In observance of Women's History Month, we pay tribute to some notable American Baha’i Women:

Today on International Women's Day, Amnesty International makes a public statement calling on "the Iranian authorities to release immediately all women detained arbitrarily in Iran, including political activists, rights defenders and members of religious and ethnic minorities."

Engaging faith communities in addressing domestic violence took center stage at a recent meeting of the Interfaith Domestic Violence Coalition (IDVC)

Nearly 150 years ago, the founder of the Baha’i Faith, Bahá'u'lláh, espoused a universal principle: "Women and men have been and will always be equal in the sight of God.” Although by many measures the status of women and girls has improved since that time, gender inequality still persists today.

In her work for the advancement of women, Florida Baha'i Taraneh Darabi draws strength from heroines of the women’s rights movement in both East and West.

At a Women’s Equality Day event in Gainesville in 2004, Darabi honored the mid-19th-century women’s rights movement with a poster featuring stories about the women at the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention in New York and one of Iran’s earliest women’s rights advocates, Táhirih, who boldly threw off her veil in public that same summer.

Happy Birthday 19th Amendment!

The International Violence Against Women Act presents a critical opportunity for the United States to protect, defend, and empower the world’s women.

For decades, the Baha'is of the United States have worked to advance the status of women by advocating policies and legislation that promote gender equality, including the U.N. Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). Learn more about CEDAW.

The Baha’i Faith has some lofty goals. To name just a few: developing a consciousness of world citizenship, the establishment of full equality between men and women, the elimination of all forms of prejudice and the development of an economy informed by spiritual principles. Many people might think of these ideas as utopian, and rightly so.

We know that women and girls around the world face violence and discrimination daily. We also know that CEDAW, the Women’s Treaty, helps women and girls to go to school, to own and inherit property, to take part in public life, and to fight violence. We need Senate action on the CEDAW Treaty (the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women) to give the U.S. greater clout to help women worldwide win these basic rights.