Celebrate USA Women’s Equality Day – August 26
August 26th is the anniversary of national woman suffrage. Across the seventy-two years between the first major women’s rights conference at Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848, and the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, thousands of people participated in marches through cities like New York and Washington DC, wrote editorials and pamphlets, gave speeches all over the nation, lobbied political organizations, and held demonstrations with the goal of achieving voting rights for women. Women also picketed the White House with questions like, “Mr. President, what are you going to do about woman’s suffrage?” “Mr. President, how long must women wait for liberty?” This was the first time in history that a group of people picketed the White House.
There is a critical need to build capacity, develop leadership, promote a gender analysis for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ESCR) advocates and create tools to raise awareness of women's ESCR. The handbook consists of information connected to ESCR including the detailed covenant, enforcement mechanisms, state obligations and useful ESCR resources.
In many parts of the world, women’s rights to land and property are systematically denied. Laws give women fewer or less secure rights than men, and discriminatory attitudes and practices undermine them. This leaves many women almost entirely dependent on the men in their lives for basic economic survival, and vulnerable to violence, poverty, and food insecurity, particularly if widowed, divorced, single.
