Public policy advocacy is a principle mission of Women’s Declaration International. Women in our US chapter are promoting sex-based rights for women and girls in multiple ways; for example, presenting testimony to government agencies, responding to proposed changes in government policy and practices, and standing in solidarity with other citizens advocating for women and girls.
Read about our most recent advocacy projects launched below.
Equality for All Act
Our proposed Equality for All Act (EFAA) would prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and nonconformity to sex-based stereotypes, while maintaining the existing sex-based protections for women and girls. WDI USA hopes that a member of Congress will consider introducing the EFAA as an alternative to the current version of the Equality Act.
State Legislative Testimony
In what has been called a “record-breaking” year, dozens of bills affecting sex-based rights for women and girls were introduced in state legislatures since January. Some sought to protect single sex sports and private spaces for women and girls; others sought to advance “gender identity” at our expense. WDI USA women are stepping up to testify in defense of women and girls around the country.
Prison FOIA Project 2023
In 2021, WDI USA volunteers sent FOIA requests to every women’s state prison in the US to inquire about the exact number of male inmates being housed in each of them. The results have been used by journalists around the country and around the world to report on this blatant violation of basic human rights. Those 2021 results can be accessed here.
In April of 2023, we decided it was time to do it again. More men have been using state laws and policies that contain convoluted definitions of sex to gain access to the women’s facilities on the basis of their supposed ‘female gender identities.’ For this reason, the 2021 numbers were likely to have grown. This time, not only did we request the numbers, we also requested the entirety of the policy documents that states are currently using to determine which and how many inmates will be housed in the women’s facility based on their ‘female gender identities.’
100 Days Project – Executive Order 13988
Immediately upon taking office, President Biden issued an Executive Order directing all federal agencies to review their policies within 100 days to determine what revisions should be made to prevent discrimination on the basis of “gender identity” and sexual orientation, using a definition that collapses these categories with the category “sex.” What this means is that biological sex and “gender identity” are treated as the same, thereby negating women’s sex-based rights. WDI USA women launched a letter-writing campaign to agency heads, urging them to protect our sex-based rights.
