The Rights of Women

The Rights Of Women

Essay retrieved from http://www.antiessays.com/free-essays/5551.html

Women form half of the human beings inhabiting planet Earth. Since human rights are the rights of all human beings, male and female alike, human rights are women's rights. By the same token, a society in which men are not willing to extend human rights to their mothers, the women who bore and nurtured them; their daughters, products of their own loins; and their wives, the women who bear and raise their treasured sons, is a society in which men are unwilling to extend human rights to men of another family, tribe, language, religion, race, ethnic tradition, or nation. If a society does not hold justice and equality for all women in the highest regard, neither will it hold justice and equality for the many varieties of men in high regard. In a very real sense, women's rights are the basis of all human rights. Women's rights belong to women as members of the human family, and, as such, are not dependent either on a woman's marital status or on the number or sex of the children she has borne.

From time to time, it behooves us to examine human rights in the special context of women's rights. Some, but by no means all, of women's rights, which are part of the rights of all human beings, both male and female, are listed below.

Since the primary responsibility of any society is to bear and raise future generations of male and female human beings, women's roles in reproduction must be held in the highest esteem and must not be permitted to become the basis for discrimination against women as women. Further, the responsibility for raising and nurturing future generations must fall upon men and women equally. Parents, male and female alike, have the right to guide the upbringing of their children according to the dictates of their consciences. Women's important and, often, unpaid contribution to the family and the community must be considered in the event of a divorce, the death of the family's primary wage earner, and a woman's own death. Since a husband and wife are equal partners in creating and maintaining a family, upon her husband's death, one-half of the family's property is to be considered the property of the widow, property which she helped to create by her labor in the interests of the family unit.

Women, equal to men in the eyes of the law, shall be subjected to the same laws, no more and no less, as men. All laws that restricts women as women are null and void.

Women have the right to the same access as men to food, clothing, shelter, medicine, an education, job training, and employment. Women, like men, have the right to rest and leisure, including a reasonable limitation on working hours, a living wage for a reasonable number of hours worked, and periodic holidays. Women have the right to equal pay for the same work as men.

Just as woman has the right to enter the place of public execution, woman has the right to enter the place of public acclaim for her accomplishments. Women, like men, have the right to freely participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific, economic, and cultural advancement and their benefits.

Women, equal to men in the eyes of the law, shall be subjected to the same laws, no more and no less, as men. For the violation of any law, women shall be subject to the same punishment as men, no more and no less. Women have the same rights as men to life, liberty, property, security, and the pursuit of happiness and can be denied