Women's Rights

Abstract Women's rights are politically valuable to critique abuses of power, to construct boundaries for the protection of women's bodies, and to outline responsibilities. Claims for women's rights have proliferated since their emergence in the late eighteenth century. Since rights are part of a modern language of resistance to abuses by the powerful, it is not surprising that feminist authors would use the language of rights to challenge the injustices women face when they are not seen as moral, political, or social equals to men. We should think of women's rights as a conceptual tool to transform who the subject of rights is and as a way to challenge existing structures of gendered power. Demanding justice for one half of humanity through the concept of women's rights means transforming who counts as human entitled to rights. Women's rights have proven to be a powerful but contested political language for seeking gendered political equality.