Equality Now is a non-governmental organization founded in 1992 to advocate for the protection and promotion of the human rights of women and girls. Through a combination of regional partnerships, community mobilization and legal advocacy the organization works to encourage governments to adopt, improve and enforce laws that protect and promote women and girls' rights around the world. Equality Now's four main issue areas are ending sexual violence, ending harmful practices such as child marriage and female genital mutilation, ending sexual exploitation including the trafficking of women and girls, and ending discrimination in law, including the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) in the United States. As of 2019, the organization has offices in New York, United States, Nairobi, Kenya, London, United Kingdom, and Beirut, Lebanon. Gloria Steinem serves as the chair emeritus of the board. Background and history Equality Now was founded in 1992 in New York by attorneys Jessica Neuwirth of the United States, Navanethem Pillay of South Africa and Feryal Gharahi. The founders believed that acts of violence against women were violations of the fundamental human rights guarantees as stated in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and that the human rights movement to that point had neglected women's rights, dismissing these violations as “cultural” or “private.” At the time, issues such as domestic violence, rape, female genital mutilation, trafficking, and reproductive rights were not part of the agendas of established human rights organizations. Neuwirth, Pillay and Gharahi envisioned an organization that would work closely with grassroots women's organizations in every region of the world, sharing and receiving information on the status of women and violations of their rights, and mobilizing public protest in response. Immediately after the opening of its first office in New York, Equality Now began to identify groups whose work matched its own mission and to consider how to support and reinforce the actions those groups were already taking. Equality Now helped to build public consciousness on women's rights as human rights and to channel concern into strategic action through the Women's Action Network, an alliance of organizations working to achieve their common goals. Supporters who joined the network received campaign briefings and were urged to take action against human rights violations against women and girls by writing letters of protest directly to government officials, sharing information about these violations within their communities and taking other steps to support the struggle