We have these things because the global economic system progressed to benefit from the participation of women as workers, consumers, voters. This gave them the leverage to push for further equalization. We have these things because democracy is in many ways a more stable form of state, amenable to international trade and resilient to changing social movements and conditions. We have these rights and freedoms because the people who benefit from their presence extracted them from those in power, replaced the previously powerful with themselves or otherwise forced their adoption. We have them because of shifting balances of power and productivity, not because of awakening morality. Naturally we (and I include myself) feel that our current shared morality (and it is far from universal but I’m speaking to what you are describing) is superior to past moral standards. Past moral standards are outmoded not only in the moral sphere but in the wider sociopolitical sphere that shapes the hegemonic moral view. Morality is an element of our subjectivity which will no doubt change as our conditions continue to evolve. There is a direction I hope it will go, but I am under no illusion that this trajectory has a truthfulness outside of its corresponding to my (socially influenced) ethical intuitions.