Women's Rights Are Human Rights

"Women's rights are human rights" is a phrase used in the feminist movement. Its early uses came during the 1980s and early 1990s. It came to most prominence as the name of a speech given by Hillary Rodham Clinton, the First Lady of the United States, on 5 September 1995, at the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing. In this speech she sought to closely link the notion of women's rights with that of human rights. In doing so Clinton used the phrase within the longer, bidirectional refrain "human rights are women's rights and women's rights are human rights."

The notion that "women's rights are human rights" was first enunciated in slightly different words by the abolitionists and proto-feminists Sarah Moore Grimké and Angelina Grimké Weld in the late 1830s. In her series of Letters on the Equality of the Sexes, Sarah Moore Grimké writes, "Consequently I know nothing of man’s rights, or woman’s rights; human rights are all that I recognize". A similar expression is used by her sister, Angelina Grimké Weld, in her speeches and personal letters. In a letter to her friend Jane Smith, she says, "whatever is morally right for a man to do is morally right for a woman to do. I recognized no rights but human rights."

The phrase "Women's rights are human rights" was used intermittently during the 1980s and first half of the 1990s, before Clinton's speech. Instances include in 1984, when the New York Times quoted the head of New York City's Human Rights Commission, Marcella Maxwell, using this phrase in conversation. It was again used in 1985 by Cecilia Medina, the Chilean jurist in a seminal paper on feminism. The title of her work was 'Women's Rights as Human Rights: Latin American Countries and the Organization of American States (OAS).' In articulating the historic idea, Medina wrote, "As a logical consequence of the fact that women's rights are human rights, feminism, in theory, is a movement to achieve a democratic society, without which human rights may not be fully enjoyed."

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