72 years ago and thanks to the impulse of another woman, Eleanor Roosvelt, the United Nations General Assembly in Paris approved the well-known Universal Declaration of Human Rights. What few know is that in that year, in 1948, an unknown woman’s rights activist, one of the few who was participating in the traditional summit, he had to fight to change one of the key phrases of article 1: replace “All men are born free and equal” by “All human beings are born free and equal”.
Several of the women who participated in the realization of the Declaration of Human Rights.
HIM-HER-IT
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The word I fought for Hansa Mehta, Indian politician and activist, was key to including women also in that declaration with a universal vocation.
In fact, for two years, Eleanor Roosvelt, the chair of the Human Rights Commission, and Hansa Mehta were the only two women present present in the debates, until the arrival of six other women who also fought to change terms that would guarantee the rights of 50% of the population in a declaration with universal aspiration.
Hansa Mehta’s case was significant. Born in 1897 in a wealthy and liberal family. Writer and great speaker, she was a pedagogue and the first woman to serve as the rector of a coeducational university in India.
She met Gandhi and participated in his movement, for which she was imprisoned twice. In his life he not only defied the rules that did not allow a woman to study, work or participate in politics but his marriage was a revolution in India where there were even demonstrations and protests, since she married the doctor Jivraj N. Mehta, in a pratiloma union, that is, that of a lower Varna man who marries a higher Varna woman. He challenged the caste system like Gandhi did.
But Hansa Mehta and Eleanor Roosvelt they were not the only women who managed to extend the declaration of Human Rights to female citizens as well. The UN also honors six other female representatives: the Dominican Minerva Bernardino, the Pakistani Begum Shaista Ikramullah, the Danish Bodil Begtrup, the French Marie-Hélène Lefaucheux, the Belarusian Evdokia Uralova and the Indian Lakshmi Menon.
MINERVA BERNARDINO
The Dominican diplomat and feminist leader was instrumental in including the term “equal rights of men and women” in the preamble of the Universal Declaration.
BEGUM SHAISTA IKRAMULLAH
The Pakistani, in her capacity as delegate of the Third Committee of the General Assembly, spent 81 meetings in 1948 examining the draft of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and promoted the incorporation of Article 16, on equal rights in marriage, since it was seen as a way to combat child and forced marriage.
BODIL BEGTRUP
Danish Bodil Begtrup argued that the Universal Declaration should refer to rights holders as “all” or “every person”, instead of using the formula “all men”.
MARIE-HÉLÈNE LEFAUCHEUX
The Frenchwoman successfully defended the inclusion of a mention of sexual non-discrimination in article 2. Thus, the final text of the article in question reads as follows: “Everyone has all the rights and freedoms proclaimed in this Declaration, without any distinction whatsoever. of race, color, sex, language, religion, political opinion or of any other nature, national or social origin, economic position, birth or any other condition “.
EVDOKIA URALOVA
The representative of the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic strongly defended equal pay for women. Thanks to it, Article 23 reads as follows: “Everyone has the right, without any discrimination, to equal pay for equal work.” Furthermore, together with Fryderyka Kalinowska, from Poland, and Elizavieta Popova, from the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, he highlighted the rights of people living in Non-Self-Governing Territories (Article 2).
LAKSHMI MENON
Another delegate from India, Lakshmi Menon, strongly advocated the repetition of sexual non-discrimination throughout the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, as well as the mention of “equal rights of men and women” in the preamble. .
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