Women’s rights and the position of women in the IHEU

1. Women’s rights are human issues, affecting all society, both women and men, in all areas of community life: equality in education, in job opportunities, in decision making, in access to councils and boards.
2. The right to reproductive freedom and to access to all birth control methods should be recognised as a fundamental human right, and not as a privilege conferred by and regulated by the state. The choice to have a safe abortion should be a legal right of all women and should not be restricted by religious or social conditions or by regressive laws.
3. Violence against women in any form and sex discrimination is strongly condemned. Women’s right to live in a world free of all forms of sexual coercion must be recognised and respected.
4. The double burden of women can only be resolved if men and women share equally in the paid and unpaid labour so that parents can being up their children in a spirit of equality of the sexes.

Therefore the IHEU should incorporate women’s issues in plenary sessions, for which a women’s caucus should be established.

Each member organisation should select a greater number of women as delegates to the IHEU board.

IHEU congress 1992

Suggested academic reference

'Women's rights and the position of women in the IHEU', Humanists International, World Humanist Congress, Amsterdam, Netherlands, 1992