Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of abbreviations
- Table of Cases
- Introduction
- 1 International human rights law and notions of human rights: foundations, achievements and challenges
- 2 International human rights law: the normative framework
- 3 Human rights in practice
- 4 The United Nations Charter system
- 5 The UN human rights treaty system
- 6 Regional human rights treaty systems
- 7 Individual complaints procedures
- 8 Civil and political rights
- 9 Economic, social and cultural rights
- 10 Group rights: self-determination, minorities and indigenous peoples
- 11 The human rights of women
- 12 The right to development, poverty and related rights
- 13 Victims’ rights and reparation
- 14 The application of human rights in armed conflict and the international criminalisation process
- 15 Human rights and counter-terrorism
- 16 Non-state actors and human rights
- 17 Globalisation and its impact on human rights
- Index
- References
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11 - The human rights of women
Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of abbreviations
- Table of Cases
- Introduction
- 1 International human rights law and notions of human rights: foundations, achievements and challenges
- 2 International human rights law: the normative framework
- 3 Human rights in practice
- 4 The United Nations Charter system
- 5 The UN human rights treaty system
- 6 Regional human rights treaty systems
- 7 Individual complaints procedures
- 8 Civil and political rights
- 9 Economic, social and cultural rights
- 10 Group rights: self-determination, minorities and indigenous peoples
- 11 The human rights of women
- 12 The right to development, poverty and related rights
- 13 Victims’ rights and reparation
- 14 The application of human rights in armed conflict and the international criminalisation process
- 15 Human rights and counter-terrorism
- 16 Non-state actors and human rights
- 17 Globalisation and its impact on human rights
- Index
- References
Summary
Introduction
The disadvantages, discrimination and subordination suffered by women globally have been well documented in a variety of contexts, yet the issue of women’s human rights has until relatively recently been neglected in international law. The instruments composing the international Bill of Rights contain general non-discrimination clauses which include the prohibition of discrimination on the basis of sex or gender, whereby the rights within these instruments are held to be applicable to everyone, regardless of, inter alia, sex. As this chapter will discuss, these generic discrimination clauses have, in a number of ways, proved inadequate to capture the specific nature of violations suffered by women and to provide adequate protection. Women’s human rights are an overarching phenomenon touching on all aspects of the international human rights framework. The importance of addressing human rights issues as they specifically pertain to women and others suffering disadvantage or oppression within gender-based power structures has been widely recognised.
Informed, determined and vociferous campaigns by national and international women’s rights movements and coalitions have brought to light, and attempted to redress, a number of inadequacies within the international human rights system. In particular, they have questioned a number of the assumptions underlying the existing framework of protection, particularly a narrow focus on non-discrimination at the expense of broader concerns reflecting the experiences of women, such as gender-based violence. The culmination of the 1976–1985 UN Decade for Women with the 1995 Beijing Fourth World Conference was instrumental in bringing key issues to the fore, followed by the Beijing Platform for Action ten years later. The Platform discussed and made recommendations on a wide range of issues, including poverty, education, health, violence against women, armed conflict, political rights and the rights of the girl child, which showed the breadth of concerns relating to women’s rights.
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- Chapter
- Information
- International Human Rights Law and Practice , pp. 452 - 483Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2013
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