seven lawyers fighting for equality around the world By Reuters

By Anastasia Moloney, Kim Harrisberg, Roli Srivastava, Nita Bhalla, and Rina Chandran

The late United States Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was an advocate for women’s rights and prevailed over systemic sexism in the legal ranks to become one of America’s best-known jurists.

Ginsburg cast key votes in landmark rulings that ensure gender equality, expand gay rights, and protect abortion rights.

Around the world, other pioneering women from Ethiopia and India to Kenya and Colombia have achieved similar victories in their home countries, pioneering changes in laws and setting legal precedent from the highest courts.

LEONA THERON, SOUTH AFRICA

Theron is one of 11 judges on the Constitutional Court of South Africa.

She has become known for challenging laws that discriminate against women and girls from the highest court.

At age 33, Theron became the first black judge, as well as the youngest judge overall, to be appointed to the KwaZulu-Natal division of the high court in 1999.

Since then, Theron has issued numerous rulings promoting women’s rights in South Africa.

An important 2008 ruling argued that women married in customary marriages have the same rights and benefits as their spouses. This was confirmed by the Constitutional Court, mainly helping black women to benefit from their property rights.

Theron has also been a staunch advocate for justice for rape survivors. In 2006, in the Supreme Court of Appeals, Theron disagreed with a majority ruling that had reduced a rapist’s life sentence to 16 years in prison.

Theron once wrote: “In the context of the unprecedented spate of rape in this country, the courts must also be mindful of their duty to send a clear message to potential rapists and the community that they are determined to protect equality, the dignity and freedom of all women. “

NJOKI SUSANNA NDUNG’U, KENYA

Ndung’u was appointed to the Supreme Court of Kenya in 2011 and is one of only two women currently serving in the seven-member court.

Before becoming a Supreme Court justice, the defender served as a member of parliament for four years, where she was instrumental in introducing laws to protect and empower Kenyan women and girls.

Ndung’u is the architect of Kenya’s 2006 Sex Offenses Act, a landmark piece of legislation, which aims to give victims of sexual violence access to justice and punish perpetrators.

Often referred to as the ‘Njoki law’, it introduces mandatory minimum sentences for a wide range of crimes, including child rape, trafficking for sexual exploitation and the deliberate transmission of HIV or other sexually transmitted diseases.

During her parliamentary term, Ndung’u was behind amendments to the Kenya Employment Act of 2007 which provided for paid maternity and paternity leave, and the Political Parties Act of 2007 on affirmative action measures for women in the politics.

During a TED talk in 2017, Ndung’u advocated for more women in policy-making positions in government.

“If you are absent from the table, your interests are too,” he said.

ELIZABETH ODIO BENITO, COSTA RICA

Benito is the first female president of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, the highest court in the Americas, and is the only woman among the other seven judges serving on the Costa Rica-based court.

She is best known for seeking justice and defending the rights of women and girls who have suffered rape and sexual violence during conflicts.

Born in Costa Rica, Benito rose to fame in the 1990s as a judge on the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia dealing with war crimes.

He played a key role in establishing jurisprudence by arguing that wartime rape and other forms of sexual violence were used as weapons of war, as a means of terror, and were war crimes.

As president of the Inter-American Court, Benito has said: “We must accept that we will only live in true democracies if women, in all their diversity, participate in making all the decisions that affect our lives.”

ASHENAFI TABLES, ETHIOPIA

Ashenafi was appointed the first female head of the Ethiopian Supreme Court in November 2018.

As an advisor to a commission that drafted Ethiopia’s new constitution in the early 1990s, and later as a lawyer fighting for victims of domestic and sexual violence, inheritance disputes, and custody battles, Ashenafi helped enshrine in the Act many protections for women and girls.

His most famous case became the award-winning Ethiopian film “Difret” in 2014, promoted by Hollywood actress Angelina Jolie as executive producer.

The film is based on a court case in which Ashenafi defended a teenage girl for killing a man who had abducted and raped her.

Ashenafi’s efforts had the charges against the teenager dropped, and resulted in the outlawing of the tradition of abducting girls to force them to marry in Ethiopia.

The defender is also credited with creating a word in Amharic, one of Ethiopia’s main languages, to describe sexual harassment.

“Naming it was very important,” Ashenafi said in an interview with US broadcaster VOA last year. “Unless I name it, it is difficult to advocate for legislative reform to articulate the issue and publicize and expose the practice.”

MONICA ROA, COLOMBIA

Roa, a Colombian human rights lawyer, is known for spearheading changes in the law to promote reproductive rights.

In 2006, Roa presented a case before the constitutional court of Colombia to have the general prohibition of abortion in the country lifted.

In a landmark ruling, the court ruled that abortion was permitted in limited circumstances: in cases of rape, incest, fetal malformation, or if the life of the mother or fetus is in danger.

His case has served as an example and inspiration for other lawyers in Latin America seeking to decriminalize abortion.

“All attempts to overturn the court’s decision since then have been defeated and the law remains strong and binding,” Roa once said to Thomson Reuters (NYSE 🙂 Foundation. “But women have not yet been able to access their abortion rights without obstacles and without being stigmatized.”

MENAKA GURUSWAMY, INDIA

Guruswamy, 45, is a senior attorney at the Supreme Court of India and has become an icon for the country’s LGBT + community.

She and her partner Arundhati Katju, also a lawyer, helped to repeal India’s colonial-era law against homosexuality in 2016.

A Rhodes scholar who read law at Oxford University and Harvard University, Guruswamy is an expert in constitutional law and has advised Nepal in the development of its constitution.

She is a leading voice in defending constitutional rights and equality for women, religious minorities and sexual minorities, in particular.

When asked for advice from young female lawyers, Guruswamy once said, “Law is a wonderful profession, but I believe that in India, as a woman, and as a lawyer, you have to listen to your heart and say that you will get there. everything around you says you can’t. “

INDIRA JAISING, INDIA

Jaising, 80, is a senior attorney on the Supreme Court of India and was the country’s first female additional attorney general between 2009 and 2014.

In the early days of her career, she handled advocacy cases for flight attendants seeking pay parity and promotions, as well as the rights of street vendors and the homeless.

Born in pre-independent India in 1940, Jaising studied arts and law at the University of Bangalore and the University of Mumbai and was a rare woman in the male-dominated courts of India when she began practicing.

He has taken on a powerful police officer and a high court judge in sexual harassment cases and played a pioneering role in drafting India’s laws against sexual harassment in the workplace and against domestic violence.

She has also fought for equal inheritance rights for women and for equal rights in child custody cases.

Jaising once said that he believes the law is like “playdough in our hands, and we must shape it to benefit the most vulnerable and marginalized.”