Adonis Diaries

Revised “Declaration of Women’s Rights”

Joan Smith, in her “The Public Woman” book, ended with a “Declaration of the rights of women”.

This declaration was drawn from the experiences and activism of many women who fought for the rights of women since the American and French Revolutions such as:

1.  The French Olympe de Gouges:  Born Marie Gouze, she produced her own version of the French declaration of human rights in Sept.1791, which had excluded women from the document on the ground that women are not considered citizens. She wrote:

“Woman has the rights to mount the scaffold. She should have the rights to equally mount the rostrum, provided that these manifestations do not trouble public order as established by law…”

She was sent to the guillotine on Nov. 3, 1793 because she challenged the “barbarous prejudice” against unmarried women with children…” and for denouncing publicly the increasing savagery of the revolution…

2. The English Mary Wollstonecraft wrote “A Vindication of the rights of woman”, promoted woman’s right to education, and lambasted the marriage institution as “legalized prostitution”

3. The Suffragist movement

4. Simone de Beauvoir of “The Second Sex”… https://adonis49.wordpress.com/2008/10/22/the-second-sex/

I added clauses in parenthesis to the original 12 clauses, which Western culture takes for granted:

1. Women are born free and equal to men

2. Women and girls have the same rights of bodily integrity as men and boys

3. Women have a right to safe contraception and abortion

4. Girls are entitled to same level of education as boys

5. No one, male or female, should be married under the age of 16

6. Both genders have an unconditional right to use and enjoy public spaces

7.  Women have the right to exercise, take part in sport and observe it on the same terms as men

8. Children should not be required to adopt religious forms of dress

9. The law should not dictate how adults dress

10. Women have a right to equal working conditions and pay as men

11. The law should require full transparency in pay schedule and the equal pay right be enforced by the government

12. Women should enjoy the same property and inheritance right as men

13. Sexual abuse is as abhorrent as racism

14. Separation of State and Church is essential to protect secular equality between genders

15. The State has a moral obligation to ensure that women and girls are free to enjoy their rights and to guarantee them when denied…

16. (Women have the same right as men to vote and to run for public offices)

17. (Women must acquire full citizenship as men).

For example, women in Lebanon cannot pass citizenship to their non-Lebanese husband or to their children. Unless the husband is from a western developed State or pretty rich. In such cases, women won’t give a hoot about her Lebanese passport… Read: Lebanese women cry out https://adonis49.wordpress.com/2013/09/25/lebanese-women-cry-foul-112-get-citizenship-and-none-for-their-children/

18. Equal opportunities to higher level jobs (regardless of the biased qualification criteria drawn by men)

19. Women right to drive car, train, airplane…

20. Women rights to mount a bike, a horse, a man (her preferred intercourse technique…)

21. (Unmarried woman with children should enjoy the same rights as unmarried men…)

22. Children should remain the joint custody for both parents at any age of the children, and never separate them to give preference to any party of the family, if the conditions do not involve criminal activities or addictions

23. Mortgage evaluation to purchase properties should not discriminate against single working women, on the assumption that they will eventually get pregnant and stop working full time. And the State should guarantee the enforcement of this law.

24. Women and adult girls should have the right to travel without the written consent from husband, father, or elder brother…

25. Women and adult girls should have the right to have a personal bank account without the written consent from husband, father, or elder brother…

Do add as many clauses as your particular society discriminates against women. Do not assume that any clause implicitly cover your particular case.

Note 1: French women got Full citizenship in 1944

Note 2: English women snatched the right to vote by 1914

Note 3: US women got the right to vote around 1912