacts of Media Portrayal on Women’s Rights
• Economic Autonomy for Women: Pathway to Empowerment
• Women’s Rights in Education: Global Perspective
• Gender Equality in Politics: Global Progress
• Intersectionality and Women’s Rights: Race, Class, and Gender
• Legal Milestones in Women’s Rights History
• Inequities in Healthcare: A Women’s Rights Issue
• Modern-Day Slavery: Women and Human Trafficking
• Climate Change: A Unique Threat to Women’s Rights
• Body Autonomy and Reproductive Rights: A Feminist Analysis
• Globalization’s Effect on Women’s Rights: Opportunities and Threats
• Gender Violence: An Erosion of Women’s Rights
• Indigenous Women’s Rights: Struggles and Triumphs
• Women’s Rights Activists: Unsung Heroes of History
• Empowerment Through Sports: Women’s Struggle and Success
• Balancing Act: Motherhood and Career in the 21st Century
• LGBTQ+ Women: Rights and Recognition in Different Societies

Women’s Rights Research Questions

• Evolution of Feminism: How Has the Movement Shifted Over Time?
• The Workplace and Gender Equality: How Effective Are Current Measures?
• Intersectionality’s Influence: How Does It Shape Women’s Rights Advocacy?
• Reproductive Rights: What Is the Global Impact on Women’s Health?
• Media Representation: Does It Affect Women’s Rights Perception?
• Gender Stereotypes: How Do They Impede Women’s Empowerment?
• Global Disparities: Why Do Women’s Rights Vary So Widely?
• Maternal Mortality: How Does It Reflect on Women’s Healthcare Rights?
• Education for Girls: How Does It Contribute to Gender Equality?
• Cultural Norms: How Do They Influence Women’s Rights?
• Leadership Roles: Are Women Adequately Represented in Positions of Power?
• Domestic Violence Laws: Are They Sufficient to Protect Women’s Rights?
• Roles of Technology: How Does It Impact Women’s Rights?
• Sexual Harassment Policies: How Effective Are They in Protecting Women?
• Pay Equity: How Can It Be Ensured for Women Globally?
• Politics and Gender: How Does Women’s Representation Shape Policy-Making?
• Child Marriage: How Does It Violate Girls’ Rights?
• Climate Change: How Does It Disproportionately Affect Women?
• Trafficking Scourge: How Can Women’s Rights Combat This Issue?
• Female Genital Mutilation: How Does It Contradict Women’s Rights?
• Armed Conflicts: How Do They Impact Women’s Rights?
• Body Autonomy: How Can It Be Safeguarded for Women?
• Women’s Suffrage: How Did It Pave the Way for Modern Women’s Rights?
• Men’s Role: How Can They Contribute to Women’s Rights Advocacy?
• Legal Frameworks: How Do They Support or Hinder Women’s Rights?

History of Women’s Rights Topics

• Emergence of Feminism in the 19th Century
• Roles of Women in the Abolitionist Movement
• Suffragette Movements: Triumphs and Challenges
• Eleanor Roosevelt and Her Advocacy for Women’s Rights
• Impacts of World War II on Women’s Liberation
• Radical Feminism in the 1960s and 1970s
• Pioneering Women in Politics: The First Female Senators
• Inception of the Equal Rights Amendment
• Revolutionary Women’s Health Activism
• Struggle for Reproductive Freedom: Roe vs. Wade
• Birth of the Women’s Liberation Movement
• Challenges Women Faced in the Civil Rights Movement
• Women’s Roles in the Trade Union Movement
• Intersectionality and Feminism: Examining the Role of Women of Color
• How Did the Women’s Rights Movement Impact Education?
• Sexuality, Identity, and Feminism: Stonewall Riots’ Impact
• Influence of Religion on Women’s Rights Activism
• Women’s Empowerment: The UN Conferences
• Impact of Globalization on Women’s Rights
• Women’s Movements in Non-Western Countries
• Women in Space: The Fight for Equality in NASA
• Achievements of Feminist Literature and Arts
• Evolution of the Women’s Sports Movement
• Advancement of Women’s Rights in the Digital Age
• Cultural Shifts: The Media’s Role in Promoting Women’s Rights

Feminism Essay Topics on Women’s Issues

• Career Challenges: The Gender Wage Gap in Contemporary Society
• Examining Microfinance: An Empowering Tool for Women in Developing Countries
• Pioneers of Change: The Role of Women in the Space Industry
• Exploring Beauty Standards: An Analysis of Global Perspectives
• Impacts of Legislation: Progress in Women’s Health Policies
• Maternity Leave Policies: A Comparative Study of Different Countries
• Resilience Through Struggles: The Plight of Female Refugees
• Technology’s Influence: Addressing the Digital Gender Divide
• Dissecting Stereotypes: Gender Roles in Children’s Media
• Influence of Female Leaders: A Look at Political Empowerment
• Social Media and Women: Effects on Mental Health
• Understanding Intersectionality: The Complexity of Women’s Rights
• Single Mothers: Balancing Parenthood and Economic Challenges
• Gaining Ground in Sports: A Look at Female Athletes’ Struggles
• Maternal Mortality: The Hidden Health Crisis
• Reproductive Rights: Women’s Control Over Their Bodies
• Feminism in Literature: Portrayal of Women in Classic Novels
• Deconstructing Patriarchy: The Impact of Gender Inequality
• Body Autonomy: The Battle for Abortion Rights
• Women in STEM: Barriers and Breakthroughs
• Female Soldiers: Their Role in Military Conflicts
• Human Trafficking: The Disproportionate Impact on Women
• Silent Victims: Domestic Violence and Women’s Health

To Learn More, Read Relevant Articles

385 Odyssey Essay Topics & Ideas

• Icon Calendar 1 August 2023
• Icon Page 3601 words

415 Rogerian Essay Topics & Good Ideas

• Icon Calendar 30 July 2023
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Women’s Rights

By: Bastian Herre , Veronika Samborska , Pablo Arriagada and Hannah Ritchie

Women’s rights are human rights that all women have. But in practice, these rights are often not protected to the same extent as the rights of men.

Among others, women’s rights include: physical integrity rights, such as being free from violence and making choices over their own body; social rights, such as going to school and participating in public life; economic rights, such as owning property, working a job of their choice, and being paid equally for it; and political rights, such as voting for and holding public office.

The protection of these rights allows women to live the lives they want and to thrive in them.

On this page, you can find data and visualizations on how the protection of women’s rights has changed over time, and how it differs across countries.

Research & Writing

Women have made major advances in politics — but the world is still far from equal

Women have gained the right to vote and sit in parliament almost everywhere. But they remain underrepresented, especially in the highest offices.

Bastian Herre

If we can make maternal deaths as rare as they are in the healthiest countries, we can save almost 300,000 mothers each year

Maternal mortality was much more common in the past. Today, it is much lower — but there are still large inequalities across the world.

Hannah Ritchie

Interactive Charts on Women’s Rights

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All visualizations, data, and code produced by Our World in Data are completely open access under the Creative Commons BY license . You have the permission to use, distribute, and reproduce these in any medium, provided the source and authors are credited.

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• Research Guides
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• Women's Suffrage

Suffragists

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Start your research on women's suffrage with this guide highlighting the Schlesinger Library's  archival collections as well as periodicals, photographs, posters, and memorabilia. Some materials may also be available in digital format and links are included where available.

Use the navigation menu to view additional material related to this topic. 

To learn more about suffrage at Radcliffe College, please see the Radcliffe College Suffrage research guide .

In the summer of 2020, supported by funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Schlesinger Library launched two new tools: the Long 19th Amendment Project Portal and the Suffrage School . The Portal is an open-access digital portal that facilitates interdisciplinary, transnational scholarship and innovative teaching around the history of gender and voting rights in the United States. The Suffrage School is a platform where a broad array of researchers, writers, and teachers have been invited to create a series of digital teaching modules. Each lesson in the Suffrage School connects in rich and unpredictable ways to the Library’s Long 19th Amendment Project , which tackles the tangled history of gender and American citizenship.

Please Take Note: Many of our collections are stored offsite and/or have access restrictions. Be sure to contact us in advance of your visit.

• Susan B. Anthony (1820-1906) Best known for her lifelong crusade for woman’s suffrage, Susan B. Anthony was first active in the temperance and anti-slavery movements. Discrimination within these movements, along with her friend Elizabeth Cady Stanton, helped to convinced Anthony that women could not fully participate in social action until equal rights were first secured. She helped to organize the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) in 1869 and served as the second president of the National American Women Suffrage Association (NAWSA) from 1891-1900. In 1872, Anthony cast a vote, for which she was arrested and tried. Anthony died in March 1906 at the age of 86, fourteen years before the Nineteenth Amendment gave American women the right to vote. Please visit the Susan B. Anthony research guide for more information and access to the digitized content.
• Blackwell family The most prominent members of the Blackwell family were Elizabeth (1821-1910) and Emily (1826-1910), among the earliest women doctors and founders of the New York Infirmary and College for Women; their brother Henry Browne Blackwell (1825-1909), his wife Lucy Stone (1818-1893), and their daughter Alice Stone Blackwell (1857-1950), known for their leading roles in the abolition, woman suffrage, and prohibition movements; and their sister-in-law Antoinette Louisa (Brown) Blackwell (1825-1921), wife of Samuel Charles Blackwell (1823-1901), the first woman ordained as a minister in the United States and an active speaker on behalf of abolition, women's rights, and prohibition. The Blackwell family collections document the family’s involvement in the suffrage movement and include materials relating to suffragists Alice Stone Blackwell and Lucy Stone, letters to Antoinette Louisa (Brown) Blackwell from Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, photographs of suffrage parades, and articles about suffrage. They also include materials relating to Emma Stone Lawrence Blackwell, who was a niece of Lucy Stone and active in the New Jersey and Massachusetts suffrage movements. Please visit the Blackwell Family research guide for more information about accessing the digitized materials.
• Alice Stone Blackwell (1857-1950) [in Woman’s Rights Collection] Alice Stone Blackwell, self-proclaimed radical socialist and daughter of suffrage leaders Lucy Stone and Henry Browne Blackwell, joined her parents at the Woman's Journal , the woman's rights newspaper they had founded and edited. Over the next 35 years, she played a leading role in writing and editing the Woman's Journal . Blackwell was instrumental in bringing about the reconciliation of the National and American Woman Suffrage associations in 1890, and for almost twenty years served as secretary of the new National American Woman Suffrage Association. Among her other positions were president of the New England and Massachusetts Woman Suffrage associations and honorary president of the Massachusetts League of Women Voters. Please visit the Blackwell Family research guide for related materials. [Digital content can be found in ProQuest's History Vault . This database requires a Harvard ID to access.]
• Olympia Brown (1835-1926) Olympia Brown became the first American woman to be ordained by full denominational authority when she was ordained by the St. Lawrence Association of Universalists in 1863. She was also active in the suffrage movement, primarily in Wisconsin and then on a national level. In 1868 Brown helped found the New England Woman’s Suffrage Association, the first suffrage organization in the United States. She also joined the Congressional Union (later the National Woman’s Party) and distributed suffrage material in front of President Wilson’s White House. After the passage of the School Suffrage Law in Wisconsin in 1885, Brown cast a vote in November of 1887, but her vote was rejected and her case went to court. Brown argued on her own behalf and won, but the decision was repealed by the Wisconsin Supreme Court. [Digital content can be accessed directly through the finding aid and in ProQuest's History Vault . The database requires a Harvard ID to access.]
• Carrie Chapman Catt (1859-1947) Carrie Chapman Catt, an active suffragist and peace leader, joined the Iowa Suffrage Association in 1887 and attended the first convention of the newly organized National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) in 1890 as an Iowa delegate. She became chair of NAWSA's Organization Committee in 1895 and thereafter worked for suffrage both nationally and internationally. She joined Jane Addams in founding the Woman's Peace Party in 1915 and organized the Committee on the Cause and Cure of War (which met annually from 1925 to 1939), serving as its chair until 1932. Material can be found in the Woman's Rights Collection and the Mary Earhart Dillon Collection . [Digital content for both collections can be found in ProQuest's History Vault . This database requires a Harvard ID to access.]
• Mary Jane Whitely Coggeshall In 1870 Mary Jane Coggeshall was a founding member of the Polk County (Iowa) Woman Suffrage Society, and edited The Woman's Hour, which the Society produced between 1877 and 1880. She also held numerous positions in the Iowa Woman Suffrage Association (which became the Iowa Equal Suffrage Association in 1897), including three terms as president. Coggeshall was elected an auditor for the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) in 1902 and 1904, attended several National American Woman Suffrage Association conventions, and was a speaker at those held in Washington, DC (1904), and Chicago (1907). She also served as editor of The Woman's Standard for its first two years of publication (1886-1888) and its last (1911). See also Additional Papers of Mary J. Coggeshall .
• Mary Ware Dennett (1872-1947) Suffragist, pacifist, artisan, and advocate of birth control and sex education, Mary Ware Dennett was a founder of the National Birth Control League, director of the Voluntary Parenthood League and editor of the Birth Control Herald. Attracted to organizations seeking a broader distribution of wealth and power, she worked for women’s suffrage, the single tax, proportional representation, and free trade. [Digital content can be found in ProQuest's History Vault . This database requires a Harvard ID to access.]
• Mary "Molly" Dewson (1874-1962) Mary “Molly” Dewson was particularly active in the Massachusetts woman’s suffrage movement and the campaign of the National Consumers’ League that worked to secure passage of minimum wage laws for women and children. In 1933, thanks to the influence of Eleanor Roosevelt, her political ally and personal friend, Dewson was appointed head of the Women's Division of the Democratic National Committee. She is credited with securing important positions for many women in the Democratic Party and the Roosevelt Administration. Material can be found in the Woman's Rights Collection and the Papers of Mary "Molly" Dewson . [Digital content can for the Woman’s Rights Collection can be found in ProQuest's History Vault . This database requires a Harvard ID to access.]
• Mary Earhart Dillon Mary Earhart Dillon assembled this collection in the early 1940s in the course of writing Frances Willard: From Prayers to Politics (published under the name Mary Earhart by University of Chicago Press in 1944). Due to the difficulty of finding primary source material, Dillon contacted various women in the Midwest (especially the Chicago lawyer and suffragist Catharine Waugh McCulloch) who had been active in temperance, woman's suffrage, and related movements and activities. These women gave Dillon books and papers they had created or accumulated during their work for these causes. [Digital content can be found in ProQuest's History Vault . This database requires a Harvard ID to access.]
• Mary Elisabeth Dreier (1875-1963) Mary Elisabeth Dreier (also known as Mimi, Mietze, and Tolochee) was a labor and social reformer as well as a suffragist. The negative attitudes of male trade unionists towards women workers helped turn Dreier into an ardent supporter of suffrage and women’s rights. Dreier chaired the Industrial Section of the New York State Woman Suffrage Party and was active in the New York Women’s Trade Union League (WTUL) throughout its existence (1903-1950), serving as president from 1906 to 1914. She never married, but shared a home with fellow reformer Frances Kellor from 1905 until the latter’s death in 1952.
• Margaret Foley (1875-1957) Margaret Foley worked as a speaker and manager of organization work for the Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Association from 1906 to 1915. Foley, along with other young Massachusetts suffragists, was inspired by the militant tactics of suffragists in England and undertook open-air speaking tours in 1909. When she and others trailed Republican candidates through Western Massachusetts publicly questioning their suffrage views, newspapers labeled her a “heckler.” Foley never married and probably lived with her long-time friend and fellow suffragist, Helen Elizabeth Goodnow, for many years. Material can be found in the Woman's Rights Collection and the Papers of Margaret Foley . [Digital content can be found in ProQuest's History Vault . This database requires a Harvard ID to access.]
• Matilda Joslyn Gage (1826-1898) Matilda Joslyn Gage served as the president of the National Woman Suffrage and the New York State Woman Suffrage associations. She also edited the National Woman Suffrage Association periodical National Citizen and Ballot Box . Gage, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Susan B. Anthony together produced the first three volumes of the History of Woman Suffrage . See also Scrapbooks of Matilda Joslyn Gage . [Digital content can be found in ProQuest's History Vault . This database requires a Harvard ID to access.]
• Helen Hamilton Gardener (1853-1925) [in Woman's Rights Collection] Helen Hamilton Gardener settled in Washington, D.C., and took up the suffrage cause in 1907. In 1913 she was appointed to the Congressional Committee of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA). She would go on to become the vice-chair as well as the vice president of NAWSA and served as its chief liaison with the Woodrow Wilson administration. In 1920, Wilson appointed her to the United States Civil Service Commission, making her the first woman to occupy so high a federal position. Gardener also published numerous lectures, articles, and books during the period between 1885 and 1900. [Digital content can be found in ProQuest's History Vault . This database requires a Harvard ID to access.]
• Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860-1935) Charlotte Perkins Gilman was a socialist, deist, independent thinker, and author who was an intellectual leader of the women’s movement from the late 1890s to the 1920s. An advocate of economic independence for women, Gilman considered the ballot of secondary importance. Her interests ranged from sensible dress for women, physical fitness, more rational domestic architecture, and professionalized housework, to birth control, Freud, and immigrants. See also Papers of Charlotte Perkins Gilman (177) . The Schlesinger holds a wide breadth of material related to Gilman, much of which has been digitized. Please see the Charlotte Perkins Gilman research guide for more information about accessing the digitized materials.
• Julia Ward Howe (1819-1910) Julia Ward Howe, perhaps best known as the author of the “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” was also active in and widely respected for her leadership in a variety of fields, including women's suffrage. After the Civil War, she helped found the New England Woman Suffrage Association (1868). In 1869, along with Lucy Stone, Howe became a leader of the American Woman Suffrage Association. She served as the president of the Massachusetts (1870-1878, 1891-1893) and the New England (1868-1877, 1893-1910) suffrage associations. She was also one of the founders of the Woman's Journal . In addition to her work regarding suffrage, she was also extremely active in the women’s club movement. She was a founder (1868) and president of the New England Woman’s Club and of the Association for the Advancement of Women (1873). [Digital content can be found in ProQuest's History Vault . This database requires a Harvard ID to access.]
• Hazel Hunkins-Hallinan (1890-1982) Hazel Hunkins-Hallinan was born in Aspen, Colorado, in 1890. Denied the opportunity to teach chemistry and physics because she was a woman, she was inspired to join the National Woman’s Party. She became a prominent figure in the picket lines in front of the White House, which led to her arrest and imprisonment in the Occoquan Workhouse, where she and other suffragists participated in a hunger strike. In addition to being a journalist, she was also the author of a children’s book, The Story of America (1942) and the editor of In Her Own Right (1968), a collection of feminist essays.
• Grace A. Johnson (1871-1952) [in Woman's Rights Collection] Grace A. Johnson defined herself as an educator, lecturing and writing on a wide variety of topics, including suffrage, the status of women, prohibition, and aspects of democracy and government structure. During a 1907 trip to Europe with her family, Johnson became interested in woman suffrage and subsequently served as president to the Cambridge Political Equality Association from 1911 to 1915 – the first of a number of similar positions. She advocated for woman suffrage and for the United States’ participation in the League of Nations (and later the United Nations) and World Court. Johnson was one of three Massachusetts women delegates to the 1912 Progressive Party national convention in Chicago. [Digital content can be found in ProQuest's History Vault . This database requires a Harvard ID to access.]
• Florence Ledyard Cross Kitchelt (1874-1961) Florence Ledyard Cross Kitchelt worked as a social worker at a number of settlement houses between 1900 and 1907. By 1915, she had become a proponent of woman’s suffrage. She became the Citizenship Director of the Connecticut League of Women Voters in 1920 and was the director of the Connecticut League of Nations Association from 1924 to 1944. She was once an outspoken opponent of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) but eventually became the chairman of the Connecticut Committee for the ERA in 1943.
• Harriet Burton Laidlaw (1873-1949) Throughout her life, Harriet Burton Laidlaw was a suffragist, social and civic reformer, and internationalist. Her concern with women’s rights blossomed into her remarkably active involvement in a variety of causes and organizations. This life of public service is reflected in her participation with many suffrage organizations including the College Equal Suffrage League, National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), and the New York State Woman Suffrage Association/Party. See also Scrapbooks of Harriet Burton Laidlaw [Digital content can be found in ProQuest's History Vault . This database requires a Harvard ID to access.]
• Rosa Marie Finnochietti Levis (1878-1959) Levis was born on Hull Street in the North End of Boston. Her parents, Giovanni and Theresa Finnochietti, were recent immigrants from Genoa, Italy. Levis was proud of her early advocacy (1910) of woman suffrage, claiming to be the first Italian-American suffragist in Massachusetts. During World War I she participated, with other suffragists, in the sale of Liberty Bonds and in programs for food conservation and for Americanization of Italian immigrants.
• Florence Hope Luscomb (1887-1985) Florence Hope Luscomb, social and political activist, became an executive secretary for the Boston Equal Suffrage Association in 1917. She held positions in the Massachusetts Civic League and other organizations and agencies until 1933, when she became a full-time social and political activist. In the early 1920s, Luscomb began to serve on the boards of civil rights, civil liberties, and other organizations. Luscomb ran unsuccessfully for the Boston City Council, U.S. House of Representatives, and governor of Massachusetts. Material can be found in the Woman's Rights Collection and the Papers of Florence Luscomb .
• Catharine Gouger Waugh McCulloch (1862-1945) Both a suffragist and a lawyer, McCulloch served as the legislative superintendent of the Illinois Equal Suffrage Association (1890-1912). She was also active in the movement for women’s rights, seeking state legislation permitting woman suffrage in presidential and local elections not constitutionally limited to male voters, a bill that passed in 1913. She served as legal adviser (1904-ca.1911) and as first vice president (1910-1911) of the National American Woman Suffrage Association. She was also instrumental in the passage of Illinois legislation granting women equal rights in the guardianship of their children (1901) and raising the legal age of consent for women from fourteen to sixteen (1905). Material can be found in the Mary Earhart Dillon Collection and the Papers of Catharine Gouger Waugh McCulloch . [Digital content for the Mary Earhart Dillon Collection can be found in ProQuest's History Vault . This database requires a Harvard ID to access.]
• Helen Brewster Owens (1881-1968) Helen Brewster Owens was both a mathematician and a suffragist. Her mother, Clara (Linton) Brewster, a teacher, was president of the Linn County Women’s Suffrage Association in Kansas, and as a young girl, Owens would help her mother distribute suffrage literature at the county fair. Owens went on to serve as chair of the Resolution Committee for the New York State Woman Suffrage Association (1910). She also organized the College Equal Suffrage League at Cornell (1911) and was a paid organizer and chair of the Sixth Judicial District for the Empire State Campaign Committee (1913-1916). See also Additional Papers of Helen Brewster Owens . [Digital content can be found in ProQuest's History Vault . This database requires a Harvard ID to access.]
• Mary H. Page (1860-1940) Mary Hutcheson lived in Europe with her family as a child; when her parents both died, she moved to Boston to attend classes in biology and chemistry as a special student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In addition to founding a discussion club that became the Brookline Equal Suffrage Association, being president of the Brookline Association, and serving as chairman of the Executive Board of the Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Association, Page played a major role in founding the Boston Equal Suffrage Association for Good Government. Chair of BESAGG's Executive Board and later its president, she was known for her fund-raising skills and ability to convince individual women to join the suffrage cause. Her interest in suffrage extended to the campaigns in Europe; in addition to making several trips there, she corresponded with several English suffragists and entertained Emmeline Pankhurst during her 1909 visit to Massachusetts. In 1912, Page and Gertude Halladay Leonard helped organize the suffrage campaign in Ohio. This collection contains organizational records of the Brookline Equal Suffrage Association and the Committee for Work, which was based in Boston and raised money to support the suffrage movement in Oklahoma and elsewhere. Also included are several of Page's suffrage-related writings and speeches, both handwritten and published; and material pertaining to the British suffrage campaign, including letters to Page from Emmeline Pankhurst and photographs of Pankhurst from her 1909 visit to Boston.
• Alice Park (1861-1961) A socialist, vegetarian, pacifist, founder of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, and campaigner for women's rights, Alice Park wrote the California law, passed in 1913, granting women equal rights of guardianship over their children. She was a delegate and speaker at the Congress of the International Women's Suffrage Alliance in Budapest, Hungary, in June 1913, and a delegate to the Tenth Congress of the International Women's Suffrage Alliance, held in Paris in May 1926. Through her connections with many women's rights organizations, Park acquired a library of feminist books, as well as buttons, leaflets, and posters. This collection includes 55 different posters of the women's suffrage movement collected by Alice Park. Most are British, two are from the international congresses she attended, and eleven are American. [All posters in this collection have been digitized and are accessible without a Harvard ID through HOLLIS Images .]
• Maud Wood Park (1871-1955) [in Woman's Rights Collection] Maud Wood Park graduated from Radcliffe College in 1898 and was active in suffrage and civic work in Boston for more than fifteen years. With Inez Haynes Gilmore, she organized the first chapter of the College Equal Suffrage League in 1900 and during the next eight years worked to establish local chapters in Massachusetts, New York, and the Midwest. Following the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920, Park served as the first president of the National League of Women Voters (1920-1924). She prepared and donated a large body of material on the suffrage movement and on women after 1920 to Radcliffe College in 1943. This collection, called the Woman’s Rights Collection, formed the nucleus of the Women’s Archives, later the Schlesinger Library. [Digital content can be found in ProQuest's History Vault . This database requires a Harvard ID to access.]
• Alice Paul (1885-1977) Alice Paul was a Quaker, lawyer, and lifelong activist for women’s rights. She was active in the Women’s Social and Political Union in England, where she was arrested and jailed repeatedly as a participant in the campaign for women’s rights led by Emmeline Pankhurst. After returning to the United States in 1910, Paul was appointed chair of the Congressional Committee of the National American Woman Suffrage Association in 1912. In June 1916, Paul founded the National Woman’s Party (NWP), its sole plank a resolution calling for immediate passage of the federal amendment guaranteeing the enfranchisement of women. After the ratification of the suffrage amendment in 1920, the NWP began a long battle to end all legal discrimination against women in the United States and to raise the legal, social, and economic status of women around the world. The Equal Rights Amendment, as written by Paul in 1923, was first introduced in Congress in December of that year. In 1938, Paul founded the World Woman’s Party in Geneva, Switzerland. This collection is digitized and is accessible through the finding aid for the Alice Paul collection (Call#: MC 399). See also Videotape collection of Alice Paul .
• Wenona Osborne Pinkham (1882-1930) Pinkham was a suffragist, reformer, and lobbyist. She taught in the Denver, Colorado, public schools and was a founder and president of the North Side Neighborhood House in Denver. As state chair for the Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Association (1913-1915), Pinkham spoke to audiences as an example of a woman voter, since Colorado had granted women suffrage years before. In 1917, she became executive secretary of the Boston Equal Suffrage Association for Good Government and remained in this position when the organization became the Boston League of Women Voters. In late 1922 she left the league and became associate executive secretary of the Massachusetts Civic League, which promoted social welfare legislation and such issues as paying prisoners for their work. From 1923 until her sudden death in 1930, Pinkham served as the Massachusetts Civic League's executive secretary.
• Jeannette Rankin (1880-1973) Jeannette Rankin, after briefly working as a social worker in Seattle, campaigned for women’s suffrage in Washington, California, Montana, and other states from 1910 to 1915. The first woman elected to Congress (1916), she voted against United States entry into World War I and worked for women’s rights as well as peace legislation. From 1919 to 1940, Rankin lobbied Congress and lectured for various peace and other humanitarian causes. In the 1920s, she was employed by the National Consumers’ League and the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom and founded the Georgia Peace Society. [Digital content can be found in ProQuest's History Vault . This database requires a Harvard ID to access.]
• Rebecca Hourwich Reyher (1897-1987) Reyher was an author, lecturer, suffragist, and traveler. In March 1913, she began her life's work for women's rights by participating in the first national suffrage parade in the United States. She carried her newfound passion to New York City and beyond, organizing street meetings and opening offices for the National Woman's Party. In 1924, Reyher took her first trip to South Africa as a journalist; it opened her eyes to the plight of women in other countries and inspired at least four more trips to the African continent. She wrote many books and articles (some unpublished) regarding women's rights throughout Africa, India, and Sri Lanka. Back in the United States, Reyher continued her work with the National Woman's Party, maintaining close friendships with many of the women and men who fought for equal rights for women.
• Anna Howard Shaw (1847-1919) A minister, physician, lecturer, and suffragist, Anna Howard Shaw became increasingly convinced that the problems she encountered in her ministry and as a physician could not be solved without major political and social reforms, and that obtaining the vote for women was a necessary first step. Shaw’s oratorical skills surrounding the suffrage and temperance movements were legendary. In 1913, the National Anti-Suffrage Association forbade its members to engage in any further debate with her. She served as the vice president (1892-1904) and the president (1904-1915) of the National American Woman Suffrage Association as well as acting as the chair of the Woman’s Committee of the U.S. Council of National Defense (1917-1919). For her extraordinary work and success in the coordination women’s contributions to the war effort, she was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal by the United States government in May 1919. Material can be found in the Woman's Rights Collection and the Mary Earhart Dillon Collection . [Digital content for both collections can be found in ProQuest's History Vault . This database requires a Harvard ID to access.]
• Nellie Nugent Somerville (1863-1952) Nellie Nugent Somerville became active in suffrage and temperance work in the early 1890s, becoming Corresponding Secretary of the Mississippi Woman’s Christian Temperance Union in 1894 and organizing the Mississippi Woman Suffrage Association in 1897. By 1915 she was vice president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association. In 1923, she became the first woman elected to the Mississippi legislature, serving until 1927. She is viewed as a pioneer in Mississippi’s work for women’s rights and was the first woman to be elected to the state House of Representatives. See also Additional Papers of Nellie Nugent Somerville . [Digital content can be found in ProQuest's History Vault . This database requires a Harvard ID to access.]
• Edna Lamprey Stantial (1897-1985) Edna Lamprey Stantial was secretary of the Boston Equal Suffrage Association for Good Government from 1916 to 1920 and was reportedly its youngest member. After the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment guaranteeing woman suffrage, she became executive secretary of the Boston League of Women Voters until 1924, when her daughter was born. Stantial continued to work for women’s rights as a volunteer while raising her child. She became close to Maud Wood Park and Alice Stone Blackwell through her political activity. Stantial was extremely organized as well as dedicated to the cause of women’s history. She helped Park gather the papers she gave to Radcliffe College in 1943 that formed the Woman’s Rights Collection, and she was named archivist of the National American Woman Suffrage Association in 1950. Stantial continued throughout her life to assemble and disseminate suffrage-related information and historical documents to a variety of repositories. Materials can be found in the Papers of Edna Lamprey Stantial and the Mary Earhart Dillon Collection . [Digital content can be found in ProQuest's History Vault . This database requires a Harvard ID to access.]
• Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815-1902) In 1840 Elizabeth Cady Stanton was appointed a delegate to the World Anti-Slavery Convention in London. There she met Lucretia Mott, with whom she signed the first call for a women’s rights convention. She was the chief agent in calling the Seneca Falls Convention (1848), and following the Convention she remained one of the leaders of women in America until her death. From 1855 to 1865 she served as the president of the National Committee of the Suffrage Party. She was president of the National Woman Suffrage Association until 1890. She was also the joint author, along with Susan B. Anthony, Matilda Joslyn Gage, and Ida Husted Harper, of The History of Woman Suffrage .
• Doris Stevens (1888-1963) Doris Stevens became active in the suffrage movement in 1913, when the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage, which became the National Woman’s Party, hired her as an organizer. Stevens held this position through 1920, at which time she published her book, Jailed for Freedom , which described the imprisonment of women activists in 1917 during the National Woman’s Party’s radical campaign for suffrage. Stevens was an active member of the National Woman’s Party for thirty years and served the party in various capacities: as vice president, as chair of the Committee on International Action, and as a member of the National Council.
• Lucy Stone (1818-1893) [in Woman's Rights Collection] Lucy Stone, a suffragist and abolitionist, gave her first public address on women’s rights in 1847. In 1850 she called for the first national women’s rights convention and had much to do with arranging later conventions. When the 14th Amendment was pending both she and her husband, Henry Brown Blackwell, tried in vain to strike the word "male" from it and thereby win suffrage for women. When the American Equal Rights Association was organized (1866), she became a member of the executive committee. In 1868, Stone and Blackwell helped organize the New England Woman Suffrage Association. She was a leading figure in the Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Association, which she helped found in 1870, and in the American and New England Associations. She likewise spent a great deal of time lecturing, drafting bills, and attending legislative hearings in the interest of women's rights. Materials can be found in the Woman’s Rights Collection and the Blackwell family papers. [Digital content for the Woman’s Rights Collection can be found in ProQuest's History Vault . This database requires a Harvard ID to access. Please visit the Blackwell Family research guide for related materials.]
• Betty Gram Swing (1893-1969) Suffragist Betty Gram Swing was born Myrtle Eveline Gram. With her sister Alice, she joined the women's rights movement in 1917 and was part of a group arrested for protesting the treatment of Alice Paul in prison. After her release, she joined the National Woman's Party as a national organizer and worked for the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment. Correspondence, speeches, clippings, and printed material show Swing's work with the National Woman's Party, first as a "suffrage picket" who served jail time in 1917, and later as an advocate for the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment. Material documenting Gram Swing's work with international women's groups, such as the Six Point Group, the Inter-American Commission of Women, the World Woman's Party, and the League of Nations Consultative Committee on Nationality, shows the tight social circles of international women's rights activists, as well as the connections between national and international campaigns.
• Woman's Rights Collection Donated by Maud Wood Park in 1943, this collection of papers concerning women and men involved in the woman's rights movement formed the nucleus of the Women's Archives, which is now the Schlesinger Library. The collection contains correspondence, journals, notebooks, speeches, financial documents, reports, minutes, membership lists, agendas, bulletins, pamphlets, manuals, articles, clippings, maps, scrapbooks, photos, posters, memorabilia, plays, books, etc. Highlighting the work done in Massachusetts, the collection primarily documents the suffrage movement and also the gains for women in government participation, protective legislation, and employment opportunities after 1920. It includes papers of and about little-known women, suffrage leaders, and professional women; records of suffrage groups; and information on international peace activities. [Digital content can be found in ProQuest's History Vault . This database requires a Harvard ID to access.]
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Article contents

Women’s rights as human rights.

• Jutta Joachim Jutta Joachim Institute for Political Science, Leibniz University
• https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190846626.013.430
• Published in print: 01 March 2010
• Published online: 11 January 2018

For centuries, women have been struggling for the recognition of their rights. Women’s rights are still being dismissed by United Nations (UN) human rights bodies and even governments, despite the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sex. It was not until the 1993 UN World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna, Austria that states began to recognize women’s rights as human rights. However, this institutional change cannot solely be credited to the UN, but more importantly to the work of international women’s organizations. According to the social movement theory, these organizations have been permeating intergovernmental structures and, with the help of their constituents and experienced leaders, framing women’s rights as human rights in different ways throughout time. It is through mobilizing resources and seizing political opportunities that women’s rights activists rationalize how discrimination and exclusion resulted from gendered traditions, and that societal change is crucial in accepting women’s rights as fully human. But seeing as there are still oppositions to the issue of women’s rights as human rights, further research still needs to be conducted. Some possible venues for research include how well women’s rights as human rights travel across different institutions, violence against women, how and in what way women’s rights enhance human rights, and the changes that have taken place in mainstream human rights and specialized women’s rights institutions since the late 1980s as well as their impact.

• women’s rights
• human rights
• United Nations
• women’s organizations
• discrimination
• gendered traditions
• societal change

Introduction

Although the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex, women’s rights violations were until recently ignored by both governments and United Nations (UN) human rights bodies. It took until the UN World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna, Austria, in 1993 for states to recognize women’s rights as human rights. In the Vienna Declaration and the Program of Action adopted at the end of the conference, governments agreed on the following text:

The human rights of women and of the girl-child are an inalienable, integral and indivisible part of universal human rights. The full and equal participation of women in political, civil, economic, social and cultural life, at the national, regional and international levels, and the eradication of all forms of discrimination on grounds of sex are priority objectives of the international community. Gender-based violence and all forms of sexual harassment and exploitation, including those resulting from cultural prejudice and international trafficking, are incompatible with the dignity and worth of the human person, and must be eliminated (UN General Assembly 1993 : Article 18).

Since then, a number of institutional changes have occurred: the UN General Assembly adopted a Declaration on the Elimination of all Forms of Violence against Women which condemns gender-based violence as human rights violations, appointed a Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women, and most recently, the Security Council adopted two resolutions on “Women and Peace and Security” – 1325 and 1820 – that recognize women’s rights in the protection of international peace.

Drawing on social movement theory, this essay attributes these outcomes to the work of international women’s organizations, which engaged in frame extension and frame bridging, seizing political opportunities, and mobilizing their own resources. Working through intergovernmental structures and relying on both their constituents as well as their experienced leaders, these organizations have framed women’s rights as human rights in different ways throughout time. While at the turn of the century, women’s organizations demanded equal political rights and opportunities with men (equal treatment frame), they called for special treatment and (affirmative) action starting in the 1960s based on the assumption that the neglect of women’s rights is structural in nature and that international human rights law is male-biased (the woman’s frame). And since the 1990s, many activists are of the conviction that discrimination and exclusion are the result of gendered institutions and that societal change is needed for women’s rights to be respected as fully human (the gender frame).

This state of the art essay is divided into four parts. The first elaborates on the theoretical concepts of framing, political opportunity structure, and mobilizing resources. The second section then turns to the different frames which women’s rights activists employed at the international level across time, illustrating how they differ in what they identify as being the source for women’s rights’ exclusion from international human rights law, suggest as remedies, and offer as justifications for the proposed changes. The third section provides a genealogy of the international women’s rights movement using the analytical constructs. It shows how the international context and the composition of the international women’s movement determined how women’s rights as human rights were defined at a specific point in time, and contributed to framing contests, the privileging of certain frames, and the marginalization of others. Concluding with the assertion that women’s rights as human rights continues to be a contested proposition, the essay closes by suggesting future venues for research.

Frames, Political Opportunities, and Mobilizing Resources

Given the state-centric character of conventional international relations theories, feminists have often borrowed heuristic devices and methods from other disciplines to study the role of women and gender in global politics. In the case of the international women’s rights movement, quite a number of scholars (e.g. Friedman 1995 ; 2003 ; Clark et al. 1998 ; Joachim 2003 ; 2007 ) have drawn on social movement theory to explain the successes and challenges women’s rights activists and organizations face. Three concepts appear particularly useful in this respect: framing, political opportunity structure, and mobilizing resources.

Frames capture the “conscious strategic efforts by groups of people to fashion shared understandings of the world and of themselves that legitimate and motivate collective action” (McAdam et al. 1996 :6). In this respect, frames have a diagnostic, a prognostic, and a motivational dimension (Snow and Benford 1988 ). They “provide a perspective from which an amorphous, ill-defined and problematic situation can be made sense of and acted upon” (Rein and Schön 1991 :263).

Framing is not an easy task, particularly at the international level – not only because new frames frequently challenge existing frames or compete with other frames, but also because they need to “resonate” with people from diverse cultural and political backgrounds. According to social movement scholars, activists frequently engage in what Snow et al. refer to as “frame alignment,” and define as the linking of different frames so that their ideas, beliefs, and interpretations are compatible (Snow et al. 1986 :464). This can take either the form of “frame bridging,” which involves the linkage of two or more ideologically congruent but structurally unconnected frames regarding a particular problem (p. 467), or “frame extension,” referring to the enlargement of a frame’s boundaries so that it encompasses interests or points of view that are incidental to the frame’s primary objectives, but are of considerable salience to potential adherents (p. 472). Women’s rights activists have engaged in both strategies. They have linked women’s concerns to broader already accepted themes, such as human rights, development, or peace, and by doing so have often pushed the boundaries of already accepted frames.

Frames that resonate with a large number of actors and across different contexts are employed by other NGOs. They become so-called “master frames,” which provide the ideational and interpretative anchoring for subsequent struggles (Tarrow 1994 ). “Women’s rights as human rights” can be considered such a master frame today. While women’s activists employed the human rights discourse to delegitimize violence against women, it is now applied widely by other movements to gain acceptance for their otherwise contested concerns. Whether activists can mobilize support for their frames depends on the political opportunity structure in which they are embedded as well as the mobilizing resources they possess.

The political opportunity structure refers to the broader institutional context that provides opportunities for or imposes constraints on NGOs engaged in framing processes (McAdam et al. 1996 :2–3). For the women’s movement, but also for other movement groups, international organizations, the venues of multilateral negations, international agencies, as well as national ones, and governments are important in this respect. They provide, according to Tarrow, a “coral reef” where transnational activists “lobby and protest, encounter others like themselves, identify friendly states, and from time to time, put together successful global–national coalitions” (Tarrow 2005 :19). Reflecting on the contemporary transnational women’s movement, Friedman identifies the UN conferences as a major element of the political opportunity structure which “conditioned women’s rights organizing, whether in establishing the agenda for global discussion or the rules through which non-governmental representatives can participate” (Friedman 2003 :315). While institutions and the actors comprising them are an important part of the political opportunity structure, it is not limited to them. A number of scholars have also stressed that noninstitutional elements can present a window for activists to make their voices heard, such as, for example, symbolic events like the end of the Cold War.

Mobilizing resources, by comparison, are “the collective vehicles, informal as well as formal, through which people mobilize and engage in collective action” (McAdam et al. 1996 :315). In the case of the international women’s movement, so-called organizational entrepreneurs have contributed to its success. These are individuals and organizations that bring with them a wealth of organizing experiences, are well connected, and have vision and charisma. Furthermore, the building and extension of networks that support and lend credibility to the movement has been a critical factor as has the accumulation of expertise, both with respect to the issues promoted and to the norms and rules that prevail in the international institutions in which they were active (Joachim 2007 ).

Women have been struggling for the recognition of their rights for centuries. Throughout this time they have employed primarily three different frames to justify women’s rights as human rights: the equal treatment frame, the women’s frame, and the gender frame. While all of these frames contest the exclusion of women’s rights from human rights discourse, they differ as to what they consider to be the source of this neglect, how it can be remedied, and on what grounds the linkage of women’s rights and human rights is justified.

The Equal Treatment Frame

The equal treatment frame is premised on the idea of equal access and opportunity. It identifies the unequal treatment between men and women to be the main source of discrimination. Compared to men, women are granted fewer human rights and opportunities. According to equal treatment proponents, this is less a problem of international human rights law itself, which they view as authoritative, than the failure of states and nonstate actors in the past to apply and enforce these rights (Reanda 1981 :11–12; Cook 1993 ).

Disadvantages suffered by women can be redressed by a simple requirement of equal treatment. In practice this means that laws need to be adopted and legal barriers dismantled to bring about women’s legal equality with men in the public sphere and to create a level playing field. Proponents of the equal rights perspective perceive the integration of women’s rights into human rights law as rather unproblematic, because it will neither disrupt nor change the existing structures. Quite the contrary, according to Rebecca Cook , it is only through such recognition that “international law [can] unfold its full potential and fulfill its promise to respect the human rights of all without sexual discrimination” (Cook 1994 :128).

The equal rights approach has been criticized because women’s rights are merely integrated and added in, without challenging existing structures and policies that are considered the real sources of discrimination. According to Teresa Rees , the equal treatment approach, or what she refers to as “tinkering” (Rees 1998 :42), is flawed because it is rooted:

in a narrow distributive conception of justice, and focuses the debate upon the allocation of positions within a hierarchy which is given. It ignores the impact of patriarchy in the home and its interactions with capital to produce gendered organizations which systematically disadvantage women. It discounts the impact of other forms of unequal power relations, for example, those which accrue as a result of class or racial oppression and discrimination. (pp. 29–30)

Although the equal treatment frame might stand a better chance of being accepted by policy makers, its impact is, in the eyes of Walby, most likely to be less substantial (Walby 2005 :324).

The Women’s Frame

In contrast to the equal treatment frame, the women’s frame identifies international human rights law as highly problematic. “Reduced to its simplest and most basic term, the underlying problem […],” according to Riane Eisler is, “that the yardstick that has been developed for defining and measuring human rights has been based on the male as the norm” (Eisler 1987 :33). Put differently, international human rights law reflects a male view of the universe (Charlesworth 1994 :65). “[T]he prototypic ‘human rights’ case is an individual [male] political activist imprisoned for the expression of his views or political organizing” (Binion 1995 :509) with the state directly or indirectly implicated in the rights violations that are brought on to him. All other cases that do not match this “Bill of Rights model of liberty” seldom receive international attention, including issues related to marriage, procreation, labor, property ownership, sexual repression, and other manifestations of unequal citizenship, which are argued to be private, nongovernmental, and reflective of cultural difference.

The women’s frame is predicated on the idea that women’s voices and experiences are distinctive and need to be accounted for in international human rights law. Proponents of this frame call, therefore, for separate conventions, institutions, and positive (affirmative) action. They emphasize strategies and initiatives that “recognize women as a disadvantaged group in society, who deserve and require particular treatment and specialist provision in order to rectify their past discrimination” (Booth and Bennett 2002 ).

According to Hillary Charlesworth , the value of the women’s frame, or what she refers to as “cultural feminism,” is that it “responds more accurately to the reality of most women’s lives” (Charlesworth 1994 :66), “highlight[s] the almost comprehensive exclusion of women’s experiences from the development of the law, and challenge[s] its claim of neutrality and objectivity” (p. 65). However, it too has problems. Similar to the equality frame, “it is concerned with the distribution of positions within hierarchies rather than with challenging the structural status quo which reinforces systems of oppression in those hierarchies” (Rees 1998 :35). This is why Rees refers to the frame as “tailoring.” Although it allows “for ‘add-on’, supplementary measures to take account of women’s ‘special’ position [they are only] ‘nips and tucks’ to accommodate their different shape” (p. 44). Moreover, the adoption of specific women’s rights conventions and the establishment of women’s rights institutions can result in the marginalization of women’s rights in the human rights system and the creation of what Reanda ( 1992 :267) and others (e.g. Bunch 1995 ) have called a “women’s ghetto.”

The Gender Frame

The gender frame differs from the equal treatment and the women’s frames in several respects. Rather than speaking of women and men, gender is introduced to highlight the social construction of alleged differences between men and women. Injustices and inequalities exist, according to this perspective, because relations and institutions are gendered. Women are neither viewed as a monolithic group nor are men exclusively perceived as deliberate oppressors. Instead, the gender frame takes into consideration not only the ways in which class, culture, or race contributes to and compounds differences, but also that men, like women, can be (dis-)empowered by social arrangements.

With respect to the sources of women’s exclusion from international human rights law, proponents of the gender approach consider the distinction between, first, public and private, and, second, that between political and civil rights, on the one hand, and social, economic, and cultural rights, on the other hand, as fundamental. With respect to the former, Eisler points out that the private sphere, traditionally conceived of as women’s domain, is an artificial construct, that is “applied in a selective manner” and serves important “systems maintenance functions in male-dominated or patriarchical societies.” First, it perpetuates “the idea that the rights of women are of a different – or lower – order than the rights of ‘man,’” thereby making it possible “to justify practices that do not accord women full and equal status” (Eisler 1987 :28; see also Romany 1994 :93). Consequently, women in international human rights law become, according to Romany, “paradigmatic aliens – the outsider, the foreigner, the stateless subject” (Romany 1994 :102). Second, the exclusion of the private sphere from international human rights law “serves as a hidden but effective obstacle to fundamental systems change by preventing […] the creation of a social system where the human rights of all persons are fully recognized and respected” (Eisler 1987 ). Finally, the assumption of privacy is misleading because the family is highly political. The violence that occurs within the family (Bunch 1990 :490–91; Sullivan 1995 :127), invades women’s “basic human right to bodily and sexual integrity” (Eisler 1987 :31).

The distinction between civil and political rights, on the one hand, and social, economic, and cultural rights, on the other hand, is equally problematic. Especially the privileging of the former in international human rights law, impedes, according to Bunch, the consideration of women’s rights since much of the abuse against them is part of the larger socioeconomic web in which they are entrapped and can neither be delineated as exclusively political or solely caused by the state (Bunch 1990 :488; see also Romany 1994 :87; Charlesworth 1995 ).

The gender frame is transformative, calling for a just and fair distribution of resources. It involves what Rees refers to as a “paradigm shift” (Rees 1998 :46). According to Hillary Charlesworth , a gender frame suggests “transforming the masculine world of rights, masquerading as ‘human,’ by extending it to include protection against all forms of subordination on the basis of gender.” In practice this means “identify[ing] policies and practices that contribute to women’s inferior position in different societies and insist[ing] that the structure of human rights law offer protection against them” (Charlesworth 1994 :67). Hence, rather than establishing a separate body of law as the women’s perspective suggests, the gender perspective is premised on the assumption that inequalities can only be eliminated, through societal change. Gender needs to be recognized within all areas, including human rights.

Like the other frames, so too has that concerning gender mainstreaming been subject to criticism (e.g. Woodward 2003 ; Hankivsky 2005 ; Rees 2005 ). Just as in the case of the women’s frame, some fear the marginalization of women’s concerns, albeit not by separating them from but, instead, linking them to broader concerns. If no specific institution is tasked with taking gender into consideration, so the argument goes, nobody will take responsibility for it. Others are skeptical about its transformative potential in light of the fact that new gender norms have “to fight their way into institutional thinking,” contradict traditional norms, and may have to compete with other goals (Elgstrom 2000 ). What follows might come, according to Walby, closer to “negotiation […] than simple adoption of new policies” (Walby 2005 :322).

Although the gender, women’s, and equal treatment frames emphasize different reasons for the exclusion of women’s rights from international human rights law, and propose different solutions and justifications for how this problem can be remedied, they should not be viewed as entirely separate or exclusive. According to Booth and Bennett, they are part of what they call the “three-legged equality stool” (Booth and Bennett 2002 :434). Each of the frames plays and played a role in mainstreaming women’s rights. As Charlesworth illustrates:

[t]he model of nondiscrimination can change the formal language and offer[s] particular individuals limited remedies against inequality. Attempting to balance the thoroughly gendered nature of the international human rights system by defining the category of women’s rights can alter a monolithic conception of inequality. And understanding the relations of power and subordination endorsed by the law can suggest methods of reform that will not fall into the same trap. (Charlesworth 1994 :68)

In the following historical section, I will show how the different frames have been interacting within the specific circumstances of different contexts, been subject to conflicts, and have either been privileged or marginalized depending on how compatible they were with other already accepted frames.

Women’s Rights as Human Rights: A Historical Perspective

Women’s activism at both the national and international level is generally divided into three historically specific phases and analyzed in terms of first, second, and third wave feminism (Booth and Bennett 2002 :433). The first covers the years between 1900 and 1950 , when women’s rights activists were primarily concerned with obtaining equal political rights within newly emerging international institutions, such as the League of Nations and the United Nations. The second wave stretches from the 1960s to the late 1980s, with the UN Decade for Women ( 1976–85 ) and the three World Conferences held in Mexico City in 1975 , Copenhagen in 1980 , and Nairobi in 1985 , constituting important focal points. Contrary to the first wave, when the equal treatment frame was particularly prevalent, the women’s frame gained in popularity during this phase of women’s international activism. Since the early 1990s, we can witness a third wave of women’s international activism and a shift to the gender frame.

Women’s Rights as Equal Rights (1900–1950s)

During the first wave of women’s international organizing, campaigns were limited, for the most part, to political and civil rights, including suffrage, labor, and equal nationality rights. They reflected the views of mostly upper class North American and European women comprising the international movement. International conferences organized by either women themselves or by intergovernmental organizations, such as the League of Nations and later the United Nations, provided opportunities for women to mobilize governmental support for their concerns. Quite a number of international women’s rights conventions were adopted and international institutions established to promote and protect women’s rights. Although the equal treatment frame appeared to be the most predominant during this time, the women’s frame mattered as well.

Women’s concern for equal political and civil rights at the turn of the century was, according to Stienstra, no coincidence. Instead, it was spurred by “the contradictions in their lives between the increased ability to obtain education and paid labor and their lack of participation in politics and government, especially in the basic right to vote” (Stienstra 1994 :47). While women had been focusing their efforts on the national level and only communicating with women in other countries through letters, the Seneca Falls conventions held in the United States in 1848 constituted an important symbolic event regarding the formation of an international women’s movement. Over 300 women gathered and adopted the Declaration of Sentiments drafted by Elizabeth Cady Stanton , Lucretia Mott, and others. Resembling the US Declaration of Independence in structure and language, the declaration identified all men as responsible for women’s oppression and compiled a list of grievances about the ways in which women were denied their rights.

The convention also sparked the formation of the first international networks and organizations. In 1888 , for example, the International Congress of Women (ICW) was established in Washington, DC. Since this was not a suffrage organization per se (Stienstra 1994 :48), Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony , and Carrie Chapman Catt (all from the US) founded the International Women’s Suffrage Alliance (IWSA) in 1904 , which aimed more specifically at “secur[ing] the enfranchisement of the women of all the nations,” but was turned into the International Alliance of Women (IAW) when suffrage was achieved. These organizations were heavily Euro-American. As Rupp and Taylor point out, “[w]omen from the United States, Great Britain, western and northern Europe constituted the original membership of international [women’s] organizations and also dominated their leadership” (Rupp and Taylor 1999 :367; see also Rupp 1994 ). Moreover, apart from the Socialist Women’s International (SWI) founded by Clara Zetkin in 1907 , the members of most international women’s organizations at the time were often of bourgeois or aristocratic decent, “with leisure time and sufficient resources to engage in international travel and communication” (Stienstra 1994 :48). In addition, many of the women were experienced activists and had been at the forefront of social reform movements at the national level, such as, for example, the temperance, antislavery, prostitution, and penal reform movements in the US. Their thinking was inspired by liberal feminist thinkers, such as Olympe de Gouges and her Dèclaration des droites de la femme et de la citoyenne published already in 1791 , Jean Jacques Rousseau , Mary Wollstonecraft ’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman ( 1792 ), and John Stuart Mill ’s The Subjection of Women ( 1869 ).

Convinced that “the advancement of women in different countries required governmental policies and democratic opportunities for women to influence” (Pietilä 2007 :1), women’s rights activists at the international level placed great importance on intergovernmental cooperation from early on. Shocked by the destructiveness of World War I, women from both warring and neutral countries gathered in The Hague in 1915 for their first International Women’s Congress, pleading not only for world peace and for women to be given political representation at both the national and international level (Costin 1982 ; Wiltsher 1985 ), but also traveling around European capitals subsequently to muster support among governments for their international peace proposal, namely a conference of neutrals (Joachim 2007 :47–52).

Women were also present at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 , where the League of Nations and the International Labor Organization (ILO) were founded, asking governments, among other things, to promote universal suffrage and to work for both the abolishment of trafficking in women as well as state-supported prostitution (Pietilä 2007 ). According to Miller, women’s engagement with the League of Nations was not only key to women’s equality, but it also engendered international politics in two important respects. First, women demanded access to intergovernmental meetings, which until then had been the exclusive realm of heads of states, foreign ministers, and diplomats, and second, through their well-prepared proposals, they placed on the international agenda what had previously been perceived as exclusively domestic issues (Miller 1994 ).

Women’s rights organizations, such as the IAW and the ICW, also took advantage of the International Conference for the Codification of International Law conducted by the League of Nations in The Hague in the summer of 1930 to lobby for equal nationality rights with men since it was then, and in some countries still is today, common practice that women would lose their nationality when entering into marriage (Bredbenner 1998 ; Joachim 2007 ). While initially unsuccessful at the international level, women’s rights activists placed the issue squarely on the agenda of the so-called Pan-American Conferences (Waltz 1937 ). In 1933 , government delegates adopted the Convention on the Nationality of Women in Montevideo, which provided a blueprint for the international Convention on the Nationality of Married Women adopted in 1957 within the framework of the United Nations.

The campaign about equal nationality rights is interesting because it highlights the conflictual nature of framing processes. Women’s organizations were divided about how far-reaching the quest for equal rights should be. According to Rupp and Taylor “[i]n fighting for suffrage, labor legislation, and nationality laws for married women, the international women’s movement divided between those who evaluated laws solely on the basis of whether they treated women identically to men and those who had a vision of just laws for both men and women” (Rupp and Taylor 1999 :375). While the first group, the so-called reformers, aimed for equal treatment only in certain areas, such as nationality rights, but special and protective legislation in all other areas, the other group, the so-called equalitarians, called for equality across the board. While the former included organizations, such as the ICW, the IAW, the International Federation of Women, and the World Union of Women for International Concord among others, the equalitarians were comprised of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom and the All-Asian Conference on Women, which called on the League of Nations to “ensure that all future codification […] shall be free from inequalities based on sex” (Stienstra 1994 :66) as well as the World Women’s Party (WWP), whose aim it was “to defeat any proposed world treaties that would impose special restrictions on women” (Pfeffer 1985 :467; see also Rupp and Taylor 1999 :372–3).

Women’s engagement at the international level was not without risk. Quite frequently they were met with opposition, ridicule, or even outright hostility. To justify their entitlement to political and civil rights, women’s rights activists at the turn of the century invoked the women’s frame. Studying women’s international organizing between 1899 and 1945 , Leila Rupp finds that protagonists commonly referred to themselves as “Mothers of the Human Race,” “carriers of life,” “Mothers of the Nations,” or “guardians of the new generations” (Rupp 1994 :1583). Women were entitled to rights because of the distinct contribution they made to the welfare of their respective societies. As Nitza Berkovitch notes:

The campaign for suffrage was predicated on the construction of women as being essentially different from men and as having higher ethical standards and superior characteristics. This would make women’s contributions, once they were politically equal with men, essential for making a morally better society. Women’s suffrage would purify politics, help pass prohibition laws, help abolish state regulation of prostitution, help eliminate wars, and secure peace. (Berkovitch 2003 :145)

If the scope of equal treatment was still contested at the outset of the nineteenth century , the frame became firmly rooted in the United Nations. The UN Charter affirms not only “the dignity and worth of the human person,” but also “the equal rights of men and women” (Pietilä 2007 ). Thanks to the unyielding efforts of women’s organizations and the commitment of Eleanor Roosevelt of the United States, who had chaired the drafting committee, Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted in 1948 reads, “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights” instead of “All men” and following an extensive debate, phrases such as “every man” or “no man” were replaced with “everyone” and “no one” throughout the text (Glendon 2001 ; Pietilä 2007 :18). Moreover, UN Member States adopted a series of international conventions whose rationale it is “to place women in the same position as men in the public sphere” (Charlesworth 1994 :64). They include, among others, the Political Rights of Women adopted in 1952 , which recognized at least on paper that “the achievement of full status for women as citizens was the key to acceptance of women as equal participants in the life of the community” (McDougal et al. 1975 :514), and the Conventions against Discrimination in Education ( 1962 ) and on Consent to Marriage, Minimum Age of Marriage, and Registration of Marriages ( 1964 ). But even the Covenants on Civil and Political Rights and Social, Economic and Cultural Rights are reflective of the equal rights frame.

In addition to the equal treatment frame, the women’s frame, however, was also still prevalent. Debates about the UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), established in 1946 , help to illustrate this point. While many women’s organizations welcomed the establishment of the Commission to promote equal rights between men and women, they were opposed to what had been the initial plan, granting it only the status of a sub-commission under the umbrella of the then still existing Commission on Human Rights (CHR). Fearing that such an arrangement would result in a peripheral treatment and invisibility of women’s issues, Bodil Begtrup , the first chair of the sub-commission, supported by accredited women’s organizations, successfully pushed a resolution through the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) as a result of which CSW became an autonomous entity (Stienstra 1994 :83–4). The institutional separation concerning women’s rights and human rights that appeared to be the best solution at the time, became, as is shown later, contested at the end of the decade.

Evidence for the women’s frame can also be found in the first conventions that were adopted within the UN framework. According to Kaufman Hevener , they contained, for the most part, protective or corrective provisions which reflected a societal concept of women as a group which needed special treatment (Kaufman Hevener 1986 ). This is particularly true for conventions adopted within the ILO, such as the Convention Concerning Equal Remuneration for Men and Women Workers for Work of Equal Value ( 1951 ), the Convention Concerning Maternity Protection ( 1952 ), or that on Discrimination in Respect of Employment and Occupation ( 1960 ) (Whitworth 1994 ; Berkovitch 2003 ).

Women’s Rights as Separate Rights (1960s–1980s)

With respect to the second wave of the women’s movement, the UN Decade for Women ( 1976–85 ) and more precisely the three world conferences on women convened during it – the first in Mexico City in 1975 , the second in Copenhagen in 1980 , and the final one in Nairobi in 1985 – constituted a watershed (for broader reviews, see, e.g. Fraser 1987 ; Wetzel 1993 ; Chen 1995 ; Friedman 1995 ; 2003 ; Winslow 1995 ; Zinsser 2002 ; Antrobus 2004 ; Fraser and Tinker 2004 ; Jain 2005 ). Not only did they inspire the formation of international and national women’s organizations as well as networks, but they also resulted in, first, the broadening of the movement to include women from developing countries as well as other classes, and, second, the inclusion of a wider set of women’s issues on the global agenda. While the equal treatment frame still played an important role, the women’s frame became more prevalent during this phase.

The UN women’s conferences took place against the backdrop of the ongoing Cold War and decolonialization. Women’s concerns and issues were quite frequently sidelined as a result of what Jaquette refers to as “bloc politics”; that is, the prevailing conflicts between North and South, on the one hand, and East and West, on the other (Jaquette 1995 ). This was particularly true for the conferences in Mexico City and Copenhagen, with delegates from developing countries tabling resolutions that called for a new international economic order or condemning apartheid, racism, imperialism, and Zionism and Northern governments voting against them (see also Fraser 1987 ). Moreover, contrary to other special conferences taking place at the time, the women’s conferences had fewer resources and staff (e.g. Fraser 1987 :21; Pietilä and Vickers 1994 :78; Stienstra 1994 :124; Allan et al. 1995 :32). In contrast to the UN Population Conference in Bucharest in 1974 , for example, which had a three million dollar budget, that of the first Women’s Conference in Mexico City in 1975 was only $350,000 (Teltsch 1975 ), with many of the activities around the meeting being funded almost exclusively through voluntary contributions (Stienstra 1994 :124).

The conflicts around the UN conferences and the rejection of patriarchal, governmental structures prompted some women to organize outside of intergovernmental structures. In 1976 a small group of mostly Northern women organized the International Tribunal on Crimes against Women in Brussels as a “counteraction” to the first UN World Conference in Mexico City, of which they were highly distrustful. Bringing together more than two thousand women from over forty countries and modeled after the war tribunals in Nuremberg and Tokyo, the tribunal saw participants testifying about the male violence they had suffered from and condemned all human forms of oppression as a crime against women (Russell and Van de Ven 1984 ; see also Joachim 2007 ). Almost a decade later, women organized the International Tribunal and Meeting on Reproductive Rights in Amsterdam in July 1974 parallel to the UN Population Conference in Bucharest, where four hundred women from sixty-five countries spoke out against international population policies which treated women as objects or “targets” rather than individuals with rights and needs (Women’s Global Network for Reproductive Rights 1986 ; see also Joachim 2007 ). The tribunal became a master frame of organizing in the 1990s for the campaign on women’s rights as human rights.

Compared to the women’s meetings in Brussels and Amsterdam, which defined women’s issues broadly, the range of issues that made it onto the governmental agenda of the UN women’s conferences was much more confined, including health, family, political participation, and employment (Stienstra 1994 :125). Nevertheless, they were reflective of a differently constituted international women’s movement. Through the UN women conferences and the financial assistance of both foundations and the UN, the international women’s movement had grown not only bigger in size, but it had also become more diversified. Southern women had joined what had until the late 1970s been a Northern movement. They brought with them different concerns, including survival, the provision of basic needs, and racism (Berkovitch 2003 :158), and had a different understanding of the sources of women’s oppression. It is therefore not surprising that the NGO meetings that took place in conjunction with the UN women’s conferences were equally conflictual as were the meetings of governments. Contrary to Northern women, who focused on discrimination and attributed women’s subordination to unequal treatment on the basis of sex or to sexism, “Southern advocates saw women’s inequality as part of a larger ‘inequality between nations’ or ‘dependency’ frame, in which Southern peoples were seen as victims of a historical process of Northern exploitation of Southern countries to advance development in the North” (Friedman 2003 :318).

That the meaning of women’s rights had become broader was also reflected in the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (hereafter the Women’s Convention) adopted by the UN General Assembly on Dec. 18, 1979 , which was heralded by both women’s organizations and observers at the time as the most comprehensive document of international law pertaining to women’s rights. It “touches every aspect of women’s lives, in the political, social, economic, legal, health, and family spheres” (Tinker 1981 :42), and “expressly addresses the traditional justification of denying human rights to women on the basis of ethnic customs and practices” (McIntosh 1981 ; Eisler 1987 ).

The Women’s Convention also highlights once again the interconnectedness of the various frames. While most of its statues had been written in nondiscriminatory language emphasizing equal treatment between men and women (Kaufman Hevener 1986 :87), Kaufman Hevener notes that it contains protective and corrective provisions as well (e.g. with respect to maternity). However, contrary to earlier treaties, the Women’s Convention “clearly legitimates temporary programs to redress imbalances or eliminate wrongs which have developed due to discriminatory practices (p. 87).

In contrast to the pre- and immediate postwar years, women activists by the time of the Decade no longer referred to their reproductive capabilities or their moral superiority to justify their claims. Instead, they began to link their concerns and demands to already accepted mainstream discourses. The major frame of reference to demand women’s equality with men was “development” (Fraser and Tinker 2004 ). The final document adopted at the end of the UN World Conference in Mexico City in 1975 , for example, stated that “[t]he full and complete development of any country requires the maximum participation of women as well as of men in all fields: the under-utilization of the potential of approximately half of the world’s population is a serious obstacle to social and economic development” (United Nations 1975 : para. 15). Women “were constructed as ‘workers’ and ‘resources’ who differ from men only in their level of training” (Berkovitch 2003 :145). However, and as Zinsser points out, traditional images of women had still not entirely vanished. Examining the final documents of the UN women’s conferences, she finds that especially those adopted in Mexico City:

defined women according to traditional patriarchal images and within patriarchical ideologies and structures of national and international relations. Women were either victims of forces beyond their understanding and control, or so marginal to the implicit model of the world that the Declaration and Plan of Action asked only that women be given “access” to training, be “integrated” into development programs, and allowed to “participate” in the political life of their country. (Zinsser 2002 :143–4)

It took until the 1980s and the Nairobi conference for such images to disappear and for women to take, as Zinsser puts it, “control of the language […] [to] use international phrases and procedures confidently and aggressively […] [to] demand […] the end to sexual stereotypes and gender discrimination […] [to speak] with new assurance and [to] assert their rights, opportunities, and responsibilities as ‘equal partners with men’” (p. 144).

From Special Rights to Gender Mainstreaming (1990s–Present)

If there had been a consensus among second wave women’s rights activists that women’s rights needed to be treated separately to prevent their marginalization, their isolated treatment became increasingly contested throughout time. Starting in the late 1980s, many women’s rights advocates began to question the ideational and institutional separation of women’s rights and human rights manifested in the existence of special treaties and the UN Commission on the Status of Women. This “ghettoization,” as some called it (Bunch 1995 :11), had not only resulted in less powerful and less resourced institutions (see, for example, Galey 1984 ; Coliver 1987 ; Zearfoss 1991 ), but was also no longer in line with women’s reality, since women’s rights violations, or more precisely, their specific manifestations, were often directly linked and compounded by class and race, a result of socioeconomic structures (Bunch 1990 :488), and had to be understood within the context of both culture and religion (Moller Okin 1999 ).

Women took advantage of the series of special conferences on environment, population, human rights, social, and women’s issues that the UN had organized in the early 1990s, following the end of the Cold War. As one observer notes, activists “shaped global understandings of issues from human rights to population growth, simultaneously mainstreaming gender analysis into areas formerly considered ‘gender-neutral’ and prioritizing women’s rights as integral to the achievement of conference goals” (Friedman 2003 ). At the UN Conference on Climate and Development in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 1992 , women’s organizations, for example, were able to extend the initial occasional mentioning of women in Agenda 21, the final document, into an entire chapter entitled “Global Action for Women towards Sustainable and Equitable Development” and numerous references throughout the text (Commission on the Status of Women 1995 ; Pearl 2002 ). At the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in Cairo, Egypt, in 1994 , women’s organizations provoked a shift in the UN’s approach to population from “counting to consciousness” of women’s reproductive rights and health despite severe opposition from conservative forces (Higer 1999 :123; see also Joachim 2007 ).

The World Human Rights Conference in Vienna in 1993 deserves particular mention here, because women’s organizations “regender[ed]” human rights (Friedman 2003 ), by focusing on violence against women. Under the leadership of the Center of Women’s Global Leadership (CWGL), they organized a global campaign comprised of “16 days of activism against violence against women,” circulated a global petition which had been translated from an initial six into twenty-four languages and was sponsored by over a thousand groups that gathered almost half a million signatures from 124 countries, and conducted an 18-hour Tribunal on Violations of Women’s Human Rights at the conference in Vienna, giving victims of gender-based violence the opportunity to testify (Bunch and Reilly 1994 ).

Women’s rights activists challenged the traditional framing of human rights in two respects. They demanded not only that state responsibility for human rights violations be extended from the exclusive focus on violations in the public sphere to that perpetrated by private actors in the family, but also that rather than being treated as separate, political and civil rights, on the one hand, and economic, social, and cultural rights, on the other hand, are indivisible (Friedman 2003 :320–21; see also Bunch 1990 ).

The acceptance of women’s rights as human rights provoked institutional changes. Following the Vienna Conference on Human Rights in 1993 , the then still Commission on Human Rights and now Council on Human Rights committed itself to integrating women’s human rights into its work. To this end, a Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women was appointed in March 1994 , who “seeks and receives information on the problem, its causes and consequences, recommends measures to eliminate violence against women, works closely with other special rapporteurs, special representatives, working groups and independent experts […], transmits urgent appeals and communications to States regarding alleged causes of violence against women, undertakes fact-finding missions, and submits thematic reports” (see w ww2.ohchr.org/english/issues/women/rapporteur ). In addition, since the mid-1990s the High Commissioner on Human Rights, on the one hand, and the UN Division for the Advancement of Women and CSW, on the other hand, cooperate and coordinate their work more closely (UN Commission on Human Rights 1998 ). Furthermore, major nongovernmental human rights organizations, such as Amnesty International (see, for example, Amnesty International 1991 ) and Human Rights Watch began to investigate gender-based violations and/or established a women’s rights program.

In addition to “gendering mainstream agendas,” the meaning of women’s rights became once again broadened so that by the 1990s, according to one author, “all issues [were] women’s issue” (Pietilä 2007 ). This was particularly apparent at the UN Women’s Conference in Beijing, China in 1995 . Building upon previous achievements, the final document called for strategic action in twelve areas, including poverty on women, education, health care, violence against women, the effects of armed or other kinds of conflict on women, inequality between men and women in sharing power and decision making, access to and participation in communication systems, inequalities in the management of natural resources and safeguarding the environment, and the rights of the child.

Finally, during the 1990s, women’s organizations made inroads into what had been considered until then the most insulated policy domain, namely security. Following the wars in Bosnia and Herzegovina, governments at the UN condemned the massive, organized, and systematic detention and rape of women in 1992 . “[M]assive, organized and systematic detention and rape of women” was included as part of the mandates of both the International War Crimes Tribunals of the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda in 1993 as well as the Rome Statute establishing the new International Criminal Court in The Hague. Furthermore, the UN Security Council adopted the resolutions 1325 (S/RES/1325) and 1820 (S/RES/1820) on “Women and Peace and Security” on Oct. 31, 2000 and Jun. 19, 2008 , respectively. Resolution 1325 calls for the integration of women in all conflict resolution processes as well as actions for resettlement, rehabilitation, and post-conflict construction. It also recommends special training for all peacekeeping personnel on the protection, special needs, and human rights of women and children in conflict situations (UN Security Council 2000 ). Resolution 1820 states that “rape and other forms of sexual violence can constitute war crimes, crimes against humanity or a constitutive act with respect to genocide.” Moreover, it urges Council members to consider imposing “targeted and graduated” measures against warring factions who committed rape and other forms of violence against women and girls when establishing and renewing state-specific sanction regimes (UN Security Council 2008 ).

If women’s groups have been successful in obtaining international legitimacy for women’s rights as human rights and contributed to institutional changes, the rights of women continue to nevertheless be contested. Evidence for this can be found at the ICPD in Cairo, where women’s demands for reproductive rights and health were met with fierce opposition from Catholic and fundamentalist Islamic countries, which entered into an unprecedented alliance to prevent the issue’s inclusion in the Platform of Action. In the eyes of representatives from the Vatican, reproductive rights and health “was coercive and demeaning to women” and constituted “a most grave threat to human dignity and liberty” (John Paul II 1994 ). Furthermore, at the Beijing conference, the term “gender” itself became a lightning rod and was the most heavily bracketed term in the Platform of Action (Friedman 2003 :325). In the preparatory conference, representatives of the Vatican opposed the term on the basis that it “challenges Catholic doctrine […] and opens the door to acknowledging different sexual orientations.” Others argued that the goal of the Beijing Conference was “to force society to accept five types of gender: masculine, feminine, lesbian, homosexual and transsexual” (Franco 1998 :282; see also Friedman et al. 2001 :28). And conservative NGOs opposed the platform on the grounds that it was not only promoting homosexuality and abortion, but that it called into question what they considered the “natural family” and equated with “the fundamental societal unit, inscribed in human nature, and centered on the voluntary union of a man and a woman in the lifelong covenant of marriage.” In the eyes of these organizations, “Western powers” tried to impose a radical” “feminist” “angry, leftist world agenda” on “beleaguered developing nations” (Jalsevac 2000 ). Although the term gender was eventually kept, over twenty governments issued reservations with the final document (Friedman 2003 :326).

There also continues to be disagreement and debate among women’s organizations as to how women’s rights can be best ensured and whether women should work inside and with established institutions or rather outside of them. At the NGO forum held parallel to the Human Rights Conference in Vienna in 1993 , participants, according to one observer, “fiercely debated as to whether human rights law, or legal solutions in general, were the appropriate solutions to entrenched social problems, and whether the often-abusive State could be turned to as an agent of protection for women” (Friedman 2003 :321). Similarly, in the lead up to the ICPD, women were divided over the women’s declaration on population policies entitled Women’s Voices ’94 , which had been prepared as a lobbying document by the Women’s Alliance and circulated among women’s groups around the world. Critics felt that (1) the perspectives of the alliance were not representative of the entire women’s movement, but rather of its more pragmatic wing; (2) that women’s ability to control their fertility had been defined in a narrow fashion, emphasizing almost exclusively rights and ignoring the issue of development; and (3) it was too accepting of population policies and institutions (see Joachim 2007 :151–5).

Future Venues for Research

Although women’s rights are now internationally recognized as human rights, the relationship remains, as the historical section illustrates, an ambivalent one. The remainder of this essay, therefore, proposes four venues for future research.

First, more studies are needed on how well women’s rights as human rights travel across different institutions. Because scholars have focused most of their attention on the UN, we know rather little to what extent human rights constitutes an equally powerful frame to mobilize support for women’s rights issues in other settings. Does it provide women’s organizations leverage in, for example, international economic institutions, such as the World Trade Organization or the World Bank, where they are starting to make inroads? Are women’s rights accepted as human rights in regional organizations, such as the European Union, the Organization of American States, and the African Union? And is the discourse of human rights helpful for addressing women’s rights violations, especially in countries where these are excused as cultural or religious practices? Answering these questions would help us to determine not only the power and scope of the “women’s rights as human rights” frame, but also its limitations.

Second, to demonstrate the exclusion of women from human rights law, women’s rights activists organized their global campaign, as illustrated above, around violence against women. The choice of the issue was no coincidence. It offered a unifying agenda for women across the globe (Mertus and Goldberg 1994 :209–10) and demonstrated in a compelling fashion the gendered nature of abuse (Bunch 1995 :15). However, the narrow focus on sex-based harm also raises questions. Would other issues also of grave concern to women have been accepted as human rights, as for example, literacy, poverty, or discriminatory divorce (Mertus and Goldberg 1994 :210) or been subject to conflict and been rejected? Furthermore, was it the nature of the issue that made gender-based violence acceptable for the human rights community, as some suggest (Keck and Sikkink 1998 ), or did it reaffirm traditional beliefs about women as being in need of protection, as others claim (Miller 2004 :40), or was it both, resonating with women as subjects and with audiences thinking of women as objects? Inquiries are needed that help us to evaluate the alleged success of the international women’s rights movement, whether and to what extent women’s rights were and are truly accepted as human rights.

Third, legal scholars have voiced concern about integrating women’s rights and human rights in the past. Some expressed worries that the human rights frame might suffer in its ideational integrity and credibility, if too many special rights are taken into consideration. Others fear that the frame will loose its effectiveness when it comes to implementation given the limited resources, on the one hand, and the broader set of rights that require attention, on the other hand. While these are indeed important concerns, it also appears necessary to approach the problem from a different angle. Instead of asking what might be lost from integrating women’s rights into human rights, we should also examine how and in what way women’s rights enhance human rights. To this end, scholars might study how the work of human rights organizations, for example, has changed since they started to investigate women’s rights violations or, drawing on human rights and women’s rights indexes, analyze whether and to what extent the overall human rights situations in countries changes in response to improvements concerning women’s rights.

Finally, we need to investigate both the changes that have taken place in mainstream human rights and specialized women’s rights institutions since the late 1980s as well as their impact. How far has the integration of women’s rights into the work of mainstream human rights institutions progressed and what obstacles have been encountered along the way? While feminist scholars have started to assess the merits of gender mainstreaming in different policy areas (e.g. Verloo 2001 ; Booth and Bennett 2002 ; Daly 2005 ; Rees 2005 ; Walby 2005 ; Woodward 2008 ) and NGOs such as the Women’s Environment and Development Organization (WEDO) are monitoring the implementation of global commitments (e.g. Women’s Environment and Development Organization 2005 ), we need more research on how well women’s rights are accounted for by human rights institutions. What role do women’s rights play in the newly established Council on Human Rights, which is equipped with more authority than its predecessor, the Commission on Human Rights? What impact has the Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women had since the office was established? Is the enforcement record still dismal or has it improved in response to the reports issued or the fact-finding missions conducted by the Rapporteur? Entertaining these and other questions will reveal more about whether women have been fully integrated into the activities of international human rights institutions or whether their concerns continue to be marginalized and treated in an isolated fashion.

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Acknowledgments

I would like to thank my two research assistants, Daniel Steffens and Alexa Brase , for their invaluable help and the two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments.

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Research Article

Twenty years of gender equality research: A scoping review based on a new semantic indicator

Contributed equally to this work with: Paola Belingheri, Filippo Chiarello, Andrea Fronzetti Colladon, Paola Rovelli

Roles Conceptualization, Formal analysis, Funding acquisition, Visualization, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

Affiliation Dipartimento di Ingegneria dell’Energia, dei Sistemi, del Territorio e delle Costruzioni, Università degli Studi di Pisa, Largo L. Lazzarino, Pisa, Italy

Roles Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, Funding acquisition, Methodology, Visualization, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

Roles Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, Funding acquisition, Methodology, Software, Visualization, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

* E-mail: [email protected]

Affiliations Department of Engineering, University of Perugia, Perugia, Italy, Department of Management, Kozminski University, Warsaw, Poland

Roles Conceptualization, Formal analysis, Funding acquisition, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

Affiliation Faculty of Economics and Management, Centre for Family Business Management, Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Bozen-Bolzano, Italy

• Paola Belingheri, 
• Filippo Chiarello, 
• Andrea Fronzetti Colladon, 
• Paola Rovelli

• Published: September 21, 2021
• https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0256474
• Reader Comments

9 Nov 2021: The PLOS ONE Staff (2021) Correction: Twenty years of gender equality research: A scoping review based on a new semantic indicator. PLOS ONE 16(11): e0259930. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0259930 View correction

Gender equality is a major problem that places women at a disadvantage thereby stymieing economic growth and societal advancement. In the last two decades, extensive research has been conducted on gender related issues, studying both their antecedents and consequences. However, existing literature reviews fail to provide a comprehensive and clear picture of what has been studied so far, which could guide scholars in their future research. Our paper offers a scoping review of a large portion of the research that has been published over the last 22 years, on gender equality and related issues, with a specific focus on business and economics studies. Combining innovative methods drawn from both network analysis and text mining, we provide a synthesis of 15,465 scientific articles. We identify 27 main research topics, we measure their relevance from a semantic point of view and the relationships among them, highlighting the importance of each topic in the overall gender discourse. We find that prominent research topics mostly relate to women in the workforce–e.g., concerning compensation, role, education, decision-making and career progression. However, some of them are losing momentum, and some other research trends–for example related to female entrepreneurship, leadership and participation in the board of directors–are on the rise. Besides introducing a novel methodology to review broad literature streams, our paper offers a map of the main gender-research trends and presents the most popular and the emerging themes, as well as their intersections, outlining important avenues for future research.

Citation: Belingheri P, Chiarello F, Fronzetti Colladon A, Rovelli P (2021) Twenty years of gender equality research: A scoping review based on a new semantic indicator. PLoS ONE 16(9): e0256474. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0256474

Editor: Elisa Ughetto, Politecnico di Torino, ITALY

Received: June 25, 2021; Accepted: August 6, 2021; Published: September 21, 2021

Copyright: © 2021 Belingheri et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Data Availability: All relevant data are within the manuscript and its supporting information files. The only exception is the text of the abstracts (over 15,000) that we have downloaded from Scopus. These abstracts can be retrieved from Scopus, but we do not have permission to redistribute them.

Funding: P.B and F.C.: Grant of the Department of Energy, Systems, Territory and Construction of the University of Pisa (DESTEC) for the project “Measuring Gender Bias with Semantic Analysis: The Development of an Assessment Tool and its Application in the European Space Industry. P.B., F.C., A.F.C., P.R.: Grant of the Italian Association of Management Engineering (AiIG), “Misure di sostegno ai soci giovani AiIG” 2020, for the project “Gender Equality Through Data Intelligence (GEDI)”. F.C.: EU project ASSETs+ Project (Alliance for Strategic Skills addressing Emerging Technologies in Defence) EAC/A03/2018 - Erasmus+ programme, Sector Skills Alliances, Lot 3: Sector Skills Alliance for implementing a new strategic approach (Blueprint) to sectoral cooperation on skills G.A. NUMBER: 612678-EPP-1-2019-1-IT-EPPKA2-SSA-B.

Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Introduction

The persistent gender inequalities that currently exist across the developed and developing world are receiving increasing attention from economists, policymakers, and the general public [e.g., 1 – 3 ]. Economic studies have indicated that women’s education and entry into the workforce contributes to social and economic well-being [e.g., 4 , 5 ], while their exclusion from the labor market and from managerial positions has an impact on overall labor productivity and income per capita [ 6 , 7 ]. The United Nations selected gender equality, with an emphasis on female education, as part of the Millennium Development Goals [ 8 ], and gender equality at-large as one of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to be achieved by 2030 [ 9 ]. These latter objectives involve not only developing nations, but rather all countries, to achieve economic, social and environmental well-being.

As is the case with many SDGs, gender equality is still far from being achieved and persists across education, access to opportunities, or presence in decision-making positions [ 7 , 10 , 11 ]. As we enter the last decade for the SDGs’ implementation, and while we are battling a global health pandemic, effective and efficient action becomes paramount to reach this ambitious goal.

Scholars have dedicated a massive effort towards understanding gender equality, its determinants, its consequences for women and society, and the appropriate actions and policies to advance women’s equality. Many topics have been covered, ranging from women’s education and human capital [ 12 , 13 ] and their role in society [e.g., 14 , 15 ], to their appointment in firms’ top ranked positions [e.g., 16 , 17 ] and performance implications [e.g., 18 , 19 ]. Despite some attempts, extant literature reviews provide a narrow view on these issues, restricted to specific topics–e.g., female students’ presence in STEM fields [ 20 ], educational gender inequality [ 5 ], the gender pay gap [ 21 ], the glass ceiling effect [ 22 ], leadership [ 23 ], entrepreneurship [ 24 ], women’s presence on the board of directors [ 25 , 26 ], diversity management [ 27 ], gender stereotypes in advertisement [ 28 ], or specific professions [ 29 ]. A comprehensive view on gender-related research, taking stock of key findings and under-studied topics is thus lacking.

Extant literature has also highlighted that gender issues, and their economic and social ramifications, are complex topics that involve a large number of possible antecedents and outcomes [ 7 ]. Indeed, gender equality actions are most effective when implemented in unison with other SDGs (e.g., with SDG 8, see [ 30 ]) in a synergetic perspective [ 10 ]. Many bodies of literature (e.g., business, economics, development studies, sociology and psychology) approach the problem of achieving gender equality from different perspectives–often addressing specific and narrow aspects. This sometimes leads to a lack of clarity about how different issues, circumstances, and solutions may be related in precipitating or mitigating gender inequality or its effects. As the number of papers grows at an increasing pace, this issue is exacerbated and there is a need to step back and survey the body of gender equality literature as a whole. There is also a need to examine synergies between different topics and approaches, as well as gaps in our understanding of how different problems and solutions work together. Considering the important topic of women’s economic and social empowerment, this paper aims to fill this gap by answering the following research question: what are the most relevant findings in the literature on gender equality and how do they relate to each other ?

To do so, we conduct a scoping review [ 31 ], providing a synthesis of 15,465 articles dealing with gender equity related issues published in the last twenty-two years, covering both the periods of the MDGs and the SDGs (i.e., 2000 to mid 2021) in all the journals indexed in the Academic Journal Guide’s 2018 ranking of business and economics journals. Given the huge amount of research conducted on the topic, we adopt an innovative methodology, which relies on social network analysis and text mining. These techniques are increasingly adopted when surveying large bodies of text. Recently, they were applied to perform analysis of online gender communication differences [ 32 ] and gender behaviors in online technology communities [ 33 ], to identify and classify sexual harassment instances in academia [ 34 ], and to evaluate the gender inclusivity of disaster management policies [ 35 ].

Applied to the title, abstracts and keywords of the articles in our sample, this methodology allows us to identify a set of 27 recurrent topics within which we automatically classify the papers. Introducing additional novelty, by means of the Semantic Brand Score (SBS) indicator [ 36 ] and the SBS BI app [ 37 ], we assess the importance of each topic in the overall gender equality discourse and its relationships with the other topics, as well as trends over time, with a more accurate description than that offered by traditional literature reviews relying solely on the number of papers presented in each topic.

This methodology, applied to gender equality research spanning the past twenty-two years, enables two key contributions. First, we extract the main message that each document is conveying and how this is connected to other themes in literature, providing a rich picture of the topics that are at the center of the discourse, as well as of the emerging topics. Second, by examining the semantic relationship between topics and how tightly their discourses are linked, we can identify the key relationships and connections between different topics. This semi-automatic methodology is also highly reproducible with minimum effort.

This literature review is organized as follows. In the next section, we present how we selected relevant papers and how we analyzed them through text mining and social network analysis. We then illustrate the importance of 27 selected research topics, measured by means of the SBS indicator. In the results section, we present an overview of the literature based on the SBS results–followed by an in-depth narrative analysis of the top 10 topics (i.e., those with the highest SBS) and their connections. Subsequently, we highlight a series of under-studied connections between the topics where there is potential for future research. Through this analysis, we build a map of the main gender-research trends in the last twenty-two years–presenting the most popular themes. We conclude by highlighting key areas on which research should focused in the future.

Our aim is to map a broad topic, gender equality research, that has been approached through a host of different angles and through different disciplines. Scoping reviews are the most appropriate as they provide the freedom to map different themes and identify literature gaps, thereby guiding the recommendation of new research agendas [ 38 ].

Several practical approaches have been proposed to identify and assess the underlying topics of a specific field using big data [ 39 – 41 ], but many of them fail without proper paper retrieval and text preprocessing. This is specifically true for a research field such as the gender-related one, which comprises the work of scholars from different backgrounds. In this section, we illustrate a novel approach for the analysis of scientific (gender-related) papers that relies on methods and tools of social network analysis and text mining. Our procedure has four main steps: (1) data collection, (2) text preprocessing, (3) keywords extraction and classification, and (4) evaluation of semantic importance and image.

Data collection

In this study, we analyze 22 years of literature on gender-related research. Following established practice for scoping reviews [ 42 ], our data collection consisted of two main steps, which we summarize here below.

Firstly, we retrieved from the Scopus database all the articles written in English that contained the term “gender” in their title, abstract or keywords and were published in a journal listed in the Academic Journal Guide 2018 ranking of the Chartered Association of Business Schools (CABS) ( https://charteredabs.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/AJG2018-Methodology.pdf ), considering the time period from Jan 2000 to May 2021. We used this information considering that abstracts, titles and keywords represent the most informative part of a paper, while using the full-text would increase the signal-to-noise ratio for information extraction. Indeed, these textual elements already demonstrated to be reliable sources of information for the task of domain lexicon extraction [ 43 , 44 ]. We chose Scopus as source of literature because of its popularity, its update rate, and because it offers an API to ease the querying process. Indeed, while it does not allow to retrieve the full text of scientific articles, the Scopus API offers access to titles, abstracts, citation information and metadata for all its indexed scholarly journals. Moreover, we decided to focus on the journals listed in the AJG 2018 ranking because we were interested in reviewing business and economics related gender studies only. The AJG is indeed widely used by universities and business schools as a reference point for journal and research rigor and quality. This first step, executed in June 2021, returned more than 55,000 papers.

In the second step–because a look at the papers showed very sparse results, many of which were not in line with the topic of this literature review (e.g., papers dealing with health care or medical issues, where the word gender indicates the gender of the patients)–we applied further inclusion criteria to make the sample more focused on the topic of this literature review (i.e., women’s gender equality issues). Specifically, we only retained those papers mentioning, in their title and/or abstract, both gender-related keywords (e.g., daughter, female, mother) and keywords referring to bias and equality issues (e.g., equality, bias, diversity, inclusion). After text pre-processing (see next section), keywords were first identified from a frequency-weighted list of words found in the titles, abstracts and keywords in the initial list of papers, extracted through text mining (following the same approach as [ 43 ]). They were selected by two of the co-authors independently, following respectively a bottom up and a top-down approach. The bottom-up approach consisted of examining the words found in the frequency-weighted list and classifying those related to gender and equality. The top-down approach consisted in searching in the word list for notable gender and equality-related words. Table 1 reports the sets of keywords we considered, together with some examples of words that were used to search for their presence in the dataset (a full list is provided in the S1 Text ). At end of this second step, we obtained a final sample of 15,465 relevant papers.

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https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0256474.t001

Text processing and keyword extraction

Text preprocessing aims at structuring text into a form that can be analyzed by statistical models. In the present section, we describe the preprocessing steps we applied to paper titles and abstracts, which, as explained below, partially follow a standard text preprocessing pipeline [ 45 ]. These activities have been performed using the R package udpipe [ 46 ].

The first step is n-gram extraction (i.e., a sequence of words from a given text sample) to identify which n-grams are important in the analysis, since domain-specific lexicons are often composed by bi-grams and tri-grams [ 47 ]. Multi-word extraction is usually implemented with statistics and linguistic rules, thus using the statistical properties of n-grams or machine learning approaches [ 48 ]. However, for the present paper, we used Scopus metadata in order to have a more effective and efficient n-grams collection approach [ 49 ]. We used the keywords of each paper in order to tag n-grams with their associated keywords automatically. Using this greedy approach, it was possible to collect all the keywords listed by the authors of the papers. From this list, we extracted only keywords composed by two, three and four words, we removed all the acronyms and rare keywords (i.e., appearing in less than 1% of papers), and we clustered keywords showing a high orthographic similarity–measured using a Levenshtein distance [ 50 ] lower than 2, considering these groups of keywords as representing same concepts, but expressed with different spelling. After tagging the n-grams in the abstracts, we followed a common data preparation pipeline that consists of the following steps: (i) tokenization, that splits the text into tokens (i.e., single words and previously tagged multi-words); (ii) removal of stop-words (i.e. those words that add little meaning to the text, usually being very common and short functional words–such as “and”, “or”, or “of”); (iii) parts-of-speech tagging, that is providing information concerning the morphological role of a word and its morphosyntactic context (e.g., if the token is a determiner, the next token is a noun or an adjective with very high confidence, [ 51 ]); and (iv) lemmatization, which consists in substituting each word with its dictionary form (or lemma). The output of the latter step allows grouping together the inflected forms of a word. For example, the verbs “am”, “are”, and “is” have the shared lemma “be”, or the nouns “cat” and “cats” both share the lemma “cat”. We preferred lemmatization over stemming [ 52 ] in order to obtain more interpretable results.

In addition, we identified a further set of keywords (with respect to those listed in the “keywords” field) by applying a series of automatic words unification and removal steps, as suggested in past research [ 53 , 54 ]. We removed: sparse terms (i.e., occurring in less than 0.1% of all documents), common terms (i.e., occurring in more than 10% of all documents) and retained only nouns and adjectives. It is relevant to notice that no document was lost due to these steps. We then used the TF-IDF function [ 55 ] to produce a new list of keywords. We additionally tested other approaches for the identification and clustering of keywords–such as TextRank [ 56 ] or Latent Dirichlet Allocation [ 57 ]–without obtaining more informative results.

Classification of research topics

To guide the literature analysis, two experts met regularly to examine the sample of collected papers and to identify the main topics and trends in gender research. Initially, they conducted brainstorming sessions on the topics they expected to find, due to their knowledge of the literature. This led to an initial list of topics. Subsequently, the experts worked independently, also supported by the keywords in paper titles and abstracts extracted with the procedure described above.

Considering all this information, each expert identified and clustered relevant keywords into topics. At the end of the process, the two assignments were compared and exhibited a 92% agreement. Another meeting was held to discuss discordant cases and reach a consensus. This resulted in a list of 27 topics, briefly introduced in Table 2 and subsequently detailed in the following sections.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0256474.t002

Evaluation of semantic importance

Working on the lemmatized corpus of the 15,465 papers included in our sample, we proceeded with the evaluation of semantic importance trends for each topic and with the analysis of their connections and prevalent textual associations. To this aim, we used the Semantic Brand Score indicator [ 36 ], calculated through the SBS BI webapp [ 37 ] that also produced a brand image report for each topic. For this study we relied on the computing resources of the ENEA/CRESCO infrastructure [ 58 ].

The Semantic Brand Score (SBS) is a measure of semantic importance that combines methods of social network analysis and text mining. It is usually applied for the analysis of (big) textual data to evaluate the importance of one or more brands, names, words, or sets of keywords [ 36 ]. Indeed, the concept of “brand” is intended in a flexible way and goes beyond products or commercial brands. In this study, we evaluate the SBS time-trends of the keywords defining the research topics discussed in the previous section. Semantic importance comprises the three dimensions of topic prevalence, diversity and connectivity. Prevalence measures how frequently a research topic is used in the discourse. The more a topic is mentioned by scientific articles, the more the research community will be aware of it, with possible increase of future studies; this construct is partly related to that of brand awareness [ 59 ]. This effect is even stronger, considering that we are analyzing the title, abstract and keywords of the papers, i.e. the parts that have the highest visibility. A very important characteristic of the SBS is that it considers the relationships among words in a text. Topic importance is not just a matter of how frequently a topic is mentioned, but also of the associations a topic has in the text. Specifically, texts are transformed into networks of co-occurring words, and relationships are studied through social network analysis [ 60 ]. This step is necessary to calculate the other two dimensions of our semantic importance indicator. Accordingly, a social network of words is generated for each time period considered in the analysis–i.e., a graph made of n nodes (words) and E edges weighted by co-occurrence frequency, with W being the set of edge weights. The keywords representing each topic were clustered into single nodes.

The construct of diversity relates to that of brand image [ 59 ], in the sense that it considers the richness and distinctiveness of textual (topic) associations. Considering the above-mentioned networks, we calculated diversity using the distinctiveness centrality metric–as in the formula presented by Fronzetti Colladon and Naldi [ 61 ].

Lastly, connectivity was measured as the weighted betweenness centrality [ 62 , 63 ] of each research topic node. We used the formula presented by Wasserman and Faust [ 60 ]. The dimension of connectivity represents the “brokerage power” of each research topic–i.e., how much it can serve as a bridge to connect other terms (and ultimately topics) in the discourse [ 36 ].

The SBS is the final composite indicator obtained by summing the standardized scores of prevalence, diversity and connectivity. Standardization was carried out considering all the words in the corpus, for each specific timeframe.

This methodology, applied to a large and heterogeneous body of text, enables to automatically identify two important sets of information that add value to the literature review. Firstly, the relevance of each topic in literature is measured through a composite indicator of semantic importance, rather than simply looking at word frequencies. This provides a much richer picture of the topics that are at the center of the discourse, as well as of the topics that are emerging in the literature. Secondly, it enables to examine the extent of the semantic relationship between topics, looking at how tightly their discourses are linked. In a field such as gender equality, where many topics are closely linked to each other and present overlaps in issues and solutions, this methodology offers a novel perspective with respect to traditional literature reviews. In addition, it ensures reproducibility over time and the possibility to semi-automatically update the analysis, as new papers become available.

Overview of main topics

In terms of descriptive textual statistics, our corpus is made of 15,465 text documents, consisting of a total of 2,685,893 lemmatized tokens (words) and 32,279 types. As a result, the type-token ratio is 1.2%. The number of hapaxes is 12,141, with a hapax-token ratio of 37.61%.

Fig 1 shows the list of 27 topics by decreasing SBS. The most researched topic is compensation , exceeding all others in prevalence, diversity, and connectivity. This means it is not only mentioned more often than other topics, but it is also connected to a greater number of other topics and is central to the discourse on gender equality. The next four topics are, in order of SBS, role , education , decision-making , and career progression . These topics, except for education , all concern women in the workforce. Between these first five topics and the following ones there is a clear drop in SBS scores. In particular, the topics that follow have a lower connectivity than the first five. They are hiring , performance , behavior , organization , and human capital . Again, except for behavior and human capital , the other three topics are purely related to women in the workforce. After another drop-off, the following topics deal prevalently with women in society. This trend highlights that research on gender in business journals has so far mainly paid attention to the conditions that women experience in business contexts, while also devoting some attention to women in society.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0256474.g001

Fig 2 shows the SBS time series of the top 10 topics. While there has been a general increase in the number of Scopus-indexed publications in the last decade, we notice that some SBS trends remain steady, or even decrease. In particular, we observe that the main topic of the last twenty-two years, compensation , is losing momentum. Since 2016, it has been surpassed by decision-making , education and role , which may indicate that literature is increasingly attempting to identify root causes of compensation inequalities. Moreover, in the last two years, the topics of hiring , performance , and organization are experiencing the largest importance increase.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0256474.g002

Fig 3 shows the SBS time trends of the remaining 17 topics (i.e., those not in the top 10). As we can see from the graph, there are some that maintain a steady trend–such as reputation , management , networks and governance , which also seem to have little importance. More relevant topics with average stationary trends (except for the last two years) are culture , family , and parenting . The feminine topic is among the most important here, and one of those that exhibit the larger variations over time (similarly to leadership ). On the other hand, the are some topics that, even if not among the most important, show increasing SBS trends; therefore, they could be considered as emerging topics and could become popular in the near future. These are entrepreneurship , leadership , board of directors , and sustainability . These emerging topics are also interesting to anticipate future trends in gender equality research that are conducive to overall equality in society.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0256474.g003

In addition to the SBS score of the different topics, the network of terms they are associated to enables to gauge the extent to which their images (textual associations) overlap or differ ( Fig 4 ).

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0256474.g004

There is a central cluster of topics with high similarity, which are all connected with women in the workforce. The cluster includes topics such as organization , decision-making , performance , hiring , human capital , education and compensation . In addition, the topic of well-being is found within this cluster, suggesting that women’s equality in the workforce is associated to well-being considerations. The emerging topics of entrepreneurship and leadership are also closely connected with each other, possibly implying that leadership is a much-researched quality in female entrepreneurship. Topics that are relatively more distant include personality , politics , feminine , empowerment , management , board of directors , reputation , governance , parenting , masculine and network .

The following sections describe the top 10 topics and their main associations in literature (see Table 3 ), while providing a brief overview of the emerging topics.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0256474.t003

Compensation.

The topic of compensation is related to the topics of role , hiring , education and career progression , however, also sees a very high association with the words gap and inequality . Indeed, a well-known debate in degrowth economics centers around whether and how to adequately compensate women for their childbearing, childrearing, caregiver and household work [e.g., 30 ].

Even in paid work, women continue being offered lower compensations than their male counterparts who have the same job or cover the same role [ 64 – 67 ]. This severe inequality has been widely studied by scholars over the last twenty-two years. Dealing with this topic, some specific roles have been addressed. Specifically, research highlighted differences in compensation between female and male CEOs [e.g., 68 ], top executives [e.g., 69 ], and boards’ directors [e.g., 70 ]. Scholars investigated the determinants of these gaps, such as the gender composition of the board [e.g., 71 – 73 ] or women’s individual characteristics [e.g., 71 , 74 ].

Among these individual characteristics, education plays a relevant role [ 75 ]. Education is indeed presented as the solution for women, not only to achieve top executive roles, but also to reduce wage inequality [e.g., 76 , 77 ]. Past research has highlighted education influences on gender wage gaps, specifically referring to gender differences in skills [e.g., 78 ], college majors [e.g., 79 ], and college selectivity [e.g., 80 ].

Finally, the wage gap issue is strictly interrelated with hiring –e.g., looking at whether being a mother affects hiring and compensation [e.g., 65 , 81 ] or relating compensation to unemployment [e.g., 82 ]–and career progression –for instance looking at meritocracy [ 83 , 84 ] or the characteristics of the boss for whom women work [e.g., 85 ].

The roles covered by women have been deeply investigated. Scholars have focused on the role of women in their families and the society as a whole [e.g., 14 , 15 ], and, more widely, in business contexts [e.g., 18 , 81 ]. Indeed, despite still lagging behind their male counterparts [e.g., 86 , 87 ], in the last decade there has been an increase in top ranked positions achieved by women [e.g., 88 , 89 ]. Following this phenomenon, scholars have posed greater attention towards the presence of women in the board of directors [e.g., 16 , 18 , 90 , 91 ], given the increasing pressure to appoint female directors that firms, especially listed ones, have experienced. Other scholars have focused on the presence of women covering the role of CEO [e.g., 17 , 92 ] or being part of the top management team [e.g., 93 ]. Irrespectively of the level of analysis, all these studies tried to uncover the antecedents of women’s presence among top managers [e.g., 92 , 94 ] and the consequences of having a them involved in the firm’s decision-making –e.g., on performance [e.g., 19 , 95 , 96 ], risk [e.g., 97 , 98 ], and corporate social responsibility [e.g., 99 , 100 ].

Besides studying the difficulties and discriminations faced by women in getting a job [ 81 , 101 ], and, more specifically in the hiring , appointment, or career progression to these apical roles [e.g., 70 , 83 ], the majority of research of women’s roles dealt with compensation issues. Specifically, scholars highlight the pay-gap that still exists between women and men, both in general [e.g., 64 , 65 ], as well as referring to boards’ directors [e.g., 70 , 102 ], CEOs and executives [e.g., 69 , 103 , 104 ].

Finally, other scholars focused on the behavior of women when dealing with business. In this sense, particular attention has been paid to leadership and entrepreneurial behaviors. The former quite overlaps with dealing with the roles mentioned above, but also includes aspects such as leaders being stereotyped as masculine [e.g., 105 ], the need for greater exposure to female leaders to reduce biases [e.g., 106 ], or female leaders acting as queen bees [e.g., 107 ]. Regarding entrepreneurship , scholars mainly investigated women’s entrepreneurial entry [e.g., 108 , 109 ], differences between female and male entrepreneurs in the evaluations and funding received from investors [e.g., 110 , 111 ], and their performance gap [e.g., 112 , 113 ].

Education has long been recognized as key to social advancement and economic stability [ 114 ], for job progression and also a barrier to gender equality, especially in STEM-related fields. Research on education and gender equality is mostly linked with the topics of compensation , human capital , career progression , hiring , parenting and decision-making .

Education contributes to a higher human capital [ 115 ] and constitutes an investment on the part of women towards their future. In this context, literature points to the gender gap in educational attainment, and the consequences for women from a social, economic, personal and professional standpoint. Women are found to have less access to formal education and information, especially in emerging countries, which in turn may cause them to lose social and economic opportunities [e.g., 12 , 116 – 119 ]. Education in local and rural communities is also paramount to communicate the benefits of female empowerment , contributing to overall societal well-being [e.g., 120 ].

Once women access education, the image they have of the world and their place in society (i.e., habitus) affects their education performance [ 13 ] and is passed on to their children. These situations reinforce gender stereotypes, which become self-fulfilling prophecies that may negatively affect female students’ performance by lowering their confidence and heightening their anxiety [ 121 , 122 ]. Besides formal education, also the information that women are exposed to on a daily basis contributes to their human capital . Digital inequalities, for instance, stems from men spending more time online and acquiring higher digital skills than women [ 123 ].

Education is also a factor that should boost employability of candidates and thus hiring , career progression and compensation , however the relationship between these factors is not straightforward [ 115 ]. First, educational choices ( decision-making ) are influenced by variables such as self-efficacy and the presence of barriers, irrespectively of the career opportunities they offer, especially in STEM [ 124 ]. This brings additional difficulties to women’s enrollment and persistence in scientific and technical fields of study due to stereotypes and biases [ 125 , 126 ]. Moreover, access to education does not automatically translate into job opportunities for women and minority groups [ 127 , 128 ] or into female access to managerial positions [ 129 ].

Finally, parenting is reported as an antecedent of education [e.g., 130 ], with much of the literature focusing on the role of parents’ education on the opportunities afforded to children to enroll in education [ 131 – 134 ] and the role of parenting in their offspring’s perception of study fields and attitudes towards learning [ 135 – 138 ]. Parental education is also a predictor of the other related topics, namely human capital and compensation [ 139 ].

Decision-making.

This literature mainly points to the fact that women are thought to make decisions differently than men. Women have indeed different priorities, such as they care more about people’s well-being, working with people or helping others, rather than maximizing their personal (or their firm’s) gain [ 140 ]. In other words, women typically present more communal than agentic behaviors, which are instead more frequent among men [ 141 ]. These different attitude, behavior and preferences in turn affect the decisions they make [e.g., 142 ] and the decision-making of the firm in which they work [e.g., 143 ].

At the individual level, gender affects, for instance, career aspirations [e.g., 144 ] and choices [e.g., 142 , 145 ], or the decision of creating a venture [e.g., 108 , 109 , 146 ]. Moreover, in everyday life, women and men make different decisions regarding partners [e.g., 147 ], childcare [e.g., 148 ], education [e.g., 149 ], attention to the environment [e.g., 150 ] and politics [e.g., 151 ].

At the firm level, scholars highlighted, for example, how the presence of women in the board affects corporate decisions [e.g., 152 , 153 ], that female CEOs are more conservative in accounting decisions [e.g., 154 ], or that female CFOs tend to make more conservative decisions regarding the firm’s financial reporting [e.g., 155 ]. Nevertheless, firm level research also investigated decisions that, influenced by gender bias, affect women, such as those pertaining hiring [e.g., 156 , 157 ], compensation [e.g., 73 , 158 ], or the empowerment of women once appointed [ 159 ].

Career progression.

Once women have entered the workforce, the key aspect to achieve gender equality becomes career progression , including efforts toward overcoming the glass ceiling. Indeed, according to the SBS analysis, career progression is highly related to words such as work, social issues and equality. The topic with which it has the highest semantic overlap is role , followed by decision-making , hiring , education , compensation , leadership , human capital , and family .

Career progression implies an advancement in the hierarchical ladder of the firm, assigning managerial roles to women. Coherently, much of the literature has focused on identifying rationales for a greater female participation in the top management team and board of directors [e.g., 95 ] as well as the best criteria to ensure that the decision-makers promote the most valuable employees irrespectively of their individual characteristics, such as gender [e.g., 84 ]. The link between career progression , role and compensation is often provided in practice by performance appraisal exercises, frequently rooted in a culture of meritocracy that guides bonuses, salary increases and promotions. However, performance appraisals can actually mask gender-biased decisions where women are held to higher standards than their male colleagues [e.g., 83 , 84 , 95 , 160 , 161 ]. Women often have less opportunities to gain leadership experience and are less visible than their male colleagues, which constitute barriers to career advancement [e.g., 162 ]. Therefore, transparency and accountability, together with procedures that discourage discretionary choices, are paramount to achieve a fair career progression [e.g., 84 ], together with the relaxation of strict job boundaries in favor of cross-functional and self-directed tasks [e.g., 163 ].

In addition, a series of stereotypes about the type of leadership characteristics that are required for top management positions, which fit better with typical male and agentic attributes, are another key barrier to career advancement for women [e.g., 92 , 160 ].

Hiring is the entrance gateway for women into the workforce. Therefore, it is related to other workforce topics such as compensation , role , career progression , decision-making , human capital , performance , organization and education .

A first stream of literature focuses on the process leading up to candidates’ job applications, demonstrating that bias exists before positions are even opened, and it is perpetuated both by men and women through networking and gatekeeping practices [e.g., 164 , 165 ].

The hiring process itself is also subject to biases [ 166 ], for example gender-congruity bias that leads to men being preferred candidates in male-dominated sectors [e.g., 167 ], women being hired in positions with higher risk of failure [e.g., 168 ] and limited transparency and accountability afforded by written processes and procedures [e.g., 164 ] that all contribute to ascriptive inequality. In addition, providing incentives for evaluators to hire women may actually work to this end; however, this is not the case when supporting female candidates endangers higher-ranking male ones [ 169 ].

Another interesting perspective, instead, looks at top management teams’ composition and the effects on hiring practices, indicating that firms with more women in top management are less likely to lay off staff [e.g., 152 ].

Performance.

Several scholars posed their attention towards women’s performance, its consequences [e.g., 170 , 171 ] and the implications of having women in decision-making positions [e.g., 18 , 19 ].

At the individual level, research focused on differences in educational and academic performance between women and men, especially referring to the gender gap in STEM fields [e.g., 171 ]. The presence of stereotype threats–that is the expectation that the members of a social group (e.g., women) “must deal with the possibility of being judged or treated stereotypically, or of doing something that would confirm the stereotype” [ 172 ]–affects women’s interested in STEM [e.g., 173 ], as well as their cognitive ability tests, penalizing them [e.g., 174 ]. A stronger gender identification enhances this gap [e.g., 175 ], whereas mentoring and role models can be used as solutions to this problem [e.g., 121 ]. Despite the negative effect of stereotype threats on girls’ performance [ 176 ], female and male students perform equally in mathematics and related subjects [e.g., 177 ]. Moreover, while individuals’ performance at school and university generally affects their achievements and the field in which they end up working, evidence reveals that performance in math or other scientific subjects does not explain why fewer women enter STEM working fields; rather this gap depends on other aspects, such as culture, past working experiences, or self-efficacy [e.g., 170 ]. Finally, scholars have highlighted the penalization that women face for their positive performance, for instance when they succeed in traditionally male areas [e.g., 178 ]. This penalization is explained by the violation of gender-stereotypic prescriptions [e.g., 179 , 180 ], that is having women well performing in agentic areas, which are typical associated to men. Performance penalization can thus be overcome by clearly conveying communal characteristics and behaviors [ 178 ].

Evidence has been provided on how the involvement of women in boards of directors and decision-making positions affects firms’ performance. Nevertheless, results are mixed, with some studies showing positive effects on financial [ 19 , 181 , 182 ] and corporate social performance [ 99 , 182 , 183 ]. Other studies maintain a negative association [e.g., 18 ], and other again mixed [e.g., 184 ] or non-significant association [e.g., 185 ]. Also with respect to the presence of a female CEO, mixed results emerged so far, with some researches demonstrating a positive effect on firm’s performance [e.g., 96 , 186 ], while other obtaining only a limited evidence of this relationship [e.g., 103 ] or a negative one [e.g., 187 ].

Finally, some studies have investigated whether and how women’s performance affects their hiring [e.g., 101 ] and career progression [e.g., 83 , 160 ]. For instance, academic performance leads to different returns in hiring for women and men. Specifically, high-achieving men are called back significantly more often than high-achieving women, which are penalized when they have a major in mathematics; this result depends on employers’ gendered standards for applicants [e.g., 101 ]. Once appointed, performance ratings are more strongly related to promotions for women than men, and promoted women typically show higher past performance ratings than those of promoted men. This suggesting that women are subject to stricter standards for promotion [e.g., 160 ].

Behavioral aspects related to gender follow two main streams of literature. The first examines female personality and behavior in the workplace, and their alignment with cultural expectations or stereotypes [e.g., 188 ] as well as their impacts on equality. There is a common bias that depicts women as less agentic than males. Certain characteristics, such as those more congruent with male behaviors–e.g., self-promotion [e.g., 189 ], negotiation skills [e.g., 190 ] and general agentic behavior [e.g., 191 ]–, are less accepted in women. However, characteristics such as individualism in women have been found to promote greater gender equality in society [ 192 ]. In addition, behaviors such as display of emotions [e.g., 193 ], which are stereotypically female, work against women’s acceptance in the workplace, requiring women to carefully moderate their behavior to avoid exclusion. A counter-intuitive result is that women and minorities, which are more marginalized in the workplace, tend to be better problem-solvers in innovation competitions due to their different knowledge bases [ 194 ].

The other side of the coin is examined in a parallel literature stream on behavior towards women in the workplace. As a result of biases, prejudices and stereotypes, women may experience adverse behavior from their colleagues, such as incivility and harassment, which undermine their well-being [e.g., 195 , 196 ]. Biases that go beyond gender, such as for overweight people, are also more strongly applied to women [ 197 ].

Organization.

The role of women and gender bias in organizations has been studied from different perspectives, which mirror those presented in detail in the following sections. Specifically, most research highlighted the stereotypical view of leaders [e.g., 105 ] and the roles played by women within firms, for instance referring to presence in the board of directors [e.g., 18 , 90 , 91 ], appointment as CEOs [e.g., 16 ], or top executives [e.g., 93 ].

Scholars have investigated antecedents and consequences of the presence of women in these apical roles. On the one side they looked at hiring and career progression [e.g., 83 , 92 , 160 , 168 , 198 ], finding women typically disadvantaged with respect to their male counterparts. On the other side, they studied women’s leadership styles and influence on the firm’s decision-making [e.g., 152 , 154 , 155 , 199 ], with implications for performance [e.g., 18 , 19 , 96 ].

Human capital.

Human capital is a transverse topic that touches upon many different aspects of female gender equality. As such, it has the most associations with other topics, starting with education as mentioned above, with career-related topics such as role , decision-making , hiring , career progression , performance , compensation , leadership and organization . Another topic with which there is a close connection is behavior . In general, human capital is approached both from the education standpoint but also from the perspective of social capital.

The behavioral aspect in human capital comprises research related to gender differences for example in cultural and religious beliefs that influence women’s attitudes and perceptions towards STEM subjects [ 142 , 200 – 202 ], towards employment [ 203 ] or towards environmental issues [ 150 , 204 ]. These cultural differences also emerge in the context of globalization which may accelerate gender equality in the workforce [ 205 , 206 ]. Gender differences also appear in behaviors such as motivation [ 207 ], and in negotiation [ 190 ], and have repercussions on women’s decision-making related to their careers. The so-called gender equality paradox sees women in countries with lower gender equality more likely to pursue studies and careers in STEM fields, whereas the gap in STEM enrollment widens as countries achieve greater equality in society [ 171 ].

Career progression is modeled by literature as a choice-process where personal preferences, culture and decision-making affect the chosen path and the outcomes. Some literature highlights how women tend to self-select into different professions than men, often due to stereotypes rather than actual ability to perform in these professions [ 142 , 144 ]. These stereotypes also affect the perceptions of female performance or the amount of human capital required to equal male performance [ 110 , 193 , 208 ], particularly for mothers [ 81 ]. It is therefore often assumed that women are better suited to less visible and less leadership -oriented roles [ 209 ]. Women also express differing preferences towards work-family balance, which affect whether and how they pursue human capital gains [ 210 ], and ultimately their career progression and salary .

On the other hand, men are often unaware of gendered processes and behaviors that they carry forward in their interactions and decision-making [ 211 , 212 ]. Therefore, initiatives aimed at increasing managers’ human capital –by raising awareness of gender disparities in their organizations and engaging them in diversity promotion–are essential steps to counter gender bias and segregation [ 213 ].

Emerging topics: Leadership and entrepreneurship

Among the emerging topics, the most pervasive one is women reaching leadership positions in the workforce and in society. This is still a rare occurrence for two main types of factors, on the one hand, bias and discrimination make it harder for women to access leadership positions [e.g., 214 – 216 ], on the other hand, the competitive nature and high pressure associated with leadership positions, coupled with the lack of women currently represented, reduce women’s desire to achieve them [e.g., 209 , 217 ]. Women are more effective leaders when they have access to education, resources and a diverse environment with representation [e.g., 218 , 219 ].

One sector where there is potential for women to carve out a leadership role is entrepreneurship . Although at the start of the millennium the discourse on entrepreneurship was found to be “discriminatory, gender-biased, ethnocentrically determined and ideologically controlled” [ 220 ], an increasing body of literature is studying how to stimulate female entrepreneurship as an alternative pathway to wealth, leadership and empowerment [e.g., 221 ]. Many barriers exist for women to access entrepreneurship, including the institutional and legal environment, social and cultural factors, access to knowledge and resources, and individual behavior [e.g., 222 , 223 ]. Education has been found to raise women’s entrepreneurial intentions [e.g., 224 ], although this effect is smaller than for men [e.g., 109 ]. In addition, increasing self-efficacy and risk-taking behavior constitute important success factors [e.g., 225 ].

Finally, the topic of sustainability is worth mentioning, as it is the primary objective of the SDGs and is closely associated with societal well-being. As society grapples with the effects of climate change and increasing depletion of natural resources, a narrative has emerged on women and their greater link to the environment [ 226 ]. Studies in developed countries have found some support for women leaders’ attention to sustainability issues in firms [e.g., 227 – 229 ], and smaller resource consumption by women [ 230 ]. At the same time, women will likely be more affected by the consequences of climate change [e.g., 230 ] but often lack the decision-making power to influence local decision-making on resource management and environmental policies [e.g., 231 ].

Research gaps and conclusions

Research on gender equality has advanced rapidly in the past decades, with a steady increase in publications, both in mainstream topics related to women in education and the workforce, and in emerging topics. Through a novel approach combining methods of text mining and social network analysis, we examined a comprehensive body of literature comprising 15,465 papers published between 2000 and mid 2021 on topics related to gender equality. We identified a set of 27 topics addressed by the literature and examined their connections.

At the highest level of abstraction, it is worth noting that papers abound on the identification of issues related to gender inequalities and imbalances in the workforce and in society. Literature has thoroughly examined the (unconscious) biases, barriers, stereotypes, and discriminatory behaviors that women are facing as a result of their gender. Instead, there are much fewer papers that discuss or demonstrate effective solutions to overcome gender bias [e.g., 121 , 143 , 145 , 163 , 194 , 213 , 232 ]. This is partly due to the relative ease in studying the status quo, as opposed to studying changes in the status quo. However, we observed a shift in the more recent years towards solution seeking in this domain, which we strongly encourage future researchers to focus on. In the future, we may focus on collecting and mapping pro-active contributions to gender studies, using additional Natural Language Processing techniques, able to measure the sentiment of scientific papers [ 43 ].

All of the mainstream topics identified in our literature review are closely related, and there is a wealth of insights looking at the intersection between issues such as education and career progression or human capital and role . However, emerging topics are worthy of being furtherly explored. It would be interesting to see more work on the topic of female entrepreneurship , exploring aspects such as education , personality , governance , management and leadership . For instance, how can education support female entrepreneurship? How can self-efficacy and risk-taking behaviors be taught or enhanced? What are the differences in managerial and governance styles of female entrepreneurs? Which personality traits are associated with successful entrepreneurs? Which traits are preferred by venture capitalists and funding bodies?

The emerging topic of sustainability also deserves further attention, as our society struggles with climate change and its consequences. It would be interesting to see more research on the intersection between sustainability and entrepreneurship , looking at how female entrepreneurs are tackling sustainability issues, examining both their business models and their company governance . In addition, scholars are suggested to dig deeper into the relationship between family values and behaviors.

Moreover, it would be relevant to understand how women’s networks (social capital), or the composition and structure of social networks involving both women and men, enable them to increase their remuneration and reach top corporate positions, participate in key decision-making bodies, and have a voice in communities. Furthermore, the achievement of gender equality might significantly change firm networks and ecosystems, with important implications for their performance and survival.

Similarly, research at the nexus of (corporate) governance , career progression , compensation and female empowerment could yield useful insights–for example discussing how enterprises, institutions and countries are managed and the impact for women and other minorities. Are there specific governance structures that favor diversity and inclusion?

Lastly, we foresee an emerging stream of research pertaining how the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic challenged women, especially in the workforce, by making gender biases more evident.

For our analysis, we considered a set of 15,465 articles downloaded from the Scopus database (which is the largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature). As we were interested in reviewing business and economics related gender studies, we only considered those papers published in journals listed in the Academic Journal Guide (AJG) 2018 ranking of the Chartered Association of Business Schools (CABS). All the journals listed in this ranking are also indexed by Scopus. Therefore, looking at a single database (i.e., Scopus) should not be considered a limitation of our study. However, future research could consider different databases and inclusion criteria.

With our literature review, we offer researchers a comprehensive map of major gender-related research trends over the past twenty-two years. This can serve as a lens to look to the future, contributing to the achievement of SDG5. Researchers may use our study as a starting point to identify key themes addressed in the literature. In addition, our methodological approach–based on the use of the Semantic Brand Score and its webapp–could support scholars interested in reviewing other areas of research.

Supporting information

S1 text. keywords used for paper selection..

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0256474.s001

Acknowledgments

The computing resources and the related technical support used for this work have been provided by CRESCO/ENEAGRID High Performance Computing infrastructure and its staff. CRESCO/ENEAGRID High Performance Computing infrastructure is funded by ENEA, the Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development and by Italian and European research programmes (see http://www.cresco.enea.it/english for information).

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• 58. Iannone F, Ambrosino F, Bracco G, De Rosa M, Funel A, Guarnieri G, et al., editors. CRESCO ENEA HPC clusters: A working example of a multifabric GPFS Spectrum Scale layout. 2019 International Conference on High Performance Computing & Simulation (HPCS); 2019.
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• 172. Steele CM, Aronson J. Stereotype threat and the test performance of academically successful African Americans. In: Jencks C, Phillips M, editors. The Black–White test score gap. Washington, DC: Brookings; 1998. p. 401–27

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Key takeaways on Americans’ views on gender equality a century after U.S. women gained the right to vote

Aug. 18 marks the 100-year anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment, which granted women in the United States the right to vote. As this milestone approaches, about half of Americans (49%) say granting women the right to vote has been the most important milestone in advancing the position of women in the country, according to a Pew Research Center study. And while many Americans say the last decade has seen progress in the fight for gender equality, a majority say the country still hasn’t gone far enough in giving women equal rights with men. 

Here are some key takeaways from  the report , which was based on a nationally representative survey of 3,143 U.S. adults conducted online from March 18-April 1, 2020.

Pew Research Center conducted this study to understand Americans’ views of the current state of gender equality and the advancement of women around the 100th anniversary of women getting the right to vote. For this analysis, we surveyed 3,143 U.S. adults in March and April 2020, including an oversample of Black and Hispanic respondents. The adults surveyed are members of the Ipsos Public Affairs KnowledgePanel, an online survey panel that is recruited through national random sampling of residential addresses and landline and cellphone numbers. KnowledgePanel provides internet access for those who do not have it and, if needed, a device to access the internet when they join the panel. To ensure that the results of this survey reflect a balanced cross section of the nation, the data are weighted to match the U.S. adult population by gender, age, education, race and ethnicity and other categories. The survey was conducted in English and Spanish.

Here are the questions used for this report, along with responses, and its methodology .

A majority (57%) of adults say the U.S. hasn’t gone far enough when it comes to giving women equal rights with men.  Assessments of the country’s progress vary by gender and political party. Women (64%) are more likely than men (49%) to say that the country hasn’t made enough progress, and Democrats and those who lean to the Democratic Party are more than twice as likely as Republicans and Republican leaners to say the U.S. hasn’t gone far enough to give women the same rights as men (76% vs. 33%). 

Americans are more dissatisfied with the state of gender equality now than when the question was asked in 2017. Three years ago, half of adults said the country hadn’t gone far enough in giving women equal rights with men, compared with 57% of adults today. This attitudinal shift has occurred across both gender and party lines.

Among those who think the country still has work to do in achieving gender equality, 77% say sexual harassment is a major obstacle to women’s equality.  Smaller shares, but still majorities, also point to other obstacles: 67% say women don’t have the same legal rights as men; 66% say that there are different societal expectations for men and women; and 64% say there aren’t enough women in positions of power. Women are more likely than men to say these are major obstacles.

When asked what gender equality would look like, many of those who say it’s somewhat or very important for men and women to have equal rights point to the workplace. Specifically, 45% volunteer that a society where women have equal rights with men would include equal pay, and 19% say there would be no discrimination in hiring, promotion or educational opportunities. About one-in-ten (9%) point to more or equal representation in business or political leadership.

About three-in-ten U.S. men think women’s gains have come at the expense of men. Most Americans (76%) say the gains have not come at the expense of men, although 22% of adults – including 28% of men and 17% of women – think they have come at the expense of men. Republican men (38%) are twice as likely as Democratic men (19%) to say the gains women have made have come at the expense of men. A quarter of Republican women also say this, compared with 12% of Democratic women.

Among women, those without a bachelor’s degree are about twice as likely as college graduates to say women’s gains have come at the expense of men (21% vs. 10%). Educational differences are less pronounced among men.

Americans are more than twice as likely to say that, when it comes to gender discrimination, the bigger problem is people not seeing it where it really does exist, rather than people seeing discrimination where it does not exist (67% vs. 31%). Three-quarters of women point to gender discrimination being overlooked as the bigger problem; 60% of men agree.

An overwhelming majority of Democrats (85%) say the bigger problem is people overlooking gender discrimination. Among Republicans, more say the bigger problem is people seeing discrimination where it doesn’t exist (53%) than say it is people not seeing it where it does exist (46%). Republican women are far more likely than Republican men to say people overlooking gender discrimination is the bigger problem (54% vs. 38%).

Majorities say the feminist movement and the Democratic Party have done at least a fair amount when it comes to institutions and groups that have helped advance women’s rights. Seven-in-ten Americans say the feminist movement has done a great deal or a fair amount to advance women’s rights in the U.S., while 59% say the same about the Democratic Party. Far fewer (37%) say the Republican Party has done at least a fair amount to advance women’s rights.

About three-in-ten adults (29%) say President Donald Trump has done at least a fair amount to advance women’s rights, while 69% say Trump has not done much or has done nothing at all.

While a majority of Americans say feminism has had a positive impact on the lives of white, Black and Hispanic women, more say feminism has helped White women a lot. About three-in-ten U.S. adults say feminism has helped the lives of white women (32%), About three-in-ten U.S. adults say feminism has helped the lives a white women a lot, compared with 21% and 15% who say this about Black women and Hispanic women, respectively.

Asked about the impact of feminism on other groups of women, a majority of Americans (57%) say feminism has helped lesbian and bisexual women at least a little, but fewer (41%) say feminism has helped transgender women. And while about half (49%) say feminism has helped wealthy and poor women at least a little, more say it’s helped wealthy women a lot (24%) than say it’s been equally helpful to poor women (10%).

About four-in-ten women (41%) say feminism has helped them personally. Women most likely to say this include those with a bachelor’s degree or more education (55%), Hispanic women (46%), women younger than 50 (47%) and Democratic women (50%).

Most who say the country still has work to do on gender equality say equality is likely to be achieved in the future. More than eight-in-ten Americans who say the country hasn’t made enough progress say it is very likely (31%) or somewhat likely (53%) that women will have equal rights with men in the future, compared with 16% who say they think gender equality is not too likely or not at all likely. Men who say the country has not yet achieved gender equality are more likely than women to say that gender equality is very likely (37% vs. 26%). Democratic women are the least likely to say this is very likely: 23% say this, compared with 35% of Republican women and 38% of Democratic and Republican men.

Note: Here are the questions used for this report, along with responses, and its methodology .

• Discrimination & Prejudice
• Gender Equality & Discrimination

Amanda Barroso is a former writer/editor focusing on social trends at Pew Research Center .

Americans’ views of offensive speech aren’t necessarily clear-cut

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Women's Rights

The rights and roles of women in society continue to evolve and vary considerably across the globe. Read the overview below to gain a balanced understanding of the issue and explore the previews of opinion articles that highlight many perspectives on feminism.

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Women's rights topic overview.

"Women's Rights." Opposing Viewpoints Online Collection , Gale, 2023.

Movements for the  equal rights of women  in the United States have been shaped in response to a system of patriarchal social norms and laws that formed the basis of US cultural, political, and economic life.  Patriarchy  refers to a society in which fathers or male elders hold legal authority over dependent women and children or, more broadly, to a society in which a disproportionately large share of power is held by men. Issues related to the rights of women in the United States largely fell under three categories: economic independence, or the rights to education, work, and property ownership; bodily autonomy, or the rights to control one's own sexual and reproductive choices; and political participation, or the rights to organize, vote, and run for office.

The patriarchal concept of  coverture , which came to North America from England with colonial settlers, determined women's lesser status by forming colonial law and subsequent state laws. As a doctrine, coverture refers to the idea that women do not have legal identities but are instead "covered," first by their fathers' identities and later, ostensibly, by their husbands' identities. Through coverture's influence, men's authority was codified in law and suffused throughout everyday life. With no legal individual identity, women could not enter into business contracts by themselves, own property or inherit it in most cases, retain control of earned wages, claim rights to their children, or withhold consent to sexual intercourse.

Though the formalized US women's rights movement did not take shape until the mid-nineteenth century, a long tradition of women working for greater autonomy had begun in the Colonial and Revolutionary eras. The arguments for women's rights were shaped by the Declaration of Independence, which declared "all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights." The US Constitution guaranteed these rights. However, the rights proclaimed to "all men" by the Constitution were limited to white, property-holding men, who were allowed to vote and participate in government. At the same time, a variety of legal and social sanctions continued to limit women's involvement in public and civic life.

The first document to emerge from an organized women's rights collective in the United States was the Declaration of Sentiments, which was drafted using the Declaration of Independence as a model and ratified at the first convention of women's rights advocates in Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848. Historians trace the origins of the movement for US  women's suffrage  (voting rights for women) to the Seneca Falls Convention, where Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Frederick Douglass argued in favor of granting women the right to vote. Women's suffrage was finally achieved more than seventy years later with the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920.

Despite the achievements of women's rights activists throughout the twentieth century, feminist scholars argue that the remnants of coverture still operate in legal and social institutions in the first decades of the twenty-first century. According to the United Nations, no country in the world had achieved gender equality as of 2022, and no countries were on track to achieve it by 2030. Beginning in March 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic has disproportionately affected women, reviving debates about the value of unpaid and underpaid domestic and caretaking work performed predominantly by women. The pandemic widened pre-existing social inequalities, including health disparities among women based on race, class, ethnicity, sexual orientation and gender identity, and disability.

Many advocates consider the June 2022 US Supreme Court ruling in  Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization  a significant setback for women's rights.  Dobbs  eliminated the federally protected right to abortion and gave state legislature broad authority to determine abortion law. In the decision, the conservative majority in the court overturned  Roe v. Wade  (1973), which had prohibited states from intervening in people's reproductive health care choices through the first trimester of pregnancy. According to the Guttmacher Institute, as of August 2022, 58 percent of US girls and women ages thirteen to forty-four lived in states that were either hostile or extremely hostile to abortion.

• Women's rights issues in the United States primarily fall under three broad categories: economic independence, bodily and sexual autonomy, and political participation.
• Patriarchy  refers to a society in which men hold a disproportionately large share of power. Laws and norms are considered to be patriarchal when they perpetuate this gendered imbalance of power.
• Coverture , which shaped how women's lesser status was written into law, is the concept that female persons do not have legal identities but are instead "covered" by their fathers' or husbands' identities.
• Consent is central to women's rights, especially in the contexts of marriage and relationships, reproductive autonomy, health care, sexual harassment and assault, and rape.
• Concerns over consent and women's rights have extended into the workplace, where sexual harassment remains prevalent across industries, as amplified by the #MeToo movement.
• Pursuing greater and more diverse political representation has been a primary strategy for achieving women's rights. Research suggests responses to COVID-19 were more effective in places where women held leadership positions.
• Many advocates believe that the Supreme Court's overturning of  Roe v. Wade , the landmark ruling that legalized abortion at the federal level, in 2022 represents a major setback for women's rights and may lead to the erosion of other achievements by the women's movement.

ECONOMIC INDEPENDENCE

Stemming from coverture, the  doctrine of separate spheres  defined the gendered divisions of US society from before industrialization until the latter half of the twentieth century. Women and men were relegated to separate, largely segregated roles and social spaces. While it was seen as both appropriate and proper for men to participate in the economic, political, and social life of the  public sphere , women were consigned to domestic and family-oriented roles in the  private sphere . The doctrine of separate spheres primarily governed white women of the middle and upper classes, as women of color and poor and working-class white women often had no choice but to seek employment outside the home. These women were often employed as domestic workers in wealthy white households or in factories, where employers could legally pay women lower wages than men for the same job.

Married women argued for property rights, which could provide a measure of economic security if a woman was widowed or abandoned by her husband. Connecticut passed a law allowing women to write wills as early as 1809, but more comprehensive legislation intended to undo coverture's most strict provisions did not come until 1848 when New York state enacted the Married Women's Property Act. In the following decade other states passed similar laws, often modeled upon the New York statute. These early laws ranged from allowing women to retain separate ownership of property to extending widows' rights to defining the circumstances in which a woman could bring a lawsuit. Through the slow acquisition of married women's property rights, more women, both married and unmarried, gained the ability to survive independently from men.

The undoing of coverture persisted well into the twentieth century, with federal laws such as the Equal Credit Opportunity Act of 1974 and the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978 continuing the work of expanding women's capacity to secure financial independence. The former act prohibited financial institutions from discriminating against women in credit and loan approvals, and the latter prohibited employers from discriminating against employees who become pregnant. In 1969 California became the first state to legalize no-fault divorce, which removed the legal requirement of providing evidence of wrongdoing (such as adultery or abuse) before being granted a divorce, a system that had often functioned to keep women in unwanted or unsafe marriages. New York became the last state to legalize no-fault divorce in 2010.

Activists in the 1970s also revived the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), which was first proposed in the 1920s and would have amended the US Constitution to guarantee women's equal rights. The ERA passed Congress in 1972, but only thirty-five of the necessary thirty-eight states had ratified it by the extended 1982 deadline. The ratification effort was renewed in the wake of the 2016 US presidential election. Nevada, Illinois, and Virginia ratified the ERA in 2017, 2018, and 2020, respectively, bringing the total to thirty-eight states. Lawmakers have made efforts to remove the 1982 deadline for state ratification and to restart the state-by-state ratification process. As of July 2022, however, their attempts remained stalled in the US Senate.

BODILY AND SEXUAL AUTONOMY

The economic circumstances of women have always influenced their health and safety, and women's legal status has historically limited their sexual agency and bodily autonomy. The status of enslaved Black women in the antebellum period enabled white people to commit a range of physical, sexual, and psychological abuses against them with impunity. Women working in factories during the Industrial and Progressive Eras risked injury and death under the same unsafe working conditions as men yet did so at significantly lower wages. Predominantly Latina farmworkers in the 1960s and onward became ill from pesticide contamination that also made it likelier their children would be born with congenital birth defects.

Consent is central to bodily autonomy. Under coverture, marital rape was legally impossible, underscoring how patriarchal understandings of sex and gender have deprived girls and women of  agency , or the capacity to act or exert power. Because a woman was absorbed into her husband's identity, she did not have the capacity to withhold or grant consent to sex. By 1993 marital rape had become illegal in every state, but the beliefs that marriage implies consent and that nonconsensual sex cannot exist within marriage persist.

The idea that women are property has arguably extended into women's professional worlds where sexual harassment is prevalent. The #MeToo movement, referring to a social media hashtag introduced by social activist Tarana Burke in 2006, emerged as an influential anti-harassment campaign in late 2017. Women from all walks of life took to social media to share their stories of sexual harassment, assault, and rape. These stories brought wide public acknowledgment to the prevalence of sexual harassment and assault in workplaces, homes, and public spaces.

Access to health care and  reproductive autonomy , or the freedom to control one's own reproductive future, remain pillars of the movement for women's rights. Reproductive autonomy relies on access to knowledge and tools for preventing and terminating pregnancy as well as freedom from coercive or forced sterilization. The US Supreme Court ruling in  Griswold v. Connecticut  (1965) prohibits the state from banning contraceptives on the basis that decisions regarding pregnancy and parenthood are private matters. Historians and activists, however, cite sterilization programs that existed in several states during the twentieth century to illustrate how marginalized women have been deprived of these decisions. Such programs attempted to control the reproduction of populations considered "less desirable" by sterilizing incarcerated women, Black women, Latinas, immigrants, and women with disabilities without their knowledge or consent.

Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization  (2022), which challenged a Mississippi law prohibiting nearly all abortions beyond fifteen weeks of pregnancy, was the first case regarding pre-viability gestational age the Supreme Court had agreed to hear since  Roe v. Wade . In its decision, the court rejected the reasoning of  Roe v. Wade , denying any constitutional right to abortion, and returning the authority to legislate abortion to state lawmakers. The  Dobbs  ruling intensified advocates' concerns the conservative majority on the court will target other rulings that serve as cornerstones of women's reproductive autonomy, such as  Griswold v. Connecticut  (1965).

The  Dobbs  decision was the culmination of a decades-long project by antiabortion activists; politicians, lawyers and judges, and reproductive rights advocates had had been preparing for the overturning of  Roe v. Wade . Before the court released its decision in  Dobbs , some states had moved to protect access to abortion, many others had moved to ban or severely restrict access in the event  Roe  was overturned, and yet others were poised to revert to pre-1973 abortion law. In 2010 the Guttmacher Institute classified ten states as "hostile" and zero states as "very hostile" to abortion rights. By 2021 it had classified fifteen states as "hostile" and six states as "very hostile." As of August 2022, legal abortions were nearly impossible to obtain in twelve states.

CRITICAL THINKING QUESTIONS

• What is the doctrine of separate spheres, and how does it affect gender norms and roles in the United States in the twenty-first century?
• Why do you think increased women's representation in Congress has not resulted in federal legislation to protect abortion and reproductive rights nationwide? Explain your answer.
• What steps, if any, should your state government take to compensate women for unpaid or underpaid domestic labor? Explain your reasoning.

POLITICAL PARTICIPATION AND WOMEN'S LEADERSHIP

Commentators noted a marked rise in women's political and social activism in the wake of the 2016 election of US president Donald Trump. Many women's rights supporters credit opposition to Trump and his administration with fueling historic results of the 2018 midterm elections. Prior to the November 2018 election, eighty-four women were serving in the House and twenty-three women were serving in the Senate. In January 2019, nearly a century after women gained the right to vote, more than one hundred seats in the US House of Representatives (out of a total of 435) and twenty-five seats in the Senate (out of a total of one hundred) were occupied by women for the first time. Representative Nancy Pelosi (D-CA)—the first woman elected to serve as Speaker of the House, serving in the post from 2007 to 2011—reclaimed the speakership in 2019. With the inauguration of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris in 2021 and Pelosi continuing to serve as Speaker, women held the second and third positions in the line of presidential succession. As of August 2022, 122 women served in the House of Representatives and twenty-four women served in the Senate. Women held twelve cabinet-level positions in the Biden administration and four of nine seats on the Supreme Court. Despite these gains, women filled only about 27 percent of all national congressional seats, about 30 percent of all state legislative seats, and 18 percent of state governorships.

Because women lack equity in political representation and continue to face societal hurdles, they have been hit harder economically and socially by the COVID-19 pandemic than men. Women in the United States have taken on a greater share of unpaid child and elder care responsibilities, suffered greater job losses, and left the workforce at rates higher than men. According to a 2021 Pew analysis, Black women and Latinas represented 46 percent of all women who had left the workforce despite representing less than 33 percent of the total female US labor force. Nevertheless, the presence of women in decision-making roles, both in government and other sectors, is associated with more effective pandemic responses. A 2020 analysis published in the  Journal of Applied Psychology , for instance, found lower COVID-19 fatality rates during the first several months of the pandemic in US states where women were serving as governors than in states with male governors.

With the majority of Americans opposed to the reversal of  Roe v. Wade , the Supreme Court's decision in  Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization  sparked immediate and widespread protest. Girls, women, and supporters of women's and reproductive rights demonstrated across the country. Advocates outside the United States staged marches in solidarity with American women. Many Democratic lawmakers and leaders including President Biden, Vice President Harris, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi condemned the ruling. However, efforts to pass a law protecting abortion access nationwide failed in the Senate. Women's and reproductive rights advocates have predicted the court's overturning of  Roe v. Wade  will motivate record voter turnout among young voters in the 2022 midterm elections.

More Articles

Women's rights should be enshrined in the us constitution.

"What's more, political fallout from the current administration, as well as the #MeToo and #SheShouldRun movements, have created momentum and transformed a long-languishing Amendment effort into a new, pressing matter."

Tina Rodia is a freelance writer and editor based in West Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

In the following viewpoint, she discusses the revived efforts to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), which was first proposed nearly a century ago. The ERA would enshrine the equal rights of women into the United States Constitution, Rodia argues, and would offer greater protections and recourse to women than the constellation of federal equal rights laws that currently bar sex and gender discrimination. Although Congress passed the ERA in 1972, only thirty-five states ratified it—three short of the number needed for enactment—before the 1982 deadline. However, the author contends, a renewed focus on women's rights following the 2016 US presidential election may be enough to see a new iteration of the ERA enacted.

The Equal Rights Amendment is dead. It should stay that way

"[C]an a legislative cadaver be ratified?"

George F. Will is a political columnist for the Washington Post .

In the following viewpoint, Will criticizes the repeated attempts by legislators to pass the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) to the US Constitution, which would guarantee equal rights for all American citizens regardless of sex. The author faults Congress for passing the ERA in 1972 without understanding the implications of its passage, for granting states a seven-year time limit for ratification, and for extending that time limit when the required numbers of states had not yet ratified. Comparing the time allotted for the ERA's ratification to other amendments, Will asserts that the proposed amendment's inability to secure ratification within the ample time provided by Congress demonstrates its irrelevance.

Excluding Transwomen from Feminism Is Transphobic

“It must be hard to be called a bigot when you have fought against male supremacy in your actions and in your heart throughout your life.”

Josephine Livingstone is a staff writer at the New Republic .

In the following viewpoint, Livingstone responds to an essay about feminism and transgender women published in The American Conservative . The essay’s author, Natasha Vargas-Cooper, suggests that the needs of transgender women do not belong as part of the collective feminist platform. Livingstone takes issue with Vargas-Cooper’s assertions that the certain demands of transgender rights activists are unrealistic and that women’s rights are not tied to transgender women’s rights. Livingstone argues that conflict between feminists and transgender activists serves to strengthen the control of the patriarchy.

“Marketplace Feminism” and the Commodification of Empowerment

“The various media and pop culture industries whose bread and butter has rested on making women hate themselves are now not only not insulting them but even celebrating their strength and smarts.”

Susan J. Douglas is a professor of communications at the University of Michigan. She is the author of several books, including Where the Girls Are: Growing Up Female with the Mass Media and Enlightened Sexism: The Seductive Message that Feminism’s Work Is Done .

In the following viewpoint, Douglas argues that advertising that promotes female empowerment advances a superficial and depoliticized version of feminism. The author cites recent examples in both advertising and more general pop culture that use feminism as a marketing ploy, depicting the political movement as an identity that can be achieved by purchasing certain products. While others have identified the popularity of feminist tropes as an indication of widespread acceptance of feminist ideals, the author worries that celebrating feminism’s current status as a trendy accessory can distract society from the need to address to systemic gender inequality.

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Women's suffrage movement.

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Articles on Women's rights

Displaying 1 - 20 of 310 articles.

The Taliban’s harsh new ‘vice and virtue’ laws are a throwback to the oppression of the 1990s – especially for the women of Afghanistan

Kambaiz Rafi , Durham University

Women who opposed votes for women: the case of Mrs Humphry Ward

Laura Edwards , Bangor University

Sierra Leone’s women farmers use a custom called bora to access land – but it’s making them more vulnerable

Bankolay Theodore Turay , University of Lagos

Rape and murder of doctor sparks nationwide protests in India

Deeplina Banerjee , Western University

Imane Khelif: the Algerian boxer who overcame an ugly gender furore to win Olympic gold

Anne Tjønndal , Nord University

Misinformation, abuse and injustice: breaking down the Olympic boxing firestorm

Holly Thorpe , University of Waikato and Ryan Storr , Swinburne University of Technology

Friday essay: public ‘pash ons’ and angry dads – personal politics started with consciousness-raising feminists. Now, everyone’s doing it

Leigh Boucher , Macquarie University ; Barbara Baird , Flinders University ; Michelle Arrow , Macquarie University , and Robert Reynolds , Macquarie University

American womanhood is not what it used to be − understanding the backlash to Dobbs v. Jackson

Linda J. Nicholson , Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis

Britain’s abortion laws are still in the Victorian era, and women are the collateral damage

Sally Sheldon , University of Bristol

Mexico emerges as a destination for Americans seeking reproductive health services – not for the first time

Alejandra Marquez Guajardo , Michigan State University

Arizona’s 1864 abortion law was made in a women’s rights desert – here’s what life was like then

Calvin Schermerhorn , Arizona State University

Women, peace and security initiatives should matter to all Canadians

Emma Fingler , Queen's University, Ontario

I spent a decade helping Afghan girls make educational progress − and now the Taliban are using these 3 reasons to keep them out of school

Enayat Nasir , University at Albany, State University of New York

Shifts in how sex and gender identity are defined may alter human rights protections: Canadians deserve to know how and why

Debra M Haak , Queen's University, Ontario

Women have been excluded from men’s spaces for centuries. That’s why the MONA Ladies Lounge matters

Catharine Lumby , University of Sydney

In France, abortion rights and hijab bans highlight a double standard on women’s rights

Roshan Arah Jahangeer , Memorial University of Newfoundland

Abortion rights are featuring in this year’s European election campaign in a way we’ve not seen before

Magdalena Frennhoff Larsén , University of Westminster

How three 18th century ‘deviant mothers’ defied social norms in their novel writing

Aditi Upmanyu , University of Oxford

How Ireland’s double referendum fits into a longer history of voting for constitutional change

Tomás Finn , University of Galway

Gifts that live on, from best bodices to money for bridge repairs: Women’s wills in medieval France give a glimpse into their surprising independence

Joelle Rollo-Koster , University of Rhode Island

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Women’s Rights Topics That Won’t Leave You Indifferent

The following women’s rights topics are presented here to help students find the best theme for their paper. You will love these ideas – they touch all aspects of women’s rights. Simply read through the following lists, and choose the topic that you like the most!

Controversial topics on women’s rights

• Women’s rights in the 1950s and 1960s.
• Should laws be changed in Saudi Arabia to advance women’s rights regarding the freedom to drive, their dress code, and their interaction with men?
• The Iranian Revolution (1978-1979) on women’s rights.
• Women’s rights during 1865.
• The role of women in 18th and 19th century .
• Should women’s rights be implemented because of the gender wage gap, violence against women, and the absences of rights for women?
• Victorian era: women’s rights then and now.
• Men who fought against women’s rights.
• The role of women at the beginning of the 20th century .
• Women’s rights throughout history.
• Muslim women’s rights in the Islamic world.
• How has the passing of women’s rights changed Canada?
• Why does adherence to the principle of gender equality enshrined in the constitutions of the EU member states remain a problem?
• The relation of women’s rights to the upbringing of children and the maintenance of the household.
• Why is there still a wage gap between men and women?
• Why is the share of women in the leadership of European companies and institutions lower than that of men, and why is it insignificant on a global scale? Only 3% of the 500 largest companies are headed by women.
• Why does physical violence against women, including in the family, remain a global problem?
• The presence of established stereotypes, as well as traditional cultural and religious customs and ideas that belittle the role of women.
• How do women and girls face discrimination and violation of rights in almost every area of life?
• The relation of women’s rights to domestic violence and harassment in the workplace.
• The relation of women’s rights to sexism, gender stereotypes, and objectification in advertising.
• The relation of women’s rights to female circumcision and early marriage.
• Why is it difficult for all countries to maintain women’s rights?
• Why do many people not understand the importance of improving women’s rights?

Women’s rights speech topics

• Aboriginal women’s rights in Canada.
• Men’s and women’s rights during the French Revolution .
• Women’s rights speech by Hilary Clinton.
• Women’s rights in Iran.
• Violation of women’s rights.
• Women’s rights in Egypt.
• Did the Islamic Revolution affect women’s rights in Iran?
• Women’s rights in Kuwait.
• Women’s rights versus men’s rights in the declaration of the French Revolution.
• Century of women’s rights struggles.
• International Women’s Day as a day of women’s solidarity in the fight for equal rights and emancipation.
• What can activists do to improve women’s rights?
• Why should we fight for women’s rights?
• What countries achieved gender equality?
• Why do numerous obstacles related to women’s rights remain unchanged in such spheres as law and culture?
• Why is violence against women and girls one of the most widespread and difficult to eradicate violations of human rights in the modern world?
• The relation of women’s rights to a partner’s violence (beating, killing women, psychological abuse).
• The relation of women’s rights to sexual abuse and harassment (rape, cyberbullying, street harassment).
• The relation of women’s rights to human trafficking.
• The relation of women’s rights to female genital mutilation.

Argumentative essay topics on women’s rights

• Women’s rights in the modern Middle East.
• In the context of the years 1903-1980, to what extent were the suffragettes responsible for the most significant gains in women’s rights in England?
• You have to watch the movie “Suffragette” and then write an essay answering the following question: “How are working class people marginalized, excluded, or silenced within the film?”
• Were the suffragettes right to use violence?
• Coco Chanel’s role in women’s rights movement .
• Confronting the discrimination faced by women and girls in all its forms.
• How to raise awareness and step up activities in support of equality and the empowerment of women and girls.
• Why does abidance for women’s rights remain a problem that is perceived and addressed differently in different countries?
• In Germany, gender equality is enshrined in the Basic Law. But why does the problem nevertheless remain?
• Why are women’s rights still being violated in many countries of the world , and why is the problem of gender equality being ignored?
• How does the degree of infringement of the rights and freedoms of women vary from country to country?
• Why are women and girls still underestimated, why do they work more, earn less, and have less choice, and why are they subjected to violence in public places and at home?
• Why is there a serious threat of a rollback of the hard-won victories of feminists?
• Why, in almost all societies and fields of activity, are women discriminated against both from a legal and practical point of view?
• The relation of women’s rights and the presence of discrimination in the family, in society, and in the workplace.
• The causes and consequences of discrimination against women.
• Influence of women’s rights on child marriages.
• How does International Women’s Day give us the opportunity to think about the successes achieved, to call for huge changes, and to remember acts of courage of ordinary women who made a big contribution to the history of their countries?
• What unprecedented successes has the world achieved in term of women’s rights?
• Why are one in three women still subjected to gender-based violence?
• What changes in women’s rights should be implemented to achieve full equality?

We hope that these women’s rights topics were helpful to you. If you have chosen the topic but don’t know how to write women’s rights essay , we advise you to place an order on EssayShark.com, online essay writing service. Get the academic help you need by using our service.

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Five Frequently Asked Questions on the Inclusion of Women in Peace Processes

Members of women's groups across Somalia participate in a review of progress made by the government in ensuring a sustainable peace. (AMISOM Photo / Omar Abdisalan)

Why, if there are substantive reasons for including women and their rights in peace and security processes, and research demonstrates positive outcomes from this inclusion, has involving women proven challenging? Women make up at least half the global population—they are not a minority group. Yet, when thinking about including more women in peace processes, there are often an array of questions expressed that in some way relate to the fundamental question: “why women?”

Outlined below are some of the most regularly-raised questions by observers, mediators, and others on the particulars of “why women” in peace processes, and brief explanations that lay out the human rights basis for women’s participation in peace processes, indicating recent research and analysis about their roles in negotiations and their outcomes.

Research increasingly shows that peace processes that are inclusive of women—crucially, where it is more than token—tend to result in more durable and sustainable peace. Research also indicates that the strong influence of women in negotiation processes positively correlates with a greater likelihood of agreements being implemented. There are thus clear benefits to including women in the process of negotiating peace.

And yet, women have historically been excluded from all stages of efforts to end conflict, this despite their roles in conflict, both as members of armed groups and as peace activists. This exclusion contravenes established international obligations and norms regarding the right of women to participate, as per the The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women ( CEDAW ), including General Recommendations 23 and 30, the Beijing Platform for Action , and as supported in numerous Security Council resolutions and regional treaties.

Women’s exclusion continues despite evidence that women and girls are targeted for specific, gendered types of violence in conflict—including sexual violence—and are often affected differently by abuses committed during conflict. The rights of women and girls are often an afterthought, if they are considered at all, in peace agreements and in the implementation of accords. Not addressing these violations, in formal and informal agreements, runs the risk of impunity and repetition.

It may seem like more women are participating in peace processes and that their inclusion is no longer as urgent an issue as it once was. However, recent research shows that “women’s participation [in peace processes and political agreements] is almost always challenged by the main armed groups, political parties, and mediators.” Available data also indicates that women’s participation remains low—usually between four and eleven percent of negotiators—and that agreements themselves rarely include mention of particular women’s rights concerns, let alone address them substantively in the text and obligations.

1. What difference does it actually make if women are included in peace processes? Won’t women who are included by negotiating parties simply toe party lines?

There is an important distinction to be made between representation—meant to indicate an individual’s role representing a constituency—and participation, which is broadly used by women’s rights advocates to denote substantive participation, not token representation. Negotiators, regardless of gender, are indeed meant to represent a constituency in peace talks, while mediators, for example, are meant to provide a space for relevant parties to navigate those constituent demands.

Women’s participation in peace processes is not, therefore, solely about adding one or two women to existing negotiation teams—an approach that is often called “add women and stir.” Rather, women’s participation refers to the multifaceted and various ways women and their rights are reflected in these political processes. From this perspective, the significance of technical advisors, civil society advocates, gender advisors (who need not be women), and women on negotiation teams are all better understood. This type of inclusion also entails the ongoing representation of women on negotiation teams (e.g., as in Colombia); the provision of gender expertise—both training and technical input—to mediators and negotiation teams to understand how women’s rights are part of issues under discussion (whether that be ceasefires, political power sharing, justice efforts, etc.); and mechanisms for civil society to input ideas, concerns and proposals (e.g., as in Guatemala).

2. Many countries suffer through grinding conflict for years. When there is an opportunity for a ceasefire, isn’t this valuable opportunity being disrupted by demanding women’s participation?

Research does not show that the inclusion of women disrupts or derails peace processes. Rather, there are numerous examples of women finding creative ways to ensure peace processes get back on track once they have stalled.

There is no doubt that getting men with guns to the negotiating table is important. But there are several points related to the rights of women that this approach neglects, beyond the fact that it is not supported by research .

First, this argument does not reflect the reality of who has the guns. It is not uncommon for women to comprise 30 percent or more of armed  groups, so excluding women means there is also a lack of women with guns at the table. It also disregards the challenges faced by these women in fighting forces, including the additional risk they face.

Then there is the substance of what a particular ceasefire covers. Recent examples from Colombia and Myanmar show that when violations  of women’s rights (e.g., sexual violence) have been central to the waging of the conflict, ceasefires need to include the cessation of these tactics and strategies. If these are not included, then the ceasefire can essentially allow conflict to continue, and undermine chances for an effective long-term peace process.

Beyond this, if initial negotiations result in more than a ceasefire and lead to a substantive peace process, “waiting until later” to push for women’s inclusion and for their rights to be addressed usually means both are substantively excluded. Women from Afghanistan, Libya, and Myanmar are currently seeing these processes continue without them because of the “urgency” argument, i.e., that the most urgent need is to get men with guns to the table, and other actors may be brought in later. Prioritizing men in the initial talks sets up an approach that continues into broader talks long after peace negotiations, with little space for women’s rights advocates in the discussions on security, political power sharing, and other topics that shape post-conflict communities.

3. There are many groups that are excluded from peace talks, so why is there so much emphasis on women?

It is true that both informal and formal peace talks tend to be exclusive of many people. But calling for women to be substantively involved at all levels is part of a broad call for inclusivity. This means ensuring groups that often are excluded from negotiations—indigenous groups, labor unions, inter alia —have a voice in peace efforts. As these groups face similar challenges regarding participation, women often face barriers to their participation within these groups as well. In other words, they are doing the work but are not represented in leadership, including in political delegations. Women face multiple challenges due to their many identities—whether indigenous, ethnic, religious, or others. Therefore, just as recommendations for women’s participation recognize the need for broad inclusivity, calls for broad inclusivity need to specifically recognize the particular barriers that women face.

4. How is it possible to know if women will advocate for women’s rights? Where are the guarantees that the “right” women are at the table?

It is crucial to emphasize that in peace processes and in general, a woman’s participation should not mean she is only there to advocate for women’s rights. Expecting women to exclusively shoulder this responsibility is problematic as it does not reflect the complexity of how both men and women participate in negotiations. This expectation also limits the role of women in negotiations, constraining them to talking about one issue area, and “silo-ing” both the issue and the women themselves. Women’s rights can be and should be raised by both men and women—including the mediators, negotiators, and experts—on the various issues under discussion, whether disarmament, reintegration into communities, political integration, ceasefires, etc. Equal participation means the ideas and concerns a woman brings to the table shouldn’t be shackled to her right to be there.

5. What does women’s inclusion look like in complex conflicts that need urgent attention?

There are multiple ways to support women and their rights in even the most complex conflicts. In Colombia , women had been mobilized for years to push for peace, resulting in multiple levels of engagement in negotiations, including in the official talks.  In Syria , this includes dialogue between leaders of negotiation processes and women who are struggling to have their voices heard. This means all negotiating parties should include women in their delegations, in addition to the Women’s Advisory Board and additional future mechanisms for women’s inclusion. In Yemen , it entails raising concerns when women were not allowed to travel to participate in initial discussions, and calls for victims to be respected in negotiations. In Myanmar , it means inclusive negotiations and political reform, with inclusion of women’s rights, while not neglecting the urgent Rohingya crisis. Specifically, previous agreements on quotas for women should be implemented, not rolled back . In Libya , it has meant, in part, women’s political participation in post-Ghaddafi transitions. In Afghanistan , it means accountability for governments and donors regarding their pledged commitments to women’s rights and women’s participation in crucial talks at all levels, and at all stages. And, on the regional and global stage, new networks of women mediators provide a promising opportunity to make women’s participation not only a regular occurrence, but a transformative one.

Sarah Taylor is a Research Fellow at the International Peace Institute and oversees the organization’s work on women, peace, and security.

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About the Global Observatory

The Global Observatory provides timely analysis on peace and security issues by experts, journalists, and policymakers. It is published by the International Peace Institute. The views expressed here represent those of the contributors and not IPI.

The International Peace Institute is an independent, non-profit organization working to strengthen inclusive multilateralism for a more peaceful and sustainable planet.