Women's Human Rights (original) (raw)
Related papers
Beijing '95: A Global Referendum on the Human Rights of Women
Canadian Woman Studies, 1996
Les auteures comparent k Forum &S ONG avec la Conprence oficielk &S Nations unies en s o u l i p n t ks disnusions The globalfocus on women 5 human rights was accompanied by an insistence that women 5 equality cannot be discussed in isolation from the global economic, poh'tical and culturalforces rapidly reshaping the world. marquantes sur l e~ droits humaim, la violence contre &S femmes, li'mpact & la restructuration Pconomique sur &S femmes, I'i&ntitP politique et la s a d. En examinant &S limites et ks gains & la plateforme visant h lhction, Its auteures soutiennent que plus les droits humains seront reconnus plus lbrganisation &sfemmes sera forte.
Women's Rights are Human Rights: A concept in the making
This article traces the development of the Global Campaign for Women's Human Rights from its origins in the global feminist movement of the 1980's through the historic Vienna (1993) and Beijing (1995) UN World Conferences. It analyzes the achievements of this movement and the challenges and backlash faced since the 20th anniversary of the Beijing Conference in 2015. (published in the collection, "Women and Girls Rising" edited by Ellen Chesler and Terry McGovern, Routledge, London and New York, 2016)
Human rights instruments have enabled women's movements to access a normative and analytic framework for fighting discrimination, and rights discourses have been deployed to legitimise women's demands for social and economic rights, political representation and well-being. Maxine Molyneux spoke to Deniz Kandiyoti about the new trends and threats to women's rights and UN frameworks. Deniz Kandiyoti: As we enter 2013, we are assailed daily by news of violence against women, as well as sharp popular reactions against these incidents. Yet the climate for a level headed discussion of gender equality and women's rights seems more unfavourable than ever at the international, regional and national levels. Shall we start with what is happening at the international level? Maxine Molyneux: Yes, there are certainly some very worrying trends. We are at some distance from the high period of liberal internationalism in terms of human rights and democracy. The spirit of optimism that accompanied both the successive waves of democratisation in various parts of the world, and the gains made by the international women's movement during the Beijing process, had drained away by the latter half of the 1990s, and even more so after 9/11 when women's rights were caught up in the so-called 'war on terror'. While almost all governments have signed up to UN frameworks on women's rights, and there have been many positive changes as a result, there has also been growing resistance to rights agendas and diminishing trans-national activism in support of women's rights. One indication of this was the passing without notice of the Beijing Plus Ten (B+10) events in March 2005 in marked contrast to the Fourth World Women's Conference in 1995 held in Beijing which was attended by more than 30,000 participants. No full-scale international conference could be contemplated for B+10 for fear of risking the gains won in Beijing and strenuously defended in the Beijing Plus Five negotiations in 2000. B+10 was confined to an intergovernmental meeting where the mood was defensive, and the main achievement – an important one-was to reaffirm the broad consensus encoded in the Platform for Action approved ten years earlier. And there are now concerns about holding a 5th Women's World Conference in case those gains are overturned. What explains these changes? Two things are significant here: one is that there has been a critical reassessment of the Beijing process itself, with doubts variously expressed as to its representivity, the content of its proposals, and the universalist pretensions of the overall project. All these questions can be and should be debated, but ultimately there may be no agreement on core values. The strongest critiques of international rights frameworks coming from within the relative safety of the Western liberal democracies are joined by positions allied with varieties of anti-imperialist, religious and/or conservative positions and these are less interested in discussion than in rejecting the very premise of universal rights. So where these ideas have influence, they have helped to weaken commitment and have divided activists. The second important factor is one far less widely analysed and discussed in these debates over human rights-namely the growing influence of illiberal, religious and conservative forces worldwide. In recent decades these became increasingly effective in the battleground over women's rights and at the very moment when women's movements were losing their vitality, purpose and leadership. It is striking that in contrast to the outpouring of critiques of feminism, trans-national women's movements and advocacy, there has been so little commentary on, or analysis of, the trans-nationalization of conservative forces and their international alliances, often but not always religious in character, mobilizing against women's rights.
Women's Human Rights: Seeking Gender Justice in a Globalizing Age
Canadian Journal of Women and the Law, 2011
In 1995, the Western media was abuzz with reports about the United Nations World Conference on Women being held in Beijing, China. Hilary Clinton, then wearing the title of First Lady of the United States, attended and gave a rousing, and controversial, speech in which she chastised the Chinese government for its human rights violations and then famously called for the recognition of women's rights as human rights. Perhaps that recognition-"women's rights as human rights"does not strike the same resonant chord today as "yes we can," but, at the time, Clinton's speech was something of a barn-burner. The media headlines from 1995, particularly in the Western press, reflected a mixed-to put it politely-reaction to the Beijing conference. For some, Beijing heralded a (possibly optimistic) change in gender dynamics and social relations: " 'Old Boys' Network' Be Warned: Women Are on the Move," reported the Charleston Gazette (West Virginia), 1 "Beijing: The Surge of a Tidal Wave," ran a headline in The Age (Melbourne).
Human rights apply to all humans, so why do some complain that they exclude women? Although human rights are regarded as universal by definition, a multitude of feminist scholars have criticized the human rights discipline for excluding women.