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Why Legal Equality Is the Most Effective Tool to End Violence Against Women and Girls
By Nisha Arekapudi and Tanya Primiani-UN Women
Around the world, more than 2.5 billion women and girls still live under laws that deny them equal rights. These inequalities are not abstract. They shape women’s everyday realities, from their ability to pass nationality to their children, to their rights within marriage and family, to whether they can work in the same industries as men. Where the law permits inequality, it reinforces power imbalances, limiting women’s autonomy and often leading to violence. This is the most visible and pervasive expression of discrimination made real.
Violence against women and girls (VAWG) remains the most urgent human rights violation worldwide, causing profound harm to women and girls, their families, communities and societies as a whole. Regardless of income level or social status, violence affects women and girls of all ages and impacts their full and equal participation in society and the economy. Violence takes many forms, including not only physical, but also sexual, emotional, and economic, as well as harassment experienced in public and in places of work and education.
Despite important efforts by States—including strengthened laws, services and justice responses—the world is not on track to eliminate violence against women and girls. Progress in reducing violence has been painfully slow, with an annual decline of only 0.2 percent over the past two decades. Globally, at least one in three women experience physical and/or sexual violence in their lifetime. This figure has remained largely unchanged over the past decade, and is most likely an underestimation, due to persistent underreporting and stigma. Sexual violence, particularly by non-partners, remains widespread yet largely hidden, with only a fraction of survivors seeking formal help or reporting to authorities. At the same time, conflict, climate change, technology-facilitated abuse and backlash against gender equality have intensified the risks of violence against women and girls both offline and online over the past five years.
VAWG has long been established as a form of gender-based discrimination in the international legal and policy framework. Through the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) and the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, States parties have pledged to put in place holistic approaches to addressing violence against women, including by revoking laws that discriminate on the basis of sex. Regional frameworks additionally reinforce the need for legislative and policy action. More recently, the priority theme of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW70) focused on strengthening access to justice for all women and girls, highlighting the need to ensure access to justice for survivors of violence by guaranteeing protection, support and remedies to victims, and holding perpetrators accountable.
CSW70 also highlighted that access to justice for survivors of violence can only be achieved through inclusive and equitable legal systems and the elimination of discriminatory laws. Indeed, eliminating VAWG requires more than criminal law responses, extending to dismantling the discriminatory legal frameworks that enable and normalize such violence. Reforming laws across all areas of women’s lives is therefore one of the most effective and sustainable investments that States can make to prevent and respond to violence.
This elimination of all forms of discrimination against women and girls by 2030 was recognized as a key enabler of sustainable development through the inclusion of dedicated targets under (Sustainable Development Goal) SDG Goal 5 on Gender Equality. UN Women serves as co-custodian for SDG indicator 5.1.1, which measures legal frameworks that promote, enforce and monitor gender equality across four areas of law, including overarching legal frameworks and public life, employment and economic benefits, marriage and family, and violence against women. Comprehensive laws and policies are critical, as they provide the foundations that enable coordinated and multi-sectoral responses to end violence against women and girls.
Data collected from 131 countries for SDG indicator 5.1.1 in 2024 shows that, despite progress, discriminatory laws and legal gaps continue to deny women their human rights worldwide and prevent them from achieving their full potential, including in the area of violence against women. Not a single country gets a perfect score across all areas measured by the indicator, and over half (51%) have a gap in every area covered. Over half of countries lack a consent-based legal definition of rape. In 15% of countries, the law does not explicitly criminalize marital rape. Additionally, 10 countries do not even have a law specifically addressing domestic violence.
Legal definitions of rape have evolved over time, from requiring use of force or violence, to lack of freely given consent, with no requirements to prove penetration, force or violence. Laws that exclude marital rape from the prohibition of rape strengthen patriarchal family structures and fail to address discrimination and violence against women. Conversely, good practice laws prohibit marital rape and remove legal barriers to women’s ability to file a complaint for rape. Since 2018, for example, Sweden and Greece have both changed the legal definition of rape to sex without consent. Prosecutors no longer have to prove the use or threat of violence or coercion. In that same timeframe, Armenia, Côte d’Ivoire, Madagascar, the United Arab Emirates, and Uzbekistan have all enacted legislation protecting women from domestic violence. In fact, between 2019 and 2025, at least 99 positive reforms focused on removing discriminatory laws and establishing legal frameworks to advance gender equality were recorded, 28 of them in the area of violence against women. The reforms included protecting women from domestic violence, harassment, and child marriage.
But discriminatory laws across multiple domains limit women’s opportunities and can increase their exposure to violence throughout the life cycle. Child, early and forced marriage, for example, remains one of the most visible manifestations of such inequality, disproportionately affecting girls by disrupting their education, increasing vulnerability to violence and abuse, and restricting their participation in economic, political and social life. While good practice laws set the minimum age of marriage at 18 for both women and men without exceptions, disparities persist, with over 50 countries maintaining a lower legal age for girls and 93 allowing marriage under 18 with parental consent. At the same time, reforms demonstrate progress is possible. Countries including Finland, Indonesia and Zambia have equalised or raised the marriage age in recent years, while Colombia’s 2025 reform established 18 as the minimum age without exceptions. Strategic litigation in Tanzania and advocacy in Norway have also helped to challenge discriminatory provisions and strengthen protections.
Beyond marriage, gaps in legal protection remain across other areas. More than 11 per cent of countries do not have legislation on sexual harassment, limiting women’s ability to safely access public spaces, education and employment, although countries such as Jamaica, Barbados and Lebanon have taken steps to strengthen protections. Discrimination in nationality laws also continues to deny women in some contexts equal rights to confer citizenship to their children, as seen in ongoing reform efforts in Malaysia, while inequalities in employment and access to resources constrain women’s economic independence. Sierra Leone’s Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment Act of 2022 illustrates how addressing these barriers through measures on equal pay, access to finance and women’s representation in public life can help shift underlying inequalities. These examples highlight that violence against women is not only addressed through criminal law, but is closely linked to broader patterns of legal discrimination. Legal frameworks therefore play a critical role in shaping both risk and protection, by either reinforcing inequality or advancing women’s rights across all areas of life.
Accelerating progress requires a comprehensive and coordinated approach to legal reform. UN Women calls on countries to review and repeal discriminatory laws across all sectors, not only those directly addressing violence, and to adopt holistic legal frameworks that promote equality. Countries can learn from each other’s experiences, strengthen accountability, and design reform roadmaps grounded in evidence and human rights standards.
Together with partners, UN Women is ready to support these efforts through technical assistance, policy dialogue, and engagement at national, regional, and global levels. Advancing equality in law is not only a matter of justice, but also one of the most effective strategies to prevent violence against women and girls and to unlock the full potential of societies.
Nisha Arekapudi
Policy Specialist, Legal Reform
UN Women
https://www.linkedin.com/in/nisha-arekapudi/
Tanya Primiani
Senior Consultant on Gender Equality and the Law
UN Women
https://www.linkedin.com/in/tanya-primiani-1319431/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/un-women/
June 26