About
Ramona continues what may be a life-long project: advancing gender equality in the law.
Ramona Vijeyarasa is a legal academic and women’s rights activist.
She is the designer behind the award-winning Gender Legislative Index, a collaboration with Rapido Social and the UTS Connected Intelligence Centre, a tool that uses human evaluators and machine-learning to assess how well laws work for women.
Her career began as a corporate lawyer in Sydney. Driven by a passion for human rights, her focus unsurprisingly shifted to international women’s rights law.
Ramona’s decade working in civil society has taken her from the slums of Rio de Janeiro, capturing the stories of survivors of domestic violence, to the floating villages of Cambodia, where she supported women’s demands for better access to reproductive health care.
As a legal activist, Ramona has helped advance anti-trafficking victim reintegration networks in Vietnam and Ukraine, filed briefs before the European Court of Human Rights, the Supreme Court of Moldova and the Supreme Court of the Philippines and made submissions to UN treaty bodies and overseeing research and programming on women and youth in urban spaces.
This rich experience informs her impact-driven approach to research, where sound methodologies are created to deliver tangible change in order to improve lives through the law.
Ramona continues what may be a life-long project: advancing gender equality in the law.
Articles about Ramona
![Ramona standing with Hillary Rodham Clinton at her In-Conversation event with Julia Gillard in Sydney in 2018](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/62980faf2b6c2156add4e088/7fc1403b-4420-426c-9882-6fd6855c43ab/Clinton2.jpg)
![Ramona at a campaign against gender-based violence in Matagalpa in Nicaragua in 2014](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/62980faf2b6c2156add4e088/b453e283-847d-4307-9401-e02de923b4e0/Nicaragua.jpg)
![PXL_20240703_065454079.jpg](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/62980faf2b6c2156add4e088/b4b1c8b7-5bd7-44a2-a702-be6ed88278ee/PXL_20240703_065454079.jpg)
![Ramona speaking on radio in Brazil about safety and gender-based violence in 2015](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/62980faf2b6c2156add4e088/ae07deac-3e75-4947-b8cb-c0bd234c9f6d/Blog-1---Radio-Mulheres-Cabo---Ramona.jpg)
![Ramona with the villagers on the floating villages of Cambodia in 2010](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/62980faf2b6c2156add4e088/887d773d-ab6f-48c5-939a-dfabe70755ce/Ramona-floating-villages.jpg)
![Ramona at the ANU launch of her book, The Woman President, With Elise Stephenson, September 2022](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/62980faf2b6c2156add4e088/7a7e30ce-5ee7-42cb-9353-af91bfe13b6c/20220912_174523.jpg)
![Ramona speaking on a panel at the Commission on the Status of Women in New York in 2012](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/62980faf2b6c2156add4e088/03a66cc1-de6d-456a-a53a-2b7d15ac3c05/CSW-027.jpg)
![Ramona making a funding “pitch” for the Gender Legislative Index with UTS partners Rapido Social](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/62980faf2b6c2156add4e088/cd62234d-6982-4aad-8469-b504f2502e07/UTSBusiPitch095.jpg)
![Ramona with Independent MP of the Tasmanian Legislative Council, Ruth Forrest in Brisbane in July, 2022](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/62980faf2b6c2156add4e088/3c93fbad-3d1e-41e8-b4ad-354212324c5f/PXL_20220714_012320902.PORTRAIT%7E4.jpg)
![240607_1274.jpg](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/62980faf2b6c2156add4e088/894eeebf-63cf-4619-84fa-aca5ed2e8083/240607_1274.jpg)
![Ramona at a campaign for ending violence against female university students in Liberia in 2011](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/62980faf2b6c2156add4e088/fddfb8c4-c360-4b7b-9d3b-79ed1ae47363/DSCN3077.jpg)
![Ramona with former Prime Minister of New Zealand, Helen Clark in Ghana in 2010](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/62980faf2b6c2156add4e088/da019da7-68a0-4f0b-a25c-f0af84a04d59/IMG_2545.jpg)
![The-Leadership-event-06.jpg](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/62980faf2b6c2156add4e088/ad9effb7-d57c-47cc-8b49-f803e8b3ed82/The-Leadership-event-06.jpg)
![Ramona running a workshop for women’s rights program managers in Rio de Janeiro in Brazil in 2011](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/62980faf2b6c2156add4e088/33496d5b-d4a4-4d52-8629-fc8b9422c7ed/RamonaAtActionAid.jpg)
![Ramona receiving the Women in Artificial Intelligence Award (Law Category) in Melbourne in March 2022](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/62980faf2b6c2156add4e088/7994c647-5d79-4e84-ac90-b038a531dae4/WAI_192.jpg)
![Ramona receiving the FLARE award in 2022](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/62980faf2b6c2156add4e088/2b679a3d-3283-4936-ac26-28a11af5ba28/Ramona-FLARE-Award.jpg)
![Ramona speaking on a panel for International Women’s Day at the University of Technology Sydney in March 2022](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/62980faf2b6c2156add4e088/2a158bc6-5658-4936-b83b-b2ca16fc1ab8/Ramona-talking-image.-WM_5MB_UTSIWD22_ShaneRozario-152_.jpg)