Women's rights are human rights

Posted by Jenni Colwill on 20 November 2009 | 0 Comments

Tags: Human Rights Act petition, Human Rights Australia, women and human rights

Securing a more equal footing for women in Australia cannot occur in isolation. I strongly believe that we need a Human Rights Act to strengthen the position of women and at the same time to address human rights abuses.

The reasons for this lie in the following two facts.

Fact#1:

Women are more likely than men to experience poverty, abuse and discrimination.

Fact#2:

Women are over-represented in Australia among the poor, the disabled, the marginally employed, the sick, the isolated, and those whose responsibilities for caring for others exclude them from community life.

Now is the time to act!

Support for a Human Rights Act or Charter is high - in March 2009, over 80% of Australians supported the introduction of a new law to protect human rights, 85% of them believing that this should be a high priority for government.

However, call me a pessimist, I can't help feeling that if we don't make a lot of noise about this right now, it will slither away from us in the same way that so many other grand ideas have slithered away over the past few years.

I strongly support a Human Rights Act. If you do too, why don't you state your support by signing our petition.