The evolving understanding of gender in international law and ‘gender ideology’ pushback 25 years since the Beijing conference on women (original) (raw)
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Id. at 7. Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland of Norway also emphasized the importance of recognizing women's human rights and bettering women's condition worldwide. Significantly, the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women, Beijing Declaration and Draft Platform for Action, U.N. Doc. AICONF.177/20 (1995) (advance unedited draft) [hereinafter Beijing Platform], clearly states women's rights are human rights. Id. % 14. 2. This exclusion of women has been a reality in both the public and private 606 [Vol. MX:3 FORMULA FOR REFORM deconstructing and reconfiguring the human rights framework to ensure that women's rights that exist in theory become reality. The United Nations Human Development Report 1995 states the shocking, but all-too-well known fact quite plainly: "In no society today do women enjoy the same opportunities as men." Recognizing the second-class status of women in societies around the world and the dangers of the marginalization that results, this article, as the title suggests, reviews and analyzes the rules that exist and the realities that persist. It proposes reform in the context of cultural, religious, and traditional norms and practices. Part II describes the general setting that provided the impetus for women around the world to unite and demand their rights as human beings. Part III reviews the international human rights construct to establish that, as a matter of paper rights, women are, or should be, protected under existing norms. Part IV reveals that the reality of the conditions and status of women worldwide is a far cry from the equality mandated by the rules. This section includes an assessment of some gender-specific practices, some of which are justified by culture, history, and tradition, as well as a scrutiny of various substantive provisions of the body of human rights documents to show that women are, indeed, not equal in their enjoyment of, or protection by, established international spheres. See infra notes 4-6, 145-57 and accompanying text; see also FEMINIST LEGAL THEORY FOUNDATIONS 3 (D. Kelly Weisberg ed., 1993) [hereinafter FOUNDA-TIONS]. "[Tihe role of law, which by its absence and unwillingness to regulate the domestic sphere, implicitly has ensured constraints that have relegated women to the private sphere. In this manner law plays a powerful role in shaping and maintaining women's subordination." Id.; see also Karen Knop, Re/Statements:
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