Description

Laws, Justice and Rights for Women in the Modern Era
Editor: Prof. Dr. Yogesh Kumar Gupta, Ishan Ahmad and Premananda Murmu
Published by Universal Academic Books Publishers and Distributors,
New Delhi (India)
ISBN: 978-81-686113-5-1, 2026

Chapter 15

The Justification of Women’s Rights in the Modern Era: An Analysis

Dr. Rashmita Panda
Assistant Professor, Khallikote Unitary University, Berhampur, Odisha

Abstract

This chapter examines the philosophical, legal, socio-economic, and cultural grounds on which women’s rights are justified in the contemporary world. It argues that the case for women’s rights rests on a convergence of several independent lines of reasoning – natural rights and human dignity theory, liberal egalitarianism, the capability approach, utilitarian and welfare-based reasoning, and feminist critiques of structural power – each of which, on its own terms, arrives at the conclusion that women are entitled to equal moral and legal standing with men. The chapter traces the historical evolution of these justifications from Enlightenment natural-rights philosophy through the suffrage and second-wave feminist movements to the intersectional and human-development frameworks of the twenty-first century. It further considers the empirical evidence linking women’s rights to economic growth, public health, and social stability, and it surveys the major international legal instruments – most notably CEDAW – that have codified these justifications into binding norms. The chapter closes by examining contemporary controversies, including debates over the universality of rights claims across cultures, the tension between formal and substantive equality, and backlash movements that contest the premises of women’s rights discourse. The analysis concludes that while the justificatory frameworks differ in emphasis and philosophical commitment, they converge on a shared normative core: that sex-based hierarchy is not a natural or necessary feature of human society but a contingent arrangement that can be, and increasingly has been, revised in the name of justice.

Keywords

Women’s rights, gender equality, human rights theory, capability approach, feminist theory, CEDAW, liberal egalitarianism

1. INTRODUCTION

The question of why women should possess rights equal to those of men might strike a contemporary reader as settled, even self-evident. Yet the normative architecture underpinning this conclusion is neither simple nor uncontested. Across the modern era – understood here as the period stretching from the Enlightenment to the present – the justification of women’s rights has been constructed through the accumulation of distinct, sometimes competing, philosophical traditions. Each tradition supplies its own reasons: natural rights theorists appeal to a shared human dignity that precedes and constrains social arrangements; liberal egalitarians appeal to the demands of impartial justice; utilitarians appeal to aggregate welfare; capability theorists appeal to the conditions necessary for a flourishing life; and feminist theorists appeal to the need to dismantle structures of domination that natural-rights and liberal frameworks alone often fail to notice.