Paper Presented at EU-China Human Rights Network
Network Seminar on Gender and Human Rights Law
Beijing, 27-28 September 2004.
Dr. Eilís Ward,
Women’s Studies Centre,
NUIG, Galway,
Ireland
Tel: +353.91524411 Ext 2108
Email: eilis.ward@nuigalway.ie
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Dr. Eilís Ward, Women’s Studies, NUI Galway, Ireland.
Summary
This article traces the relationship between the women’s movement, whether global, national or local, and the development of women’s human rights. In transforming traditional notions of ‘public’ and ‘private’ spheres the women’s movement has radicalised both the language and our understanding of human rights.
It argues that that the existence of an autonomous women’s movement is necessary for the development and consolidation of a comprehensive human rights culture within and between states
Introduction
The purpose of this paper is three fold:
 to sketch the development of the women’s movement internationally in relation to the evolution and development of women’s human rights.
 to identify the nature of the relationship between the women’s movement and women’s human rights.
 to illustrate the role of an independent women’s movement in the context of developing a human rights culture
All of my comments are framed in an acknowledgement of the fraught nature of attempting to universalise the human experience, and specifically women’s experience and women’s lives, in a world marked by differences in culture, beliefs, power structures, psychological practices and social structures. When dealing with issues of feminist analysis or critiques, we western academics must be particularly aware of the tendency for western feminist discourse towards hegemony within feminism or the global women’s movement.
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1 The author acknowledges inspiration for the title from Sikkink. Kathryn,, 2001,
“Historical Precursors to Modern Campaigns for Women’s Human Rights” in Askin,
Kelly and Koenig, Dorean, (eds.), 2002. Women and International Human Rights Law,
Transnational Publishers, New York, Vol. 3.
2 See Funk, Nanette, 1993. “Feminism East and West” in Funk, Nanette and Mueller
Magda (eds), Gender Politics and Post-Communism , Routledge, New York and London.
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I’d like to structure this paper primarily around a simple question: what has been the relationship between the women’s movement (globally, regionally, nationally and locally) and the long historical sweep of the women’s rights movements and the women’s human rights movements. I will trace this relationship through history but will concentrate mostly on recent decades. In particular I will refer to the issue of violence against women.
But before we begin, we must be clear about what is meant by a women’s movement. A considerable body of literature exists on both social movements generally and the women’s movements particularly. As our purpose here is not to debate this literature I am proposing to move forward with a working definition of a movement which captures two critical characteristics of the women’s movement: its dynamic nature and its sharing of a collective identity despite differences. The women’s movement we can say involves the sustained activity of organised groups, to include networks of organisations, that have a shared sense of belonging to the movement although they may have different goals and members.
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Tracing the History
The women’s movement globally is customarily described as having developed in two distinct waves beginning in the second half of the nineteenth century.
However, the idea of women’s human rights is frequently cited as beginning much earlier with the publication in 1792 of Mary Wollstonecrafts’ book A Vindication of the Rights of Women .
4 Furthermore, the evolution of women’s organisations and women’s movement politics have been frequently bound up with nationalist and anticolonial movements, the nature of the state (such as liberal, authoritarian) and inevitably have been determined by the facilitation or otherwise of an independent civil society within any given state.
5 These differences were articulated frequently in the nature and extent of the women’s movement that emerged. We can however, state that the first wave of the women’s movement was facilitated primarily by the demand for women’s suffrage
3 Definition cited in Connolly, Linda, 1997. “From Revolution to Devolution: Mapping the Contemporary Women’s Movement in Ireland” in Byrne, A. and Leonard, M.
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Women and Irish Society , Beyond the Pale Publications: Belfast.
See Fraser, Arvonne, 2001. “Becoming Human: The Origins and Development of
Women’s Human Rights” in Agosin, Marjorie, (eds.), Women, Gender and Human
Rights: a Global Perspective , Rutgers University Press, New Jersey, for details on the
5 intellectual and historical origins of the women’s human rights movement.
For instance, although national women’s organisations emerged in many post-colonial, post revolutionary societies many were not independent of the state. This was particularly the case in the states of the former USSR. It was also the case in countries where mass mobilization of the population occurred as part of national liberation movements and post-liberation processes (such as in Cuba, Eritrea and Tanzania). Here women were organised by the state into a movement or structure linked to the national reconstruction effort.
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(or the right to vote) and was unambiguously assisted by women gaining access to education to the labour market and, importantly, to advances made in birth control.
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The ‘First Wave’ of the Women’s Movement
The year 1848 is conventionally cited as the first point of departure in the story of women’s rights. At a meeting in Seneca Falls in New York a number of women came together to articulate demands for women’s freedoms and rights. Many of these principles on which the demands were made would appear one hundred years later in the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
7 From this point onwards we can trace throughout several continents the clustering of women’s groups around issues of the vote, slavery, peace, women’s rights to property, access to public life and other issues. In the
1860’s an English women’s rights campaign organised itself around four key issues
(access to education, prostitution, control over income and property) while continuing to campaign on the right of women to vote.
8 Similar campaigns were found throughout
Europe, in South and Central America 9 , In Japan, following several decades of activism by women, The Association of New Women was formed in 1919 to campaign for the vote and other issues.
10 One of the earliest cited successful campaigns against a form of violence against women was that run by missionaries and Chinese women against the practice of footbinding in China between 1874-1911. Here a national campaign led by reformers considered the abolition of footbinding and the general improvement of women’s status (such as in relation to employment and education) as a necessary part in the wider programme for national self-strengthening.
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A key factor in all these movements was its international dimension best exemplified by the many international conferences held by women’s organisations.
12 which were attended by women from all over the globe. Ideas moved across national borders. Women heard about, were inspired by and sought to replicate activism in other states.
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7
Fraser, Avonne, 2001: 18-19.
8
Fraser, Avonne, 2001: 33.
See Anderson, Bonnie S. and Zinsser, Judith P. A History of Their Own: Women in
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Europe , Harper and Row, Volume 11: 360-365.
Miller, Francesca, 1991 . Latin American Women and the Search for Social Justice ,
University Press of New England, 68-144.
10 Ling, Yuriko and Matsuno, Azuna, 1992. “Women’s Struggle for Empowerment in
Japan” in Bystydzienski, Jill (ed.), Women Transforming Politics , Indiana University
Press: 54.
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Sikkink, Kathryn, 2001: 799-807.
Such as the International Women’s Suffrage conference held in Washington, USA in
1902, the conference in Berlin, Germany in 1904 that established the International
Woman Suffrage Alliance and the International Feminist Conference held in Buenos
Aires, Argentina in 1910.
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The near universal extension of the vote to women by the period after World War
Two can be read as making the unimaginable possible – women were now allowed to vote. But the change had deeper significance also for women’s rights. It revealed that the manner in which citizenship had been conceived, particularly in relation to the rights it endowed in relation to participating in public and civic life and being a representative of the wider population, was deeply gendered: that women had been seen ‘as less’ than the citizen or ‘other’ to the citizen. The resistance to extending this right, or its circumscribing, in certain parts of the world today indicates its fundamental nature in terms of cultural perspectives on equality between men and women.
The ‘Second Wave’ of the Women’s Movement
In as much as the first wave of the women’s movement was mediated by other movements for significant change (labour and workers movements, anti-slavery movements, early articulations of socialism) the second wave was equally mediated by global change and a time of ferment. Customarily again we describe the period beginning in the late 1960’s as embracing the second wave. Here the wider movements of international socialism, civil rights (such as in the US), anti-colonial struggles (such as in
Africa), student agitation (such as in Europe and the US) and national liberation movements (such as in South and Central America) created spaces and the ferment of ideas which reverberated deeply with those concerned with women’s rights specifically.
In turn, women began to create and articulate their own demands. Increasingly they used the language of human rights as laid down with the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights.
A brief account of the key points for women’s advancement during this period underlines the need furthermore to understand that while there were certainly ‘waves’ of movement, there was also a constant flow of ideas through historical time and across continents. This forum does not allow for a complicated analysis of this period and the gains made but we can summarise some key point which will be of interest here for this seminar.
Informed by the history of women’s activism and organisations and increasingly, but not exclusively, by feminism as a comprehensive critique of women’s disadvantage 13 , the second wave of the feminist movement encompassed social, cultural, civil and political rights. The movement, in the US, in Europe, in the Americas 14 for example, began to present a profound critique of, inter alia , women’s role in society, in family life and how sex-roles and sexuality are constructed. In particular, socialist feminists, some of
13 It is important to note that not all women’s organisations or women’s movement activities are necessarily feminist or espouse feminist principles.
14 In South America, in particular, movements of women engaged in collective action on issues of political and state violence, poverty, rural development and work conditions.
See Stephen, Lynn, 1997 . Women and Social Movements in Latin America , University of
Texas Press, Austin and Radcliffe S. and Westwood, S, 1993. Viva: Women and Popular
Protest in Latin America , Routledge, London and New York.
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whom were informed by their experiences in socialist and revolutionary politics began to articulate that there was a force, or structure independent of the means of production which systematically oppressed and disadvantaged women. The concept of ‘patriarchy’ provided an important explanation as to why even where ‘rights’ (such as the right to education) were universally upheld in a particular state, women did not attend, achieve or flourish as well as men within that system and were frequently discriminated against in law or in practice. Equally the concept of ‘gender’ as opposed to ‘sex’ 15 became a critical tool in explaining the systematic, universal discrimination against women in countries and states which were otherwise marked by differences.
It was this kind of critique emanating from within the women’s movement and its intellectuals that brought about a focus onto human rights and in particular onto the importance of the UN and its institutions to break down patriarchical constructions. A critical argument, eventually recognised at the Beijing Fourth World Conference on
Women, was that until human rights treaties were themselves gendered (specifically accounted for gender dimensions of rights), the legal basis of much of women’s rights activism on the ground would remain inconsistent and ad hoc.
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The story of the evolution of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of
Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), adopted by the UN in 1979, is well documented and this convention is being discussed in another panel during this conference.
17 We know also of the history of the UN World Conferences flowing from the adoption and implementation of CEDAW: Mexico, 1975; Copenhagen, 1980;
Nairobi, 1985 and Beijing 1995.
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Each of these conferences, of itself, provided an opportunity (through the preparatory process, the provision of shadow or alternative reports, the participation of representatives in states parties delegations and at the NGO Forums at each event) for increased networking and strengthening of collective positions on the part of women’s movement activists nationally and globally.
19 In addition the women’s movement
15 The distinction was clearly drawn by French feminist Simone de Beauvoir who argued that one is not born but one becomes a woman – in other words sex and sex-identities are constructs and not, as traditionally understood, ‘natural’.
16 Miller, Alice, 1999. “Realizing Women’s Human Rights: Nongovernmental
Organizations and the United Nations Treaty Bodies” in Meyer, M.K. and Prugl, E.
(eds.), Gender Politics in Global Governance , Rowman and Littlefield, Maryland: 161.
17 A key date was the UN’s declaration of 1975 as the ‘International Year of the Woman’
– an initiative that came from an international women’s organisation with UN consultative status and was subsequently adopted by CSW members. For evolution of
CEDAW, see, for example, Fraser, Avonne, (2001): 15-64. See also Pietila, Hillka and
Vickers, Making Women Matter: the Role of the UN , Zed Books, London.
18 See, for example, Bunch, Charlotte, 1990. “Women’s Rights as Human Rights:
Towards a Revisioning of Human Rights” in Human Rights Quarterly , Vol. 12: 486-492.
19 This is not to deny some deep differences that exist between women’s movement organisations. This is also not to deny the opposition to women’s advancement through
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internationally has advanced its cause by participating in other important world conferences held by the UN such as the conference on the Environment and Development
(Rio de Janeiro, 1992); the World Conference on Human Rights (Vienna 1993); the
World Conference on Racism (South Africa, 2000).
20 As has been pointed out by come commentators, while the UN did not set out to facilitate global feminist and women’s movement networking, the conferences and surrounding work helped create the conditions and context for women to come together to develop understanding and a way of working together.
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Of very particular importance was the gain made at the Vienna conference (1993) not just because the conference embraced the goal of much international women’s movements activism over the previous decade, viz , a global recognition of the universality of women’s human rights, but also because of the gains made on the issue of violence against women. Gender based violence against was women was, up to this period, not recognised as a human rights issues and hence not an issue that required attention from the international human rights community.
22 At Vienna, the principle that women’s rights were human rights was acknowledged.
The Issue of Violence Against Women .
The campaign on the human rights of women in the context of gender based violence against women emanated from an acknowledgement that, when it came to violence against them, women were treated as secondary to the ‘human rights’ of men. In the run up to the Vienna Conference of 1993, women’s networks, and groups, globally organised themselves specifically on targeting this issue as a way of both revealing the gendered nature of ‘human rights’ and the need for greater state protection against the many violent practices that were accepted or invisible across cultures.
23 In addition, in response to pressure from women’s organisations, groups such as Amnesty International began to locate violence against women in a human rights discourse. The adoption of a human rights framework to address violence against women in Vienna was facilitated by the mass rape of women during the civil war in Yugoslavia which made policy makers (at human rights legislations and institutions. At the Beijing conference (1995) an organised opposition, principally from conservative and male dominated religious institutions, states and organisations was evident and had a significant impact on affairs. See West,
Lois, 1999. “The United Nations Conferences and Feminist Politics” in Meyer and Prugl op cit : 177-193.
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21
See Miller, Alice, 1999, op cit : 161-176.
Bunch, Charlotte, 2001. “Women’s Human Rights: The Challenge of Global Feminism and Diversity” in Dekoven, Marianne, (ed.), Feminist Locations: Global and Local:
Theory and Practice , Rutgers UP, New Brunswick: 130-131.
22 Bunch, Charlotte, Frost, Samantha and Reilly, Niamh, 1999. “Making the Global
Local: International Networking for Women’s Human Rights” in Askin and
Koenig,(eds.), op cit : 92.
23 See Bunch, Charlotte, etc al, op cit, for details of the campaign: 91-113.
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the UN) aware of the political nature of gender violence, its pervasiveness and its crosscultural nature.
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Arguably, the issue of violence against women has provided some of the greatest successes for the women’s movement in advancing women’s human rights and is also providing to be the most intractable. At least two, related explanations can be offered for this difficulty.
Firstly, much of the difficulty arises from the embedded nature of practices and attitudes within cultural norms and institutions (such as the institution of the family) which can be used to justify violations. Amongst these practices are acts such as, broadly, domestic violence, rape within marriage, sexual assault in intimate relationships, female genital mutilation, bride burning, female infanticide, and trafficking. By insisting that this gender-based violence, often carried out within the ‘private sphere’ was as serious and as fundamental a human rights violation as, say, denial of political rights, the women’s movement successfully forced government’s to recognize that familiar or intimate relationships came within the purview of the human rights obligations.
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Secondly, the case made by women’s movement activists and organisations rested on arguing that it was, often, the states’ failure to protect women from such violence was, itself a human rights violation. Hence states were obliged to eliminate violence perpetrated by public authorities and by private actors.
26 This campaign finally culminated in the adoption of a Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against
Women, by the UN General Assembly in 1994, the appointment by the UN of a Special
Rapporteur on violence against women the same year and the adoption by the Beijing
Platform for Action of a section on gender-based violence in 1995.
Again the time allocated to this paper does now allow an examination of the impact of these changes in the lives of women in the ground in terms of an improvement in their rights. This is for another paper. However, a critical point to be extracted here is that, as illustrated by the success of the campaign to secure a human rights regime on violence against women, is that the change came about as a result of local, national and international movements of women asserting a case which, in many instances, were based on imagining the impossible. And if, for many women a world without wife battery, rape,
FGM and other violation is still impossible to imagine, this does not diminish the gains that have been made for many others. The networks of information and lobbying which grew up, the organisation of local and national events, the degreee of public education and mass campaigns, the collaboration with other like-minded organsiations, all stemmed from the dynamic and policy-focused nature of the women’s movement.
I’d like to summarise some points here before drawing to a conclusion.
24 Joachim, Jutta,1999. “Shaping the Human Rights Agenda: the Case of Violence
Against Women” in Meyer, M and Prugl. E. (eds.), op cit: 155.
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26
See Bunch, Charlotte, et al , op cit : 92.
Merry, Salle E., 2001. “Women, Violence and the Human Rights System” in Agosin
(eds.): 86-87.
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The global women’s movement has always been founded on a recognition of the commonality of discriminations against women and violations of their rights across different cultures and political/ideological systems.
There was, over time, and particularly with the emergence of the second wave of the women’s movement, a recognition that while the UN
Commission on the Status of Women (established in 1946) had made many advances what was in fact required was a UN Convention which specifically provided a menu or protection and internationally binding norms for women. In other words, women needed specific protection.
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This was based primarily on the gender blindness of the human rights instruments. Feminist critiques of the law, including international law, argued that the very structure of the law had been ‘built on women’s silence’. This is a reference to their absence not just from the rooms where laws are drawn up but their absence from positions of power in both public and private worlds.
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The UN Declaration of the UN Decade for Women (1975-85) provided the focus and a structure for global organisating and the World conferences facilitated extensive networking, lobbying and collaboration by national, local and international women’s organisations across the continents. The UN structure provided what has been termed the
‘opportunity structure’ 29 for radical and profound change.
In recognition of the power of human rights instruments to both redress profound gender imbalances and to require states to provide greater protection for women, it became evident that there was a need to transform how we (through the UN institutions) conceived ‘human rights’
The focus on violence against women served as both a means of doing this and of building a global constituency of women’s organisations, across all continents which argues that gender violence is unacceptable and that international law can and must be used to eliminate it.
Finally, and importantly, the international instruments (such as and particularly CEDAW) have instituted an important role for women’s movement organsiations in reporting, overseeing government policies, providing date and analysis for government policies, educating the public, and in for instance, providing Shadow Reports for the UN, all legitimize the role of the independent women’s sector or women’s civil society within the discourse of human rights nationally and internationally.
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See Fraser, Arvonne, 2001: 15-64 for a comprehensive analysis.
Charlesworth, Hilary, 1994. “What are ‘Women’s International Human Rights’?” in
Cook, Rebecca, (ed.), Human Rights of Women: National and International Perspectives ,
University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia: 60.
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Joachim, Jutta, 1999, op cit : 143.
Clearly the degree to which women’s organisations can function independently and effectively will be determined by the political culture within which they are embedded.
At the same time, NGO’s can also be used by governments. Best practice in the field of
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Conclusion
As we face this new Century, women’s issues have been integrated into human rights mechanisms to a profound degree. Whether they will be acted on and implemented fully in the act and the spirit of the law is another matter and not for this paper.
31 What we can say with absolute certainty, however, is that this change would not have been possible without the decades of activism of the women’s movement, through its intellectuals, international and national networks, and local groups across all continents.
The force of these movements came from, not least of all, the independence of the voices from those of government.
The idea that all people share fundamental human rights is one of the most powerful concepts that disenfranchised group have used to legitimize their struggle in that the language of human rights claims that all should be included in the human community as equal citizens.
32 Women’ movement politics forged the link between patriarchal values (that the male value or the male interest is the norm) and women’s oppression or discrimination across cultures and thereby transformed the language and the conceptualization of ‘human’ rights.
In order for a human rights culture to evolve in any state, and particularly one which fully embraces all citizens as carrying rights that are fully inalienable and universal and indivisible, regardless of sex, it is important that all human voices and concerns are heard and brought into the dialogue. This may and ought to result in the mobilization of shame against values and practices which are oppressive, damaging and in some cases destructive of women. For policy makers and shapers, at a national and international level, this can mean that their own values and attitudes towards women are under scrutiny and the discriminating nature of their own laws are under attack. The progress of the history I’ve very briefly outlined here underlines the importance of the legitimisation and the continued validation of this scrutiny in the continuous growth and deepening of human rights cultures. human rights it can be argued, is founded on the necessity of organisations which are independent of the state. See Baer, Peter, 2001 . Human Rights: Universality in Practice ,
Palgrave.,
31 The application of remedies for, for instance, violence against women, is still not the norm. See Gaer, Felice, 2001. “Mainstreaming a Concern for the Human Rights of
Women” in Agosin, Marjorie (ed.), op cit:121.
32 Bunch, Charlotte, 2001, op cit:138.
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