The purposes of the Humanist Women's International Network are to:

• Promote women's rights, empowerment and development within the UN system and the international community
• Challenge women's subservience in the world's religions
• Promote and encourage humanist women to participate in their national women's lobby and governmental agencies
• Put gender on the agenda of humanist organisations
• Promote and encourage women to take leadership positions within their national humanist organisations

The policy priorities for the Humanist Women's International Network are:

• Education of girls
• Economic empowerment and independence of women
• Health and reproductive rights
• Civil and political rights
• Violence against women
• Separation of religion and state

Humanist Women are welcome to subscribe to a regular network newsletter, to become active in their local or national Humanist organisation, and to contact the Women's Network Co-ordinators if they would like to get involved.

2006

The Humanist Women's International Network plans to get involved in the Commission on the Status of Women to be held at the United Nations, New York from 27 February to 10 March 2006. The UN Commission is following up how the Member States are implementing the Beijing Platform for Action. The 50th session in 2006 will concentrate on:

• Enhanced participation of women in development: an enabling environment for achieving gender equality and the advancement of women, taking into account, inter alia, the fields of education, health and work.
• Equal participation of women and men in decision-making processes at all levels.

2005

The Humanist Women's International Network ran a workshop at the World Humanist Congress in Paris in July 2005. Contributions from that workshop are available on this web site.

2003

The Humanist Women's International Network was set up within IHEU. The network was launched at the IHEU International Conference "Empowering Women" held on 15th and 16th November 2003 at Conway Hall, London, at which participants from 16 countries (Slovakia, Poland, Belgium, The Netherlands, Germany, France, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, Iraq, Syria, Iran, India, Nepal, the United Kingdom and the United States) assembled. They unanimously passed a resolution calling on the United States government to ensure that the new Constitutions for Afghanistan and Iraq conform to the standards set out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The conference discussed the main global problems of women today and agreed that the empowerment of women would be the best way of achieving the United Nations Millennium Goals. At the Millennium Summit in September 2000, the 189 member states of the UN pledged to meet the Millennium Development Goals by 2015.

The conference also agreed that women and men needed to stand side by side to fight for the equality between the sexes.

Within the Humanist movement, the issues of women's empowerment must be mainstreamed. All member organisations of IHEU are urged to put gender on their political agenda. They are also urged to look within the policies and practices of their own organisations to ensure that the gender imbalance is addressed, that the voices of women are both heard and listened to, and that the leadership of women is encouraged, sustained and developed.