The latest update to Equality Now's flagship Words & Deeds report reveals that women's and girls' rights globally are facing a "strategic and coordinated rollback," with hard-won legal protections being weakened or deliberately undermined, though the report stresses this backlash is neither inevitable nor irreversible .
The report, examining progress 31 years after the Beijing Platform for Action, identifies growing threats including attempts to weaken existing legal protections, shrinking civil society space, pressure on multilateral institutions, and the use of digital technologies to amplify anti-rights narratives . Anti-gender actors are increasingly exploiting legal loopholes, introducing discriminatory bills, and challenging established human rights standards through courts, parliaments, and multilateral institutions.
For India, the report's global findings carry particular resonance. According to the UN secretary-general's report launched alongside these findings, 54 percent of countries lack consent-based legal definitions of rape, while 72 percent allow child marriage in all or some circumstances . India has faced persistent criticism from women's rights organisations for gaps in its legal framework on marital rape and for high rates of child marriage, particularly in rural regions, where enforcement of the Prohibition of Child Marriage Act remains uneven despite the law's existence. The report notes that harmful narratives seek to justify harmful practices like child marriage and female genital mutilation.
The Words & Deeds series, launched in 1999 to hold governments accountable to the Beijing Platform's pledge to "revoke any remaining laws that discriminate on the basis of sex," has tracked over 130 discriminatory laws reformed since 1992 . Equality Now notes that while progress is possible—87 percent of countries have enacted domestic violence legislation, and more than 40 countries have strengthened constitutional protections for women and girls over the past decade—discriminatory social norms including stigma, victim-blaming, and community pressure continue to silence survivors and obstruct justice, allowing even the most extreme forms of violence, including femicide, to go unpunished.
Sarah Hendriks, UN Women's director of policy, programme and intergovernmental support, warned that "no country in the world has achieved full legal equality between women and men," with women globally holding just 64 percent of the legal rights of men . UN Women Executive Director Sima Bahous said that "when women and girls are denied justice, the damage goes far beyond any single case. Public trust erodes, institutions lose legitimacy, and the rule of law itself is weakened".
Countries Examined
The Equality Now Words & Deeds update highlights legal reforms in Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, and Malaysia, alongside backlash analysis drawing on case studies from the United States, The Gambia, and Latvia, alongside India.
In Kuwait, the repeal of Article 182 of the Penal Code ended the notorious "marry-your-rapist" loophole, which had allowed perpetrators of kidnapping-related crimes to escape punishment by marrying their victims.
Kyrgyzstan is noted for removing discriminatory restrictions in its labour law that had barred women from more than four hundred professions, and for proposing life imprisonment as the penalty for rape-related murder or rape of children under 14 or persons with disabilities.
Malaysia passed a constitutional amendment securing equal nationality rights for women, allowing them to pass citizenship to children born abroad on the same basis as men.
The United States serves as a critical case study on defending existing rights. Equality Now's submissions to the UN Human Rights Council identify four areas of violation: lack of universal constitutional sex equality, legal loopholes permitting child marriage, inadequate FGM/C protections, and failure to comprehensively address online sexual exploitation and abuse.
The Gambia is highlighted for the mobilisation defending its anti-FGM law, as the Supreme Court considers a petition seeking to overturn the ban under the Women's (Amendment) Act 2015.
Latvia is cited alongside the United States and The Gambia as an example of coordinated advocacy successfully resisting rollback attempts.
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