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Home » Of Special Interest To » Women

Women's Charters


In a number of countries women's movements have developed "Women's charters" as statement of the claim and rights of women. Such a document can be used as a focus for women's activities, and as a reasonably concise statement of what women perceive as their rights. These documents need not specifically relate to a constitution. They may be a claim not just to legal rights but to fair treatment by administrators, even by the rest of the community. But many of the sorts of claims made by women could appropriately be dealt with to some extent - even if detail is left to ordinary laws, administrative instructions or even to education.

In 2001 women's organizations in Australia produced the Women's Charter for Political Reform. This is not concerned with all areas of women's rights, as its name suggests, but with the particular issues that make women's participation in politics difficult: discrimination, money politics and so on.

The South African Women's Charter was originally adopted in 1954. A new Women's Charter was adopted in 1994. You can read a brief account from a report by the UN Secretary General of the time, discussing the relationship of the Charter with the new Constitution that South Africans were preparing, here. And you can read the whole charter here.

The Women of Zimbabwe also produced a Women's Charter, of which you can read a short version here.

East Timor became independent from Indonesia after a period of UN supervision in 2002. As it moved towards the setting up of a Constituent Assembly in 2001, women drew up a short Charter to be presented to the Constituent Assembly. You can read that here. There is, of course, no guarantee that such a Charter will be taken seriously by the constitution makers. Studies of the constitution of East Timor suggest that the Women's Charter there had little effect. Women will need to do more than prepare a document (see the notes in this website on Women and Constitution Making).

You might find interesting another sort of women's charter – one produced by the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers – a British trade union. You can read it here.

Women in Nepal might find some of these examples interesting or useful. But the issues in Nepal will not be identical to those in any other country and the responses to problems will not always be the same either. It is interesting to note the different approach to prostitution in the East Timor Women's Charter (ban it) and in the South African one (remove prostitution from the criminal law). These reflect different perceptions of how to deal with issues, especially perhaps the prevalence of HIV/AIDS on South Africa.

But what about Nepal? Work has been proceeding on a Women's Charter for Nepal for a few years, organized by Women's Campaign for Equality and Just Peace. You can read something about this campaign on their website here, on the WOREC website. When the document is available we hope to provide a link to it from this website, as well as a comment on how it might be reflected in a new Constitution.
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