In 2011, the United Nations Committee against Torture found that the Irish State had failed to protect girls and women who were involuntarily confined in Ireland’s Magdalene Laundries.
For the first time the highest court in the UK recognised gender as a protected characteristic and women as a particular social group within the meaning of the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees.
The Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (OP-CEDAW) gives women the ability to hold government to account for systemic gender inequality.
As a direct result of women’s lobbying at the 1919 Peace Conference, Article 7 of the Covenant of the League of Nations stated that its Secretariat – an international civil service – would be open to both women and men.
The British Nationality Act 1948 conferred on women the same right as men to retain or change their nationality on marriage.