Women are now and always have been equal to men. As such, women must enjoy the same rights, protections and freedoms as men, and public access to information (PATI) is a means through which rights can be enjoyed equally by both genders.

In practice, PATI has been shown to be a useful tool in broadly promoting gender rights.

At an individual level, it is also a very effective tool which can be exercised by women coming from all levels of society to protect their own rights.

Specifically, groups advocating gender equality will find it useful to disseminate awareness about the PATI legislation, and its utility in addressing issues such as payment equity, gender-based discrimination in hiring practices and diversity in corporate governance.

As an example, the United Kingdom is widely regarded as a country where women's rights are respected and upheld. In 1970, the Equal Pay Act was introduced in the UK making it illegal for employers to pay men and women different salaries for the same or similar work.

However, statistics released in 2004 showed continued disparity in salaries paid to both sexes in the UK.

Indeed, in 2006, the UK Freedom of Information Act 2000 was used to specifically uncover payment disparity for male and female reporters of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC).

This was an alarming discovery at a time of mounting public pressure on the government to take gender equality within the public sector.

Shortly thereafter, the BBC announced its plans to undertake a thorough salary review to identify and address discrepancies within the organisation, and in January 2007, the BBC's Board of Governors was replaced by the BBC Trust, tasked in part with the duty to promote gender equality in the BBC's public functions.

James M. Ferguson recently left his job with the Access to Information Programme of the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI), an international, independent, non-governmental organisation founded in 1987, with offices in India, Ghana and the United Kingdom, whose objectives are to promote awareness of and adherence to international human rights obligations for the practical realisation of human rights in Commonwealth countries.

This example on the importance and utility of the right to information can be found along with other examples in the CHRI publication, "Our Rights, Our Information Empowering People to Demand Rights through Knowledge", at http://www.humanrightsinitiative.org/publications/rti/our_rights_our_information.pdf.