Equality Now: Securing Girls' and Women's Rights Worldwide for 22 Years

Since 1992, Equality Now has been working to protect and promote the human rights of girls and women around the world. The non-profit organization began with a small group of dedicated volunteer activists in a few countries and initially relied on street T-shirt sales for startup funding. Today, Equality Now has offices in New York, Nairobi, and London, as well as a presence in Amman and Washington, DC.



Equality Now combines grassroots activism with regional, national, and global legal advocacy, documenting violence and discrimination against women and girls and mobilizing international action to support efforts to stop these abuses. Envisioning a world where women and men have equal rights and full enjoyment of those rights, Equality Now focuses on four areas: discrimination in law, sexual violence, female genital mutilation (FGM), and trafficking.

Equality Now's strategies to secure women's rights include international advocacy through the Equality Action Network, whose more than 35,000 members in 160 countries call on governments and policy makers to guarantee girls' and women's rights; establishing partnerships with grassroots women's rights groups to amplify local and global advocacy; and mobilizing support for partners on the ground. Additionally, Equality Now raises awareness about violations against women and girls and uses the media to bring these stories to the public.

While there is still much work to be done to end violence and discrimination against girls and women, Equality Now has reached significant milestones on the path to gender equality over the last 22 years. Key achievements include playing a crucial role in the prosecution and conviction of a New York sex tour company in 2006; launching the Fund for Grassroots Activism to End Sex Trafficking in 2007; and being named Secretariat of the first UK All Party Parliamentary Group in 2011 to address the practice of FGM in the United Kingdom.