WOMEN’S RIGHTS. Did you know that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights came close to referring to “all men are born free and equal” instead of “all human beings”?
The Indian Hansa Mehta, the Pakistani Begum Shaista Ikramullah or the Dominican Minerva Bernardino are three of the women who succeeded in including women’s rights in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. We present them below:
Begum Shaista Ikramullah was the main promoter of equal rights in marriage. She considered that if this sphere of life was mentioned in the declaration, child marriage and forced marriage could be more easily fought. This woman from Pakistan therefore succeeded in incorporating Article 16 into the declaration, which refers to free consent, equal rights during marriage and in its dissolution, etc.
“All men are born free and equal” or “All human beings are born free and equal”? The Indian Hansa Mehta was clear: “all men” was not inclusive enough, so the Declaration of Human Rights must include all human beings. This great defender of women’s rights in India and worldwide is attributed to the merit of changing ‘all men’ to ‘all human beings’.
Eleanor Roosevelt is another woman to be highlighted when we talk about the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. She was one of the initial promoters of creating a document that would prevent the horrors of World War II from being repeated. In addition, she was the first president in the history of the Human Rights Commission (the rest of the commission were all men).
Minerva Bernardino, from the Dominican Republic, and other South American women, such as Bertha Lutz or Isabel Vidal, were critical to including women’s rights and gender-based non-discrimination in the United Nations Charter. The French Marie-Hélène Lefaucheux was also one of the leading advocates of including gender in Article 2, which mentions equality regardless of origin, language, religion… And also of gender.
Thus, in 1948, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights became the first international agreement to recognise equal rights between men and women.
The ideas of the Danish Bodil Begtrup were well advanced at the time. She called for the rights of minorities to be discussed, but did not succeed. Begtrup also argued that the declaration should contain phrases such as “all people” or “all”, instead of “all men”.
Evdokia Uralova, from Belarus, strongly advocated equal pay for men and women. The Article 23 of the declaration finally included that “all people have the right, without any discrimination, to obtain the same salary in return for the same work.”
Another Indian woman was instrumental in drafting the Declaration of Human Rights. Lakshmi Menon vehemently opposed the concept of “colonial relativism”, which was intended to deny the rights of people living in countries under colonial rule.
> To learn more about these women, you can check the original source, on the United Nations website, “Women who shaped the Universal Declaration”.