Women's Declaration International
Women's Declaration International (WDI) is an international organization founded in 2019 that was called Women's Human Rights Campaign until December 2021. Its founders include Sheila Jeffreys, Heather Brunskell-Evans, and Maureen O'Hara. The organization is built around the Declaration on Women's Sex-Based Rights, which was presented in New York in March 2019.
What you can find
The website features the declaration in a large number of languages, with the option to sign it. It also includes country chapter pages, webinars, and news. The declaration calls on states to retain the concept of sex in legislation rather than using gender or gender identity.
Background
The organization is highly controversial. The international women's rights organization AWID and the Southern Poverty Law Center, among others, describe its agenda as discriminatory toward transgender people. See also international developments and legal matters.
The declaration and its support
The declaration invokes the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, abbreviated in English as CEDAW. It states that the rights of women and girls are based on sex and that replacing the concept of sex with gender identity disadvantages them. Trans women are described in the text as men who claim a female gender identity. The site lists 40,394 individual signatories and 560 organizations from 160 countries. The text is available in more than twenty languages, including Dutch. Organizations that have signed it include the Women's Liberation Front and LGB Alliance. In the Netherlands, the Voorzij foundation refers to the declaration. The article radical feminists see the Transgender Act as a threat describes how radical feminists in the Netherlands view the Transgender Act.
Organization and activities
WDI describes itself as a group of female volunteers. The organization is registered in England and Wales and based in Mildenhall, Suffolk. It runs the Feminist Question Time and Radical Feminist Perspectives webinar series. It has chapters in countries including Norway, Germany, and the United States. The US chapter is led by Kara Dansky, who publicly expressed support in 2022 for the Republican Study Committee's Women's Bill of Rights. In 2021, the organization called for the UK's Gender Recognition Act to be repealed. In the United States, it distributed model legislation to state legislatures.
Further criticism
The US National Organization for Women described members of the organization as opponents of trans rights who present themselves as feminists. Legal scholar Sandra Duffy called the concept of sex-based rights a fiction with a veneer of legality. In 2024, UN Women included gender-critical movements among the movements that oppose rights. More about this relationship can be found under gender and feminism. Explanations of the terms used can be found under glossary.