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Global Fund for Women's approach focuses on winning rights for women, girls, and all historically marginalized people. Women's human rights are essential to achieving gender justice globally. Learn more about gender justice here.
What are women's human rights?

Women's rights are the fundamental human rights that were enshrined by the United Nations for every human being on the planet nearly 70 years ago. These rights include the right to live free from violence, slavery, and discrimination; to be educated; to own property; to vote; and to earn a fair and equal wage.

As the now-famous saying goes, "women's rights are human rights." That is to say, women are entitled to all of these rights. Yet almost everywhere around the world, women and girls are still denied them, often simply because of their gender.

Winning rights for women is about more than giving opportunities to any individual woman or girl; it is also about changing how countries and communities work. It involves changing laws and policies, winning hearts and minds, and investing in strong women's organizations and movements.

Global Fund for Women exists to support the tireless and courageous efforts of women's groups who work every day to win rights for women and girls. These groups are working to ensure women can own property, vote, run for office, get paid fair wages, and live free from violence - including domestic violence, sexual assault, and harmful practices such as female genital mutilation.

What rights do we stand for?

We want every woman and girl to realize the rights that are enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. We also stand for other rights that are vital for women's equality. We stand for a woman's right to decide if and when she has children, and to have high-quality health care that means she won't die in pregnancy or during childbirth. We know female genital mutilation is a violation of girls' rights, and must be eliminated. And we stand for the right of every woman to live equally and free from discrimination, no matter her sexuality or identity.

We support two critical documents for women's rights that have followed the UN declaration. The Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), an international bill of rights for women, requires governments to end gender discrimination and affirms women's rights to health services, including family planning. The Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, adopted in 1995 at the UN's Fourth World Conference in Beijing, was a rallying cry to embed gender equality and women's rights in every facet of life.

Women's rights and the Global Goals

The UN Millennium Development Goals set specific targets to reduce poverty, including targets for increased gender equality in education, work, and representation. UN Women found that progress was uneven. Globally, more women are now in school and work. Yet girls are still more likely than boys to be out of school (particularly at the secondary level). And although the number of women in elected office has risen, they are still only 21.8 percent of parliamentarians. What's more, women's rights remain at risk in many areas not addressed in the millennium goals - from violence against women to sexual and reproductive rights. And women who are already marginalized because of their race, caste, sexuality, income, or location see the fewest gains of all.

The new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) hold real promise to embed advances in women's rights, and include a specific goal (Goal 5) for gender equality. Goal 5 is more broad-based than the last gender goal and includes targets on ending gender-based violence, eliminating child marriage and female genital mutilation, and ensuring access to sexual and reproductive health. It also includes equal access to education, expanding women's economic opportunities, and reducing the burdens of unpaid care work on women and girls. Now it is up to all of us to hold governments accountable for their commitments and make sure the goals are met. Involving women - and funding the solutions of grass-roots women's groups - will be critical to success.

What does the future of women's rights look like?

The future of global women's rights is at stake. The U.S. administration's proposed cuts to foreign aid and stringent policies-from abortion and refugee resettlement to climate change- pose a direct threat to the health, dignity, and well-being of women and girls everywhere. We must reflect: Will women globally lose hard-won rights, or will the backlash instead catalyze new wins?

This moment calls for energizing new efforts and focus on strengthening women's movements to help lead the charge for social change on the most pressing issues of our time. Global Fund for Women is committed to turning these challenges into opportunities for women to assert their leadership, action, and voice. By 2020, Global Fund for Women will ensure that movements for women's rights are powerful, influential, and achieving lasting gains. Now is the time to stand with the global women's movement.

Global Fund for Women is working for a world where every woman and girl can realize and enjoy her human rights.

Only when women and girls have full access to their rights - from equal pay and land ownership rights to sexual rights, freedom from violence, access to education, and maternal health rights - will true equality exist. Only when women have taken leadership and peacemaking roles and have an equal political voice will economies and countries be transformed. And only then will all women and girls have the self-determination they are entitled to.

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Information about Women's Human Rights - Global Fund for Women

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Global Fund for Women focuses on winning rights for women, girls, and marginalized people. Learn more about what women's human rights are and more, today.

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Call 800.656.HOPE (4673) to be connected with a trained staff member from a sexual assault service provider in your area.

How does it work?

When you call 800.656.HOPE (4673), you'll be routed to a local RAINN affiliate organization based on the first six digits of your phone number. Cell phone callers have the option to enter the ZIP code of their current location to more accurately locate the nearest sexual assault service provider.
Telephone Hotline Terms of Service
How can the hotline help me?

Calling the National Sexual Assault Hotline gives you access to a range of free services including:

Confidential support from a trained staff member

Support finding a local health facility that is trained to care for survivors of sexual assault and offers services like sexual assault forensic exams

Someone to help you talk through what happened

Local resources that can assist with your next steps toward healing and recovery

Referrals for long term support in your area

Information about the laws in your community

Basic information about medical concerns

Is it confidential?

The National Sexual Assault Hotline is a safe, confidential service. When you call the hotline, only the first six numbers of the phone number are used to route the call, and your complete phone number is never stored in our system. Most states do have laws that require local staff to contact authorities in certain situations, like if there is a child or vulnerable adult who is in danger.

While almost all callers are connected directly to a staff member or volunteer at a local sexual assault service provider, a handful of providers use an answering service after daytime business hours. This service helps manage the flow of calls. If all staff members are busy, you may choose to leave a phone number with the answering service. In this case, the number will be confidential and will be given directly to the organization's staff member for a callback. If you reach an answering service, you can try calling back after some time has passed, or you can choose to call during regular business hours when more staff members are available. You can also access 24/7 help online by visiting online.rainn.org.

Who are the sexual assault service providers?

Sexual assault service providers are organizations or agencies dedicated to supporting survivors of sexual assault. The providers who answer calls placed to the hotline are known as RAINN affiliates. To be part of the National Sexual Assault Hotline, affiliates must agree to uphold RAINN's confidentiality standards. That means:

Never releasing records or information about the call without the consent of the caller, except when obligated by law

Only making reports to the police or other agencies when the caller consents, unless obligated by law

Agreeing to RAINN's non-discrimination policy

To learn more about how a provider can become an affiliate of the National Sexual Assault Hotline, visit the Sexual Assault Service Provider information page. Volunteer opportunities for the National Sexual Assault Hotline are coordinated through these local providers. Search for volunteer opportunities near you.

How was the National Sexual Assault Hotline created?

The National Sexual Assault Hotline was the nation's first decentralized hotline, connecting those in need with help in their local communities. It's made up of a network of independent sexual assault service providers, vetted by RAINN, who answer calls to a single, nationwide hotline number. Since it was first created in 1994, the National Sexual Assault Hotline (800.656.HOPE and online.rainn.org) has helped more than 3 million people affected by sexual violence.

Before the telephone hotline was created, there was no central place where survivors could get help. Local sexual assault services providers were well equipped to handle support services, but the lack of a national hotline meant the issue did not receive as much attention as it should. In response, RAINN developed a unique national hotline system to combine all the advantages of a national organization with all the abilities and expertise of local programs. One nationwide hotline number makes it easier for survivors to be connected with the help they deserve.
Anyone affected by sexual assault, whether it happened to you or someone you care about, can find support on the National Sexual Assault Hotline. You can also visit online.rainn.org to receive support via confidential online chat.

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national sexual assault telephone hotline

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About the National Sexual Assault Telephone Hotline

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When you call 800.656.HOPE (4673), you'll to be routed to a local sexual assault service provider in your area. Trained staff can provide confidential support and connect you to resources in your area.

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Deborah Gray White, celebrated for groundbreaking research that gave a voice to enslaved black women, talks about life today

Deborah Gray White, Distinguished Professor of History and professor of Women's and Gender Studies at Rutgers-New Brunswick, understands what successful African-American women - and all black women - are up against.

Before the Women's Marches and the #MeToo and Time's Up movements made headlines and brought issues of women's rights back to the forefront, Rutgers scholars had been working for decades as ardent advocates through their research, teaching and outreach. Over the next several weeks, Rutgers Today will be highlighting many of the women whose work is making a noticeable impact.
It would seem to be cause for unequivocal celebration. If you sort Americans by gender and ethnicity and look at the percentage of each group attending some form of higher education, you'll see that African-American women are enrolled in college at a higher percentage than any other group. And yet Deborah Gray White isn't celebrating - yet. "Sometimes," she says, "the more success you have, the more threatening you appear."

White is more than conversant with success. She's a Board of Governors Distinguished Professor of History, a professor of Women's and Gender Studies at Rutgers University-New Brunswick, and a former chair of the Department of History at the School of Arts and Sciences. She codirected " The Black Atlantic: Race, Nation and Gender" project at the Rutgers Center for Historical Analysis, was a research professor at the Rutgers Institute for Research on Women, and is chair of the Rutgers University Committee on Enslaved and Disenfranchised Populations in Rutgers History.

She's written widely on the history of black women in America, and her monograph Ar'n't I a Woman?: Female Slaves in the Plantation South was highly lauded and widely influential. It led to a new subject category ("Woman Slaves") in the Library of Congress and was voted as being among the 100 most admired American history books by the Organization of American Historians.

All of which makes her uniquely situated to understand what successful African-American women - and all black women - are up against. "People think it's only black men who appear threatening, and that's not the case," she says. "They [black women] have to be fearful of police brutality. They have to be concerned that they don't appear too aggressive." Go shopping, and you may be tracked as a potential shoplifter. Walk down the halls of your office, and your coworkers may wonder what right you have to be there.

"Sometimes," she says, "the more success you have, the more threatening you appear."

Citing a recent study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, she raises the issue of "weathering: the daily minutiae that black women have to deal with in terms of racism," she says-"weathering," because it wears you down. And so those promising educational statistics have to be weighed against the realities of day-to-day life for African-American women: they suffer from a different set, and a disproportionate number, of health problems; they're three times more likely than white women to die during pregnancy and/or childbirth; they're disproportionately single mothers (67 percent as opposed to 42 percent among Latinas and 25 percent among white women).

Black women have historically been viewed as promiscuous, which made getting legal recourse for rape virtually impossible. "As inconsistent as the law was in regards to white women," says White, "it was just totally nonexistent for black women." She notes that raping a black woman wasn't even against the law in the United States until after the Civil War.

Although White is celebrated for her research and writing on enslaved black women, she's also an acknowledged expert on African-American history in general, a fact evident in her publications, among them Freedom on My Mind, Volume I: A History of African Americans, With Documents; Let My People Go: African Americans 1804-1860; and Scarlet and Black, Volume I: Slavery and Dispossession in Rutgers History. The last book, which she co-edited with faculty member Marisa J. Fuentes, was the fruit of White's work as chair of the Committee on Enslaved and Disenfranchised Populations in Rutgers History (and the work, it should be noted, of the many Rutgers undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty who researched and wrote about the university's complex and often shadowy relationship with slavery).

Among the book's revelations are that a founder of Queen's College, Philip Livingston, was a slave trader and that Henry Rutgers, after whom the university was renamed, was a slaveholder. Both the college's first president, Jacob Hardenbergh, and its first tutor, Frederick Frelinghuysen, were slaveholders. Like most early American colleges, White pointed out at an event celebrating the book's publication in 2016, Rutgers depended on slaves to build its campuses and serve its students and faculty and it depended on the sale of black people to fund its existence.

As an initial redress against the ills revealed in Scarlet and Black, Rutgers followed the committee's urgings to change the name of New Brunswick's College Avenue Apartments to the Sojourner Truth Apartments, after the celebrated abolitionist and slave whose family was owned by relatives of Hardenbergh; to name the footpath between Old Queens and the Voorhees Mall Will's Way, after the slave who laid the foundation of Old Queens; and to rename the Kilmer Library on the Livingston campus after James Dickson Carr, Rutgers' first African-American graduate, who got his degree in 1892 and went on to Columbia Law School.

As to redress for historical (and current) ills against black women, White says she's hopeful about the future. She notes that it was black women-and LGBTQ women-who founded the movement known as Black Lives Matter. And a black woman was also the driving force behind the #MeToo movement. "These women," she says, "have stepped up and said, 'Hey, black lives matter, gay lives matter, they matter, and we're going to bring it all to the table."

Read the Rutgers Magazine #WeToo story profiling Rutgers scholars here.

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The Reality of Being a Black Woman in America

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Deborah Gray White, a Board of Governors Distinguished Professor of History, is celebrated for her groundbreaking research that gave a voice to enslaved black women and an acknowledged expert on African-American history in general.

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