Mariana Flores Melo: Women’s Rights and Gender Equality According to the United Nations

Mariana Flores Melo: Meaning of Women's Right

The gender equality is the basis of all human rights and the values of United Nations. One of the most important principals of the Charter of the United Nations, approved in 1945, is “gender equality for men and women” and the defense and promotion of women’s rights as one of the biggest responsibilities of all countries.

Mariana Flores Melo: Women's rights

However, hundreds of women around the world continue being the perfect victims of discrimination like:

• Many laws and policies prohibit that women have access to land, property and dwelling in equal terms.
• The economic and social discrimination means fewer opportunities for a better life and this could let them to human trafficking.
• The acts of gender- based violence affect at least 30% of women in the whole world.
• Human rights female defenders are considered as a threat to their own communities, as dangerous citizens for changing traditions.
• Women’s role as defenders of the peace and security of many situations around the world is relegated as something not important. Their function in the society isn’t really valued and all the risks they go through are not taken into account.

Also, many women face a lot of situations in which they have specific discrimination because of their age, ethnicity, some disability or social and economic situation, which are other problems besides their female condition.

In a way to guaranteed women’s rights, it is necessary to understand very well the social structures that affect them and also all the relations between:

• Laws,
• policies,
• economy,
• social dynamic,
• and their family and community life.

It is essential to disable all the gender stereotypes that affect women in hundreds of ways, and make that society see them as capable and unique human beings that have their own desires and needs.   

Mariana Flores Melo: Female defenders of human rights

By [Mariana Flores Melo].