Title: Defining a new inclusive future - Equality Now
Headings: Defining a new inclusive future
Jun 09, 2020
Defining a new inclusive future
In this ever changing, expanding context, the one constant is the widespread exploitation of women and girls.
A strong inclusive women’s movement has never been more necessary, yet our movement sometimes feels fraught with fractions.
We have it in our gift to define a new inclusive future, indeed, it is already happening.
Let us continue to rise above the divisions created by the patriarchy and seek equality through inclusion.

Content: A strong inclusive women’s movement has never been more necessary, yet our movement sometimes feels fraught with fractions. Despite the scale, pace and changing dynamics of the sex industry, efforts to curb it have stalled and men’s demand for paid sex is dividing the women’s movement and pitting us against one another. Concerns about trans women’s inclusion - suspicious of or denying trans people’s identity or fearing that solidarity with them will undermine opportunities to progress women’s rights in conservative contexts - fail to acknowledge that transphobia is rooted in the same structural patriarchal gender discrimination that affects women and other marginalized genders. Many governments have failed to secure the universality of human rights for women and girls as they allow the right to religious and cultural freedom to trump those of equality and non-discrimination. This has led to a situation of extreme inequalities, not just between women and men, but between women in the same country depending on their religious and or cultural heritage. Finally, other fissures have appeared when more powerful, educated, and albeit well-intended women make decisions on behalf of other, more marginalized women. For example, in India, Dalit women (previously known as the “untouchable” caste), devadasis (women who are considered given in marriage to God) and women born into prostitution in India being excluded from debates and referred to as workers, sex workers or Goddesses, when many self-define as being enslaved, vulnerable, exploited and abused. As the world shifts and division and strife driven by patriarchal systems increase, it is critical that we, the women’s movement, does not lose focus. We must unite to end the exploitation and oppression of people and the planet. In the face of these many divisions and the conservative forces at play, Equality Now’s focus on legal equality, the rule of law, access to justice and the role of international law provides opportunities for building bridges and finding common cause.