The term "women's rights" emerged in connection with the feminist movement to focus attention on the unequal treatment of women in the public sphere. Women demanded equal civil, political, and economic rights and have fought for the expansion of the human rights framework to claim rights of bodily integrity for women (for example, the right to decide on such issues as abortion).

The notion of individual rights stems from eighteenth-century Western political thought and helped prepare the grounds for the American and French Revolutions. New laws defined the rights of the new citizens according to their gender, race, and class. Only male, white property owners had the right to vote and run for office, and the right to own property largely was limited to white males. Personal law defined women and men as fundamentally different, and men had final decision in matters...