Editing Women's rights (section)

=== Right to health ===

[[File:Maternal mortality rate worldwide.jpg|thumb|left|Global maternal mortality rate per 100 000 live births (2010)<ref name=CIA>[https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2223rank.html Country Comparison: Maternal Mortality Rate] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150418113820/https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2223rank.html |date=18 April 2015 }} in [[:en:The World Factbook|The CIA World Factbook]].</ref>]]
[[File:FGM prevalence UNICEF 2016.svg|thumb|upright=1.2|alt=map|FGM in Africa, Iraqi Kurdistan and Yemen, as of 2015 ([[Special:Filepath/AfricaCIA-HiRes.jpg|map of Africa]]).<ref name="UNICEF2016">{{cite web |url=http://www.unicef.org/media/files/FGMC_2016_brochure_final_UNICEF_SPREAD.pdf |title=Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting: A Global Concern |publisher=New York: United Nations Children's Fund |date=February 2016 |access-date=2018-06-29 |archive-date=2017-02-10 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170210071422/http://www.unicef.org/media/files/FGMC_2016_brochure_final_UNICEF_SPREAD.pdf |url-status=dead }}</ref>]]
[[Health]] is defined by the World Health Organization as "a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity".<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.who.int/about/who-we-are/constitution|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190317234054/https://www.who.int/about/who-we-are/constitution|url-status=dead|archive-date=17 March 2019|title=Constitution|publisher=World Health Organization|language=en|access-date=2019-06-17}}</ref> [[Women's health]] refers to the health of women, which differs from that of men in many unique ways.

Women's health is severely impaired in some parts of the world, due to factors such as inequality, confinement of women to the home, indifference of medical workers, lack of autonomy of women, and lack of financial resources of women.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.who.int/topics/womens_health/en/|title=WHO {{!}} Women's health|website=WHO|access-date=2019-06-17}}</ref><ref name="who.int" /> Discrimination against women occurs also through denial of medical services that are only needed by women.<ref name="who.int" /> Violations of women's [[right to health]] may result in [[maternal death]], accounting for more than 300,000 deaths per year, most of them in developing countries.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/maternal-mortality|title=Maternal mortality|publisher=World Health Organization|language=en|access-date=2019-06-17}}</ref> Certain traditional practices, such as [[female genital mutilation]], also affect women's health.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/female-genital-mutilation|title=Female genital mutilation|publisher=World Health Organization|language=en|access-date=2019-06-17}}</ref> Worldwide, young women and adolescent girls are the population most affected by [[HIV/AIDS]].<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.unwomen.org/en/what-we-do/hiv-and-aids/facts-and-figures|title=Facts and figures: HIV and AIDS|website=UN Women}}</ref>

There are also historical cases of [[Patient abuse|medical abuse]] of women, notably the 19th century policy of [[Wrongful involuntary commitment|wrongful confinement]] of women into [[insane asylums]], often at the request of husbands and male relatives.<ref>{{cite web | url=https://time.com/6074783/psychiatry-history-women-mental-health/ | title=Declared Insane for Speaking up: The Dark American History of Silencing Women Through Psychiatry | date=22 June 2021 }}</ref> A notable activist against such practices was [[Elizabeth Packard]], who was wrongfully committed in 1860 by her husband, and filed a lawsuit and won thereafter, highlighted the issue of wrongful involuntary commitment.<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Testa|first1=Megan|last2=West|first2=Sara G.|date=October 2010|title=Civil Commitment in the United States|journal=Psychiatry (Edgmont)|volume=7|issue=10|pages=30–40|issn=1550-5952|pmc=3392176|pmid=22778709}}</ref> Another activist was investigative journalist [[Nellie Bly]], who went undercover in  1887, at an asylum in [[New York City]], to expose the terrible conditions that mental patients at the time had to deal with.