Humanists have always stood up for the equal rights of women, including their right to complete autonomy and control over their own bodies and reproductive health. Humanists UK has fought for women’s rights from the start. Our first chief executive was a suffragette, women have been represented in our leadership since our foundation in 1896, and through campaigns along the way we have fought to bring greater equality, emancipation, and freedom to women’s lives.
In the 19th and 20th centuries, Humanists UK activists and leaders included many of the UK’s leading suffragists, suffragettes, and abortion rights activists. Today we are also members of important coalitions defending the rights of women, such as the End Violence Against Women Coalition and Voice for Choice.
We are a longstanding member of the Sex Education Forum (SEF) and of the PSHE Association and supported the introduction of Relationships and Sex Education to equip young people, but particular, young women and girls with the knowledge needed to reduce unwanted pregnancies, and sexually transmitted infections (STIs), and to protect them from abuse and exploitation.
We have been actively involved in all major recent initiatives around the decriminalisation of abortion, particularly in Northern Ireland. This is discussed more on our policy page on abortion and sexual and reproductive rights. We have spoken at the UN Human Rights Council in interactive dialogues with the working group on discrimination against women and called for the decriminalisation of abortion.
Policy briefings
From our past
We’ve been upholding and promoting the rights of women since our foundation. Women have been represented equally in our membership and as part of our leadership from day one, including as our first president and our first executive director back in 1896. In the decades since, humanist campaigners were instrumental in national campaigns for women’s suffrage, divorce law reform, women’s reproductive rights, working rights for women, protections for lesbian and bisexual women, for an end to violence against women, and championing equality and human rights protections for all.
Morals Without Religion, and the Case of the Unholy Mrs Knight (YouTube)
Professor Alice Roberts discusses how criticism of the humanist campaigner Margaret Knight was rooted in misogyny and sexism.
Heroines of freethought: key women in the early humanist movement
Discover the women who founded and sustained the humanist movement, including brilliant humanist campaigners, scientists, and artists.
Our Rosalind Franklin Lecture, celebrating women in humanism
Marking International Women’s Day, the Rosalind Franklin Lecture explores and celebrates the contribution of women towards the advancement humanism.
