Legal Reform | Women's Learning Partnership

Laws can protect freedoms, advance equality, and uphold human dignity — or they can reinforce discrimination and exclusion. Through our partnership of women-led organizations, WLP works to ensure that laws become tools for justice that strengthen communities, expand rights, and support women’s leadership and economic independence.

Our Priorities

WLP advances legal reform where law most directly shapes women’s autonomy, safety, and participation in public life. Our priorities reflect the areas where discriminatory legal frameworks most deeply entrench gender inequality, and where collective feminist action has the power to drive systemic change.

Ending Violence Against Women and Girls

WLP supports legal reforms that strengthen prevention, protection, and accountability for violence against women and girls—including political and technology-facilitated violence. We work to ensure laws are not only enacted, but implemented in ways that protect survivors and expand access to justice.

Transforming Family and Personal Status Laws

Family law is a foundational site of gender inequality, shaping women’s rights in marriage, divorce, inheritance, nationality, mobility, and bodily autonomy. WLP advances reform of discriminatory family laws as a core feminist movement priority, recognizing that equality in public life cannot exist without equality in the family.

Advancing Women’s Full Participation and Citizenship

WLP works to reform laws that restrict women’s political participation, nationality rights, and civic engagement. By challenging legal barriers to citizenship and public life, we support women’s leadership and democratic participation at all levels.

Securing Women’s Economic and Social Rights

Legal frameworks governing land, labor, and economic participation play a critical role in women’s independence and security. WLP supports advocacy and reform efforts that advance women’s economic rights as integral to gender justice.

Real Change in Action

WLP’s legal reform efforts are driven by women organizing in their own contexts using research, advocacy, and cross-border learning to challenge discriminatory laws and norms.

From advancing family law reform to supporting women’s land rights and economic autonomy, WLP partners demonstrate how legal change can shift power within families, communities, and institutions. Collective learning across regions allows strategies that succeed in one context to inform advocacy elsewhere.

Jordan

Repealed the law allowing rapists to escape accountability by marrying their victims.

Morocco

Soulaliyate women secure equal rights to property and representation in community bodies

Egypt

Approved the country’s first-ever law criminalizing sexual harassment, marking a historic step for women’s safety.

Pakistan

Passed a law which set the legal marrying age at 18 for all genders in the Islamabad Capital Territory.

Kyrgyzstan

Passed amendments to the Criminal Code, raising the minimum marriage age to 17 and increasing penalties for abduction and forced marriage to 7–10 years.

Brazil

Added femicide as a distinct crime in the penal code.

Lebanon

Improved the legal status of non-Lebanese spouses and children of Lebanese women.

Malaysia

Passed Anti-Sexual Harassment Law, providing legal protection for women in workplaces and public spaces.

Morocco

Introduced a law to fight violence against women, criminalizing forced marriage, cyber harassment, expelling spouses, and financial abuse.

Mauritania

Successfully pressured the government to establish gender quotas for women’s political participation.

Morocco

Reformed the Family Code

Malaysia

Advocated for Domestic Violence Bill Amendments, expanding protections for survivors, including non-physical abuse, and implementing safeguards against further harm.

Palestine

Advocated for the ratification of seven core human rights treaties, including CEDAW.

Brazil

Passed the “No is No” protocol to combat harassment and violence committed against women in public establishments.

Kyrgyzstan

Introduced criminal punishment for child religious marriages, penalizing adults who conduct or facilitate marriages under 18.

Morocco

Stopped a bill permitting child marriage and reversed discriminatory CEDAW reservations.

Mozambique

Prohibited early marriage and established protections for children already in such unions.

Senegal

Introduced criminalization of rape with a minimum sentence of 10 years, holding perpetrators accountable.

Brazil

Passed a resolution organizing the flow of assistance to child and adolescent victims of sexual violence.

Palestine

Successfully enforced laws punishing perpetrators of honor crimes.

Morocco

Repealed the law that let rapists escape accountability by marrying their victims.

Mozambique

Revised laws removing exceptions allowing children as young as 16 to marry with family consent.

Brazil

Added femicide as a distinct crime in the penal code.

Pakistan

Passed the Punjab Women Protection Bill, criminalizing physical violence, abusive language, stalking, and cyber harassment.

Morocco

Passed a bill establishing an independent authority for parity and anti-discrimination.

Legal Resource Hub

Shared legal knowledge strengthens movements. WLP’s Corpus of Law is a global, publicly accessible collection of laws, statutes, and international conventions related to women’s rights and gender equality.

Activists, scholars, and policymakers use the Corpus to:

Compare legal frameworks across countries
Analyze trends and gaps in protection
Identify models for equitable and rights-based legislation
Support advocacy with evidence and precedent

By making feminist legal knowledge accessible across regions and languages, the Corpus helps movements learn from one another and advance reform grounded in real-world experiences.

EXPLORE THE CORPUS