Question

Women fought hard for many rights, such as the right to vote, right to
be educated, etc. They also fought for “bodily integrity and autonomy”. Explain   what this means, and provide a specific scenario where a woman did not have
the right to bodily integrity and autonomy. How is having this right, beneficial
to men?

Answer 1

Bodily integrity is the inviolability of the physical body and emphasizes the importance of personal autonomy, self-ownership, and self-determination of human beings over their own bodies. In the field of human rights, violation of the bodily integrity of another is regarded as an unethical infringement, intrusive, and possibly criminal. In developmental psychology and moral, political, and bioethical philosophy, autonomy is the capacity to make an informed, uncoerced decision. Autonomous organizations or institutions are independent or self-governing. Autonomy can also be defined from a human resources perspective, where it denotes a (relatively high) level of discretion granted to an employee in his or her work. In such cases, autonomy is known to generally increase job satisfaction. Self-actualized Individuals are thought to operate autonomously of external expectations. In a medical context, respect for a patient's personal autonomy is considered one of many fundamental ethical principles in medicine. Though bodily integrity is (according to the capabilities approach) afforded to every human being, women are more often affected in violations of gender-based violence. These include sexual assault, unwanted pregnancy, domestic abuse, and limited access to contraception. These principles were addressed in the CCL Working Conference on Women's Rights as Human Rights. The conference defined bodily integrity as a right deserved by all women: "bodily integrity unifies women and that no woman can say that it does not apply to them".
As defined by the conference participants, the following are bodily integrity rights that should be guaranteed to women:

- Freedom of movement
- Security of persons
- Reproductive and sexual rights
- Women's health
- Breaking women's isolation
- Education
- Networking
1) Freedom of movement, mobility rights, or the right to travel is a human rights concept encompassing the right of individuals to travel from place to place within the territory of a country, and to leave the country and return to it. The right includes not only visiting places, but changing the place where the individual resides or works.

Such a right is provided in the constitutions of numerous states, and in documents reflecting norms of international law. For example, Article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights asserts that:

"Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state."
"Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country."[3]
Some people and organizations advocate an extension of the freedom of movement to include a freedom of movement – or migration – between the countries as well as within the countries. The freedom of movement is restricted in a variety of ways by various governments and may even vary within the territory of a single country. Such restrictions are generally based on public health, order, or safety justifications and postulate that the right to these conditions preempts the notion of freedom of movement.

2) Security of the person is a basic entitlement guaranteed by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the United Nationsin 1948. It is also a human right explicitly mentioned and protected by the European Convention on Human Rights, the Constitution of Canada, the Constitution of South Africaand other laws around the world.

In general, the right to the security of one's person is associated with liberty and includes the right, if one is imprisoned unlawfully, to a remedy such as habeas corpus. Security of person can also be seen as an expansion of rights based on prohibitions of torture and cruel and unusual punishment. Rights to security of person can guard against less lethal conduct, and can be used in regard to prisoners' rights.

3) Reproductive rights are legal rights and freedoms relating to reproduction and reproductive health that vary amongst countries around the world. The World Health Organization defines reproductive rights as follows:

Reproductive rights rest on the recognition of the basic right of all couples and individuals to decide freely and responsibly the number, spacing and timing of their children and to have the information and means to do so, and the right to attain the highest standard of sexual and reproductive health. They also include the right of all to make decisions concerning reproduction free of discrimination, coercion and violence.

Women's reproductive rights may include some or all of the following: the right to legal and safe abortion; the right to birth control; freedom from coerced sterilization and contraception; the right to access good-quality reproductive healthcare; and the right to education and access in order to make free and informed reproductive choices. Reproductive rights may also include the right to receive education about sexually transmitted infections and other aspects of sexuality, right to menstrual health and protection from practices such as female genital mutilation (FGM).

Reproductive rights began to develop as a subset of human rights at the United Nation's 1968 International Conference on Human Rights. The resulting non-bindingProclamation of Tehran was the first international document to recognize one of these rights when it stated that: "Parents have a basic human right to determine freely and responsibly the number and the spacing of their children." Women’s sexual, gynecological, and mental health issues were not a priority of the United Nations until its Decade of Women (1975-1985) brought them to the forefront. States, though, have been slow in incorporating these rights in internationally legally binding instruments. Thus, while some of these rights have already been recognized in hard law, that is, in legally binding international human rights instruments, others have been mentioned only in non binding recommendations and, therefore, have at best the status of soft lawin international law, while a further group is yet to be accepted by the international community and therefore remains at the level of advocacy.

Issues related to reproductive rights are some of the most vigorously contested rights' issues worldwide, regardless of the population's socioeconomic level, religion or culture.

The issue of reproductive rights is frequently presented as being of vital importance in discussions and articles by population concern organizations such as Population Matters.

Reproductive rights are a subset of sexual and reproductive health and rights.

4) Women's health refers to the health of women, which differs from that of men in many unique ways. Women's health is an example of population health, where health is defined by the World Health Organization as "a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity". Often treated as simply women's reproductive health, many groups argue for a broader definition pertaining to the overall health of women, better expressed as "The health of women". These differences are further exacerbated in developing countries where women, whose health includes both their risks and experiences, are further disadvantaged.

Although women in industrialised countrieshave narrowed the gender gap in life expectancy and now live longer than men, in many areas of health they experience earlier and more severe disease with poorer outcomes. Gender remains an important social determinant of health, since women's health is influenced not just by their biology but also by conditions such as poverty, employment, and family responsibilities. Women have long been disadvantaged in many respects such as social and economic power which restricts their access to the necessities of life including health care, and the greater the level of disadvantage, such as in developing countries, the greater adverse impact on health.

Women's reproductive and sexual health has a distinct difference compared to men's health. Even in developed countries pregnancy and childbirth are associated with substantial risks to women with maternal mortalityaccounting for more than a quarter of a million deaths per year, with large gaps between the developing and developed countries. Comorbidity from other non reproductive disease such as cardiovascular disease contribute to both the mortality and morbidity of pregnancy, including preeclampsia. Sexually transmitted infectionshave serious consequences for women and infants, with mother-to-child transmissionleading to outcomes such as stillbirths and neonatal deaths, and pelvic inflammatory disease leading to infertility. In addition infertility from many other causes, birth control, unplanned pregnancy, unconsensual sexual activity and the struggle for access to abortion create other burdens for women.

While the rates of the leading causes of death, cardiovascular disease, cancer and lung disease, are similar in women and men, women have different experiences. Lung cancer has overtaken all other types of cancer as the leading cause of cancer death in women, followed by breast cancer, colorectal, ovarian, uterine and cervical cancers. While smoking is the major cause of lung cancer, amongst nonsmoking women the risk of developing cancer is three times greater than amongst nonsmoking men. Despite this, breast cancer remains the commonest cancer in women in developed countries, and is one of the more important chronic diseases of women, while cervical cancer remains one of the commonest cancers in developing countries, associated with human papilloma virus (HPV), an important sexually transmitted disease. HPV vaccine together with screeningoffers the promise of controlling these diseases. Other important health issues for women include cardiovascular disease, depression, dementia, osteoporosis and anemia. A major impediment to advancing women's health has been their underrepresentation in research studies, an inequity being addressed in the United States and other western nations by the establishment of centers of excellence in women's health research and large scale clinical trials such as the Women's Health Initiative.

5) Breaking women's Isolation (physical, social or emotional) is often used to facilitate power and control over someone for an abusive purpose. This applies in many contexts such as workplace bullying, elder abuse, domestic abuse, child abuse, and cults.

Isolation reduces the opportunity of the abused to be rescued or escape from the abuse. It also helps disorientate the abused and makes the abused more dependent on the abuser. The degree of power and control over the abused is contingent upon the degree of their physical or emotional isolation.

Isolation of the victim from the outside world is an important element of psychological control. Isolation includes controlling a person's social activity: whom they see, whom they talk to, where they go and any other method to limit their access to others. It may also include limiting what material is read. It can include insisting on knowing where they are and requiring permission for medical care. The abuser exhibits hypersensitive and reactive jealousy.

Isolation can be aided by:

economic abuse thus limiting the victim's actions as they may then lack the necessary resources to resist or escape from the abuse.
smearing or discrediting the abused amongst their community so the abused does not get help or support from others.
divide and conquer.
gaslighting and mind control.
6) Education is the process of facilitating learning, or the acquisition of knowledge, skills, values, beliefs, and habits. Educational methods include teaching, training, storytelling, discussion and directed research. Education frequently takes place under the guidance of educators, however learners can also educate themselves. Education can take place in formal or informal settings and any experience that has a formative effect on the way one thinks, feels, or acts may be considered educational. The methodology of teaching is called pedagogy.
7) Women's Rights Network (WRN) was founded in 1995 in response to the need to develop collaborative, crosscultural, and international strategies to eliminate domestic violence. The WRN initiated meetings with local advocates to identify the most pressing issues facing the US battered women's movement and then began to contact advocates for battered women throughout the world. To date, the WRN offers a resource center documenting strategies used around the world to end domestic violence, gives workshops and presentations to increase public education and awareness about domestic violence, organizes international strategy sessions between women's advocates in Massachusetts and those in other countries, facilitates one-on-one partnerships between groups for battered women in Massachusetts and sister organizations in other countries, and participates in the annual "16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence." The WRN also plans to publish a biannual journal.