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International Feminist Journal of
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From intergovernmental
negotiations to (sub)national
change
Susanne Zwingel
a
a
Ruhr University , Bochum, Germany
Published online: 19 Aug 2006.
To cite this article: Susanne Zwingel (2005) From intergovernmental negotiations to
(sub)national change, International Feminist Journal of Politics, 7:3, 400-424, DOI:
10.1080/1461674050016118
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1461674050016118
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From Intergovernmental Negotiations
to (Sub)national Change
A TRANSNATIONAL PERSPECTIVE ON THE IMPACT OF CEDAW
SUSANNE ZWINGEL
Ruhr University, Bochum, Germany
Abstract ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------In the last thirty years, a process of global norm creation in the field of gender equality
has taken place. The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination
Against Women marks a milestone in this process: it emerged as the first legally
binding international instrument for the protection of women’s rights. The 180 states
that have ratified the Convention have interpreted their treaty obligations in diverse
ways, ranging from reluctance to active incorporation. Beyond its original mandate,
CEDAW has increased attention on gender issues within the UN human rights framework. Further, it has motivated transnational NGO activism that uses the Convention
to connect local understandings of women’s rights with global standards to influence
national policy developments. Taking these global, national and transnational
dynamics together, the article argues that CEDAW has been transformed from a ‘classical’ intergovernmental regime to a transnational network enforcing women’s rights.
Based on these findings, a theoretical view on global norm creation and enforcement
is developed that stresses the reciprocal interrelation between global, national and
local spheres. Instead of assuming a ‘trickle-down’ dynamic as a consequence of
global agreements, it is argued that the legitimacy and authority of global norms
depends on their active interpretation and appropriation within national and local
contexts all over the world.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Keywords
CEDAW, international norms, transnational networks, women’s rights
In the last thirty years the unequal gender relations that persist in all parts of
the world have become a matter of international concern. Gender policy has
International Feminist Journal of Politics, 7:3 September 2005, 400– 424
ISSN 1461-6742 print=ISSN 1468-4470 online # 2005 Taylor & Francis Group Ltd
http:==www.tandf.co.uk/journals
DOI: 10.1080=1461674050016118
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developed into a field of its own for international organizations and now takes
a place next to long-established domains of international co-operation such as
trade relations or disarmament. A parallel process has occurred within nation
states; since the 1970s states in every world region have created a variety of
public gender policies. Both international and national dynamics that have
been strongly influenced, and often brought about, by non-governmental
women’s organizations, have shaped a global discourse on gender norms
(Friedman 1995; Meyer and Prügl 1999; Mintrom and True 2001; Ruppert
2001). This discourse has included such foci as raising awareness about
gender hierarchies, the struggle for universal standards to eliminate discrimination against women and the development of mechanisms to enforce these
standards.
The global debate on gender norms has been sustained by governmental and
non-governmental voices from different, yet often overlapping, cultural contexts, and it continues precisely because it is full of contradictory ideas as to
the best means to improve women’s lives (Basu 1995). More recently, there
have also been fundamental contestations and resistance, for example, from
voices prioritizing freedom of religion over gender equality (Friedman
2003). The ‘public face’ of this global discourse on gender norms has been
the world women’s conferences held between 1975 and 1995 in Mexico,
Copenhagen, Nairobi and Beijing. A milestone in the discourse was the creation of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination
Against Women (CEDAW). Adopted in 1979 by the General Assembly of the
United Nations, CEDAW was the first international human rights instrument
explicitly to define all forms of discrimination against women as fundamental
human rights violations. As of April 2005, 180 states have ratified CEDAW.
The Convention thus represents the most far-reaching international commitment of governments to work for gender equality.
It is noteworthy that CEDAW has not received much scholarly attention,
with the exception of feminist international law literature, which has
contributed a great deal to the acknowledgement of the Convention’s groundbreaking contribution in gendering international human rights law (Byrnes
1989, 2002; Cook 1994; Gallagher 1997; Freeman 1999). For a variety of
reasons, both non-feminist and feminist International Relations (IR) scholars
have shown little interest in CEDAW as a potential instrument for social
change. While international co-operation and the dynamics of global norm
emergence are crucial areas of IR research (Levy et al. 1995; Finnemore
1996; Ruggie 1998), the field of global gender policies has been largely
ignored by non-feminist IR scholarship. Also, international human rights treaties such as CEDAW have been discussed as a special, and maybe least promising field of international co-operation as they dispose of weaker enforcement
mechanisms than other forms of international regimes (Donnelly 1986;
Moravcsik 1995). Feminist scholars in IR have rarely engaged in neo-liberal
debates on international co-operation, but have focused on the hegemonic structures underlying co-operation. Actors traditionally engaging in international
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co-operation – predominantly governments – represent certain interests and
exclude many others, most notably those of women, the poor and citizens
from postcolonial nations (Peterson 1990; Grewal 1999). Thus, feminist scholarship has focused on global and transnational women’s organizations and
women’s movements as crucial actors in transforming gendered international
power hierarchies (Meyer and Prügl 1999; Joachim 2000; Naples and Desai
2002; Friedman 2003). Hence, as CEDAW was created as a state-oriented, not
a movement-oriented mechanism for the protection of women’s rights, it has
until recently received only marginal consideration in the transnational feminist
literature.
This article contributes to closing the scholarly gap around CEDAW and to
developing a theoretical perspective on global norms that goes beyond the
international sphere. It is based on empirical research reconstructing the
interpretations of the CEDAW process as expressed by experts in the field of
women’s rights.1 The article follows the understanding that an international
instrument as such is usually not the most relevant driving force for social
change, but that it is contingent upon national and local struggles. A staff
member of UNIFEM describes this mutual influence of different contexts,
and at the same time, criticizes the somewhat isolated emphasis that is often
laid on international instruments:
Sometimes the impact that we want to say is a direct result of the Convention is
not real. . . . The fact that CEDAW was used is useful but it isn’t the only tool. . . .
So for those of us who are trying to extract . . . one piece and try to show what its
role was, we need to learn . . . that it is a question of what we judge as impact and
what we value. Do we value that women’s groups came together for the first time
and talked about a range of issues, and also the Convention? Or is an impact only
if CEDAW is used to change a law?
(Interview with UNIFEM staff member, September 2000)
I argue that the authority of global norms depends on the active appropriation and interpretation of them within various national and sub-national contexts all over the world. I trace the development of CEDAW within four
different contexts. The first one is the intergovernmental context of its creation, which is predominantly shaped by secular western notions on gender
equality and states’ interests in maintaining their sovereignty. The second is
the context of the UN as the international organization, which initially
created unfavourable conditions for the functioning of the CEDAW committee,
but later enabled the substantial strengthening of the monitoring body. The
third perspective moves to the national contexts. In particular, it discusses
how state institutions translate their obligations under CEDAW into domestic
policies. Fourth, transnational, predominantly non-governmental activism is
considered that connects the global norms enshrined in CEDAW with local
women’s interests and national policy development. The subsequent theoretical reflections conceptualize intergovernmental, international, national and
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sub-national discourses and practices on gender norms2 not as separate and
hierarchical, but as interconnected and mutually constituting each other.3
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FIRST MILESTONE IN THE UNFINISHED JOURNEY TOWARDS WOMEN’S
RIGHTS: THE CREATION OF CEDAW
Created after World War II, the United Nations provided the first international
public space for debates on the advancement of women. While the Commission
on the Status of Women (CSW) was established as early as 1946, the ‘women
question’ started gaining momentum in the 1960s. By then, a rather formal
debate on the legal status of women was turned into a comprehensive
approach to transform the socio-economic foundations of societies and
abolish discrimination against women. This gender-awareness was increased
by the emergence of diverse women’s movements all over the world in the
1970s, and was reflected in the announcement of International Women’s
Year in 1975 and the subsequent UN Decade for Women (Winslow 1995;
Pietilä and Vickers 1996). However, while women’s concerns gained visibility
in the discourse on socio-economic development, they remained detached
from the evolving international human rights framework. Even if human
rights law proclaims a life in freedom and dignity for women as much as for
men, most of the human rights violations specifically affecting women
were not recognized as such, but as somewhat less problematic cultural or
traditional patterns (Gallagher 1997).
CEDAW was the first international instrument to correct this gender-blindness. After a lengthy intergovernmental drafting process within the CSW and
the UN General Assembly, the text of the Convention adopted in 1979 did certainly not satisfy all UN member states (United Nations 1996: 41). The most
significant line of conflict was the tension between religious and secular concepts of the role of women in society, the former interpreting the idea of
women’s rights as embedded in women’s functions within family and
society, the latter emphasizing women’s autonomy and individuality. Accordingly, the most heated debate of the drafting process arose on equal rights of
men and women within marriage and the family. While the final text grants
equal rights, some delegations defended complementary roles of men and
women. Proponents of this view criticized the Convention as biased, e.g. the
delegate of Morocco to the General Assembly regretted ‘that delegations
failed to understand how vital it is that this Convention strike a fair balance
among all existing legal systems. Extremism will never lead to the desired
results’ (UN-Doc. A/34/107, para. 41).4
The Convention aims at achieving substantial gender equality as a result of
eliminating discrimination against women. Article 1 defines ‘discrimination
against women’ in very broad terms, explicitly mentioning direct and indirect
discrimination and extending it to all spheres of life including the private
sphere. The Convention then elaborates the measures states must take to
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eliminate discrimination against women (art. 2, 3),5 and it encourages temporary
special measures to accelerate de facto equality (art. 4). It urges states to suppress
trafficking in women and the exploitation of prostitution (art. 6), and to improve
the situation of rural women as a particularly disadvantaged group (art. 14) –
these two articles are the most explicit in dealing with the elimination of discrimination against women. The Convention calls for the equality of men and
women in public and political life (art. 7, 8), before the law and concerning
nationality rights (art. 9, 15), in education (art. 10), employment (art. 11), in
the provision of health care including access to family planning services (art.
12) and in marriage and family matters (art. 16). Article 5 calls for the modification of stereotypical cultural attitudes based on ‘the idea of the inferiority or
superiority of either of the sexes’, and thus points to a change in gender relations
that implicitly touches upon the status of men.6
States that ratify the treaty are obliged to implement the CEDAW principles in
their domestic context. Upon ratification states are allowed to enter reservations
to single provisions of the treaty as long as those reservations are not incompatible with the object and purpose of the Convention (art. 28).7 There is a global
monitoring mechanism whereby states submit a report every four years on the
progress they are making and enter into a ‘constructive dialogue’ with the
CEDAW committee (art. 18). The committee consists of twenty-three experts
of ‘high moral standing’ representing the world regions (art. 17). As a result
of this dialogue, the committee issues Concluding Comments to support the
state in its future efforts. While both constructive dialogue and Concluding
Comments may result in strong criticism, it is obvious that the monitoring procedure is tailored according to the interests of states: it is within their sovereign
discretion how to proceed with the committee’s advice. In a nutshell, the
Convention is an ambitious instrument in terms of content, while at the
same time non-coercive in terms of enforcement mechanisms.
Who was involved in the creation of CEDAW and which interests are represented in the treaty? In the eyes of a US-American participant in the drafting
process, ‘(t)he convention . . . resulted from initiatives and long negotiations
within the political organs of the UN, but with a unique difference. Women
drafted these instruments’ (Fraser 1995: 77). This view emphasizes the symbolic victory of women within international structures over a male-dominated
environment and its procedures. The progressive tone of the Convention is certainly due to the engagement of coalitions among female proponents of
women’s rights from different governmental delegations and from within
the UN.8 These coalitions were by no means representative for the world’s
women: they were proponents of a secular concept of women as individual
subjects of rights, and the delegates from Socialist states laid specific emphasis
on the importance of women’s rights in the socio-economic sphere. The
women behind CEDAW were more representative for middle-class women’s
interests than for those of poor women, or for those of women experiencing
only gender discrimination instead of multiple forms of discrimination. In
addition, as governmental delegates, they had to represent the interests of
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their governments. Many female delegates were replaced by diplomats, who
did not have any particular interest in gender issues, when negotiations
were passed on from the CSW to the General Assembly. Thus, the governmental interests were strengthened in the last stage of the negotiations, resulting in
the weak enforcement mechanisms of the Convention. In sum, the text of
CEDAW is both shaped by a secular feminist understanding of gender equality,
which included western and Socialist values, and by the interests of states to
minimize any constraint on their national sovereignty.
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THE ‘POOR COUSIN’ GETS ACCESS TO THE TABLE: THE
STRENGTHENING OF CEDAW WITHIN INTERNATIONAL STRUCTURES
The CEDAW monitoring committee had to start its work under extremely difficult conditions, because it was not considered part of the UN human rights framework, but of the UN activities on women’s affairs, which were dealt with
from the UN-secretariat in Vienna at that time.9 As such it is the only human
rights treaty body10 that does not meet at the United Nations Centre for
Human Rights in Geneva. This somewhat isolated situation combined with
the restricted meeting time of two weeks per year and a situation of extremely
scarce resources prompted one expert to describe the CEDAW committee as the
‘poor cousin of the human rights treaty bodies’ (Byrnes 1989: 57). This description is true for the beginning of the committee’s work, and reflected the international ignorance of, if not resistance to, women’s rights in the early 1980s.
Since the mid-1990s the working conditions of the committee have improved,
and now not only has the committee’s meeting time been expanded to a level
comparable to the other treaty bodies, but its administrative support has also
been upgraded. Since 1996 CEDAW has been served by an extra unit with
the legal expertise required to support the reporting procedure. This is partly
due to the increasing awareness of women’s rights as an integral part of
human rights, and the resulting increase in funding for UN activities in this
field, and partly due to the persistent lobbying of some of the CEDAW experts.
Based on these improved conditions the committee has strengthened its functions: it has turned the constructive dialogue with state delegations into a critical in-depth analysis, systematically including independent information beyond
the states’ reports, especially those provided by NGOs and United Nations
specialized agencies. In its General Recommendations, the committee has interpreted the Convention’s provisions in the light of newly emerging areas of
concern and provided states with guidelines for action, e.g. regarding violence
against women or HIV/AIDS and women. Committee members have also been
very active beyond their mandate as independent experts, and have tried to
increase the recognition of CEDAW within the UN. The co-operation between
the human rights treaty bodies has been particularly important for CEDAW,
and CEDAW chairpersons have been successful in raising the gender-awareness
of other committees within their areas of work. Also, specialized agencies have
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integrated a women’s rights framework in their fieldwork, and raised awareness
of CEDAW. UNIFEM and UNDP in particular have designed their projects
according to CEDAW principles.
During the twenty years of its work, the professionalism as well as the global
profile and authority of the CEDAW committee have increased significantly.
This is, most notably, reflected in the adoption of an Optional Protocol to
the Convention in the year 2000 (United Nations 2000). The Optional Protocol
provides the opportunity for an individual complaint procedure, which
enables individuals to address the committee when they see their rights violated and have exhausted all domestic legal remedies. From the international
law perspective this is a truly significant step, and the committee is currently
conducting the first two inquiry procedures on possible ‘grave or systematic
violations by a State Party of rights set forth in the Convention’, one taking
place in Mexico, the other one in Germany.11 However, how many women suffering from violations of their rights will really benefit from this new instrument remains to be seen, since only citizens of states that ratify the
Protocol12 are allowed to complain, and since the committee’s comment is
not equivalent to a legally binding judgment.
CEDAW experts and UN staff members, both from the Secretariat and other UN
agencies have been the most effective actors in the international context,
strengthening the recognition of the Women’s Convention within the UN,
initially against considerable resistance. The women’s rights proponents have
access to governmental and international circles, and while their value
systems are shaped by different cultural influences they belong to a global
elite in terms of their educational and class background. Their activism is not targeted directly to invoke social change towards gender equality. Rather, they aim
at increasing the authority of international mechanisms, because they consider
this an indispensable step towards the development of useful strategies to fulfil
women’s rights. They do connect global discourses with local realities to some
extent, especially in operational organizations such as UNIFEM. This exchange
has helped to make international discourses on women’s needs more complex,
with growing recognition of the diverse specificities of gender inequalities.
Thus, in the second context, a network of global gender experts has worked to
increase the authority of CEDAW within international structures. While this
commitment to global recognition only indirectly strengthens CEDAW’s
impact, it has helped to establish connections between the global rhetoric on
women’s rights and diverse local realities of women’s lives.
GOOD AND BAD COMPLIERS: STATES’ RESPONSES TO THE
CONVENTION
As of April 2005, a remarkable 180 states had ratified the CEDAW with only 11
UN-member states not being a party to it.13 While each state has developed its
own attitude towards the CEDAW procedure, the overall behaviour of States
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parties14 regarding their treaty obligations can be summarized as limited commitment combined with increasing respect for the Convention. The reporting
patterns and the issue of reservations are two telling indicators of states’ attitudes to the Convention. The majority of the States Parties do not comply with
the duty to submit periodic reports to the CEDAW committee every four years
– as of the year 2003, only 27 per cent of states parties have never been late in
submitting reports. Forty-four per cent of all States Parties had submitted their
last report eight years or more ago. This unsatisfactory reporting pattern makes
it difficult to establish a continuous monitoring process. However, in the cases
for which the committee has received reports on a regular basis, it has almost
always noted improvement in the quality of reports. The CEDAW experts I
interviewed interpreted this improvement as a learning process by state institutions in the analysis of gender hierarchies. Also, the delegations entering
into the dialogue with the committee tend to be better prepared than earlier
on, and experts find that they have become increasingly frank and more
aware of the complexity of their tasks under the Convention.
Regarding the issue of reservations, a disparity in states’ understandings of
their treaty obligations can be observed. While states are allowed to enter
reservations as long as they are in accordance with the Convention’s goals,
there is no authority that can legitimately decide if a reservation is admissible
or not (Clark 1991). As a consequence, some states have entered wide-ranging
reservations that seem to oppose the goal of the Convention. For example,
Singapore states:
In the context of Singapore’s multi-racial and multi-religious society and need to
respect the freedom of minorities to practice their religious and personal laws, the
Republic of Singapore reserves the right not to apply the provisions of articles 2
and 16 where compliance with these provisions would be contrary to their
religious and personal laws.
(UN-Doc. CEDAW/SP/2002/2: 28)
This reservation nullifies the Convention’s provision to grant equal rights and
duties for men and women in matters regarding marriage and the family, while
the private sphere of the family is arguably one of the areas where equal rights
for women are most necessary. Roughly 20 per cent of States Parties have
entered reservations that are incompatible with the Convention, and they
usually do not make any effort to withdraw them, even if consistently urged
by the committee to do so. Another 14 per cent of States Parties have
entered reservations that do not concern the core provisions of the treaty
(Bayefsky 2001 and own calculations). As many states of this group have
been willing to withdraw reservations,15 their understanding of compliance
can be called in accordance with the Convention. The majority of states
never entered reservations, and finally, a group comprising less than 10 per
cent of States Parties has overtly expressed disapproval with fundamental
reservations of other states, though this symbolic protest has shown little
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effect. Thus, most states parties formally agree with the principles enshrined in
the Convention, yet internationally expressed agreement does not necessarily
result in proactive domestic measures to fulfil treaty obligations.
For the domestic implementation of CEDAW, three factors seem to be influential: first, the degree to which political institutions enable the representation
of women’s interests within public policy formation; second, the existence of
transnational governmental or non-governmental activism that supports the
appropriation and implementation of international norms; and third, the
level of cultural affinity with the Convention.16 Regarding the last factor,
there is no direct correlation between higher affinity and more comprehensive
use of the Convention or vice versa. For example, in both the Netherlands and
Finland – states that have achieved a high level of gender equality – the Convention was used to refine public gender policies. However, in the Netherlands
CEDAW played only a marginal role in the process (Roerink van Dijk 2000),
while it was the most important incentive for legal change in the Finnish
case. On the other hand, states that are explicitly opposing parts of the Convention may still take significant steps to implement those parts they agree
on. For example, Bangladesh has entered a reservation to article 2, but still
used CEDAW as a framework to develop its first comprehensive public
programme to confront discrimination against women (Afsharipour 1999).
Starting from these three factors as a general framework, which concrete
implementation strategies have been developed in specific domestic contexts?
To give a preliminary answer to this question, the two cases of Finland and
Chile are discussed here in further detail.17 Both states have been complying
with their formal duties under the Convention and have been actively using
CEDAW in domestic policies, and they have done so under differing political,
socio-economic and cultural conditions. In the first case, Finland, CEDAW was
used by governmental institutions, especially the women’s policy agency
Council for Equality. 18 Finland signed the Convention in 1980 and ratified it
six years later, after significant amendments to its legislation. The most
important change was the adoption of an equality act. The Council had been
lobbying for an equality act since the early 1970s, yet political decision
makers did not see a need for protection against gender-based discrimination.
However, the Convention is clear about the need for legislation, and Finland
was the only Nordic country without legal provisions on gender-equality at
that time. In an interview, a representative of the Council described the strategy employed as twofold: on the one hand, the Council reminded the Government of its international obligations, and on the other hand, it argued that
Finland needed similar legal guarantees to those existing in comparable
states like Sweden and Norway. Since this argumentation was accepted in
principle, a working group with members from all relevant ministries was
established to scrutinize Finish legislation. While the process of ratification
of international treaties is the responsibility of the Ministry of Foreign
Affairs, the Council for Equality managed to take a leading role in the
review process. Finally, the working group submitted a report to the Parlia-
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ment suggesting changes to a number of laws before CEDAW could be ratified.
Besides the introduction of an equality law, the working group also proposed
changes related to marriage law, nationality rights and child custody (UN-Doc.
CEDAW/C/5/Add.56).
The main factors that determined this implementation process are the following: first, the Finish state is a democratic system in which different
social interests – such as those of women – are institutionally well represented
(Bergqvist 1999). In this context, the women’s policy agency was able to establish coalitions to diminish resistance against the proposed legal change.
Second, the Finish women’s policy agency was well connected with governmental women’s rights advocates in other countries, and with discussions at
the international level. These transnational links helped to reinforce claims
that the Council for Equality had been making for a long time. Third, the
national and international normative settings, while not being identical, complemented each other in a way that was strategically useful for the Council:
political and socio-economic equality including gender equality has been a
highly valued norm in Finland. Paradoxically, this all-encompassing notion
of equality has often obscured social structures discriminating against or victimizing women (Nousiainen and Niemi-Kiesläinen 2001). CEDAW proved to
be a useful instrument in bringing this perspective in.
In the second case, Chile, both women’s NGOs and governmental institutions have made use of CEDAW to strengthen their arguments against traditions and practices that discriminate against women.19 The Chilean
normative fabric is strongly influenced by authoritarianism and Catholicism
(Craske 1999). Thus, the dominant understanding of gender relations often collides with the Convention’s provisions, especially in the field of reproductive
rights. Yet Chile’s transition from dictatorship to democracy in the last
fifteen years, and especially the reconstruction of state institutions, was very
much influenced by international standards. Parts of the post-dictatorial political elite in Chile were organized women, and in 1991 they succeeded in
establishing a women’s policy agency, SERNAM (Franceschet 2001; Rios
Tobar 2003). The founding law for this agency refers to Chile’s obligations
assumed under CEDAW, as do a range of other laws, such as the law on
domestic violence adopted in 1994 (Zwingel 2002).
While both SERNAM and women’s NGOs make use of international standards to promote women’s rights against the conservative voices dominating
Chilean public opinion, they represent different points of view and often do
not engage in co-operative strategies. The field of reproductive rights is an
illustrative case: in the public discourse, the idea of reproductive rights is
loaded with negative connotations because it is not interpreted within the
context of reproductive health and self-determination, but equalled with
the ultimate goal of legalizing abortion. While abortion seems to be unacceptable in the Chilean normative context and is in any case illegal, the reality is
that one in four pregnancies ends in abortion. The high percentage of
unwanted pregnancies is a direct consequence of insufficient information on
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and availability of contraceptives. Also, unsafe illegal abortion is the second
main cause of maternal deaths in Chile, which affects predominantly poor
women who do not have access to private clinics where abortions are
performed safely (La Morada et al. 1999).
SERNAM as well as parts of the women’s movement lobby for better reproductive health conditions. This claim was supported by the last Concluding
Comments of the CEDAW committee, where the committee expressed
concern about the high number of deaths caused by illegal abortion and
urged the Government to ensure safe conditions (UN-Doc. A/54/38/Rev.1,
66f). However, this statement of the committee has also caused outrage in
the media and was framed as an assault on the values of Chilean society
(Molina 2000). Faced with this kind of deeply rooted resistance, SERNAM
does not touch on the matter of legalization of abortion, not even for
medical reasons. However, the women’s policy agency is engaged in other
issues concerning reproductive health, which are also very contentious, but
at least debatable, such as sterilization20 or sex education in high schools to
prevent teenage pregnancy. In contrast, NGOs working in the field have a
long-term and transforming perspective. They have built networks within
the country and across the continent to raise awareness on reproductive
health problems of women, to address the taboo around abortion and to
help women who have had an abortion to grapple with their feelings of
guilt. Chilean NGOs even drafted a bill on reproductive rights that was submitted for debate by a few sympathetic parliamentarians, but the issue has
not found support within the political parties and was not backed by SERNAM.
In the Chilean case, the factors discussed above indicate a more cumbersome
implementation process: first, as a legacy of dictatorship, Chilean state institutions represent the interests of different social groups, especially women
and the poor, only to a limited extent. The under-representation of women’s
interests finds its expression in a women’s policy agency that conceptualizes
innovative gender policies, but because their realization depends on other
state institutions, SERNAM takes a low profile regarding contested issues
(Waylen 1996; Baldez 2001). Second, there are women’s rights proponents
in Chile, both governmental and non-governmental, who are transnationally
connected and capable of bringing international norms into domestic discourses. SERNAM has used CEDAW to add legitimacy to proposals on legal
and policy reforms and to defend them against right-wing parties. NGOs
have used the CEDAW provisions both to criticize insufficient governmental
policies, and to raise awareness among women about the rights they should
be able to enjoy based on the international responsibilities Chile has
assumed. However, there are also very active and powerful transnational
church-related networks promoting values opposing the Convention. Third,
the national normative discourse differs from the norms enshrined in
CEDAW – in particular, the understanding of gender difference and complementary male and female roles prevails over the notion of gender equality.
While this ‘mismatch’ has resulted in considerable domestic resistance
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towards international gender norms, it might also be the basis for a fundamental process of social change. The recent legalization of divorce – probably the
most contentious moral issue over the last decade – may be interpreted as one
facet of this process.
In sum, the domestic use of CEDAW is influenced by political representation
of women, transnational networking in the field of women’s rights and by
social constructions of gender relations, but in addition, each national
context creates specific conditions. In countries where women’s policy agencies
exist, they often play a leading role in implementing CEDAW. Depending on
their status within the Government, they take a more forceful or more reserved
position. Women’s rights organizations co-operate with state institutions in
monitoring or implementing CEDAW, they use the Convention in independent
strategies or to pressure the Government or they refer to CEDAW in domestic
courts21 (UNIFEM 1998). In general, NGOs working with CEDAW are of the
opinion that a joint effort between civil society and state institutions is most
fruitful for realizing women’s rights, in other words, they do not have a radically anti-institutional attitude. Apart from the actors that try to pull international gender norms into national contexts, there are a variety of social
groups opposed to those norms. They often construct national normative settings as unchangeable due to ‘cultural traditions’. In many postcolonial
states, religion plays a crucial role in national identity formation, because
it marks a distinction from the secular character of the former colonizing and
currently dominating states. However, this kind of opposition towards
global hegemonic structures often neglects women’s interests.22
BRINGING CEDAW HOME: TRANSNATIONAL NETWORKS LINKING
INTERNATIONAL, LOCAL AND NATIONAL DISCOURSES
Transnational activists often play a key role in the unfolding of international
norms in domestic settings. In the case of CEDAW, two NGOs in particular have
engaged in this form of activism: one is International Women’s Rights Action
Watch (IWRAW), an NGO founded in 1986 and based in Minneapolis, USA.
The second is International Women’s Rights Action Watch Asia Pacific
(IWRAW Asia Pacific) founded in 1993 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The goal
of both organizations has been ‘the progressive interpretation, universalization, implementation and realization of women’s human rights through the
lens of CEDAW’ (www.iwraw-ap.org/aboutus.htm, April 2005). IWRAW first
engaged in making the Convention more public among women’s NGOs and
the general public, and in bringing alternative information provided by
women’s NGOs into the CEDAW monitoring procedure. Thus, the first transnational strategy was to add critical domestic voices to the constructive dialogue
between the CEDAW committee and states to make the procedure more
effective.
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Both organizations went further and IWRAW Asia Pacific in particular has
developed a mission for the Asian Pacific region that connects local activism
with the international framework to influence national policy change. On the
local level, IWRAW Asia Pacific collaborates with women’s organizations to
create knowledge regarding international standards at the grassroots, and to
enable women to translate these norms into their realities and struggles. Building on this work, IWRAW Asia Pacific supports local activists to take part in
international discourses. For example it has developed a programme for
NGOs to participate in the CEDAW monitoring process. Being present at
their state’s presentation, NGOs support the independent experts with their
specific knowledge of the domestic situation. Also, the programme facilitates
NGOs in the development of follow-up strategies in response to the Concluding
Comments of the CEDAW committee.
Both IWRAW and IWRAW Asia Pacific have used the contextualized knowledge they help to create to influence international discourses on women’s
rights. They have made various statements in front of the CEDAW committee
and in other international fora interpreting the meaning of gender equality in
the light of diverse women’s experiences. Some of those statements have particularly stressed the need to understand and address intersecting discrimination – that is, the reinforcement of gender-based discrimination by other
dimensions of discrimination such as racism or socio-economic deprivation
(Dairam 2002; Graterol 2003). These statements contribute to an understanding of the complex forms of discrimination that CEDAW and other human
rights instruments23 seek to eliminate.
On the national level, IWRAW Asia Pacific supports the establishment of
CEDAW monitoring networks: in twelve Asian countries, NGO-coalitions
have been formed to monitor public gender policies in the light of the Convention and to propose or design additional measures to attain de facto equality.
For example, in Pakistan, the Aurat Foundation as the core group of the
CEDAW monitoring network in the country decided to take the improvement
of women’s political participation as a starting point for its monitoring activities. It campaigned for a 33 per cent allocation of seats for women in local
decision-making bodies, and this quota for women was granted in the Local
Government Plan of the year 2000. However, the CEDAW monitoring
network came to the conclusion that the measure as such was not sufficient
to encourage women to run for elections, especially because of the stereotypical view that women are not capable of being political leaders, and because of
most women’s lack of knowledge of political procedures. To address these
obstacles, a broad coalition of women’s organizations, headed by the Aurat
Foundation, campaigned in support of women running for elections and established capacity building programmes for potential candidates. The outcome of
this campaign was not only the impressive number of more than 36,000
women being elected in local government institutions. Also, the mobilization
contributed to a long-term change in stereotypical understandings of gender
roles, because it initiated a public debate on women’s political capabilities
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(IWRAW Asia Pacific 2004). In 2002 the CEDAW monitoring network held a
national consultation with women councillors to identify problems in their
work and to develop future strategies. In sum, the Pakistani CEDAW monitoring network presented a much more comprehensive interpretation of global
gender norms than the Government. It convinced the Government to take temporary special measures to increase women’s political participation, and
it complemented the Government’s policy in preparing women to run for
elections and in supporting them to carry out their office skillfully.
The main actors in this transnational co-operation are organized women on
the sub-national and national levels, who are usually not part of the educational or decision-making elite of their country, and IWRAW Asia Pacific,
which belongs to the transnational community of gender experts. Their
focus of work is no longer global awareness raising, but national social and
political change. Thus, in reference to Keck and Sikkink’s (1998) term transnational advocacy networks, they can be called transnational implementation
networks. These networks accept CEDAW as a legitimate instrument for
change, and they develop the Convention further in interpreting it from the
particular shape of gender hierarchies in their own contexts. This activism
has initiated the important process of contextualizing international norms
without relativizing them, which makes those norms not only more legitimate,
but also more useful and effective around the globe.
An indispensable prerequisite for this form of transnational co-operation is
mutual respect and careful dealing with power hierarchies. IWRAW Asia Pacific’s mandate is based on the principle of empowering women, and on maintaining sustainable and fair relationships with national and local
organizations. National NGOs are supported in their work, and in getting
access to global processes, by IWRAW Asia Pacific. On this basis, the transnational implementation networks try to influence national policies, either in
co-operation with the state or through criticism and public pressure. Governmental institutions are not averse to this kind of co-operation because they
ultimately benefit from the transnational expertise of the activists.
FROM INTERNATIONAL AGREEMENTS TO TRANSNATIONAL ACTIVISM:
IMPLICATIONS FOR THEORY BUILDING
The four different perspectives on CEDAW illustrate the dependency of global
norm creation and enforcement on specific contexts and strategies. In other
words, the idea of the universality of human rights is confronted with
human rights practice that is always contextual and embedded in existing
social relations and values. This situated practice of global discourses has, in
my view, significant implications for IR theory building.
Without doubt, the acknowledgement of norms and values as significant
factors in state interaction has gained weight in the theoretical debate over
the last fifteen years. In the context of the ‘constructivist turn’,24 scholars
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have questioned the epistemological foundations of methodological individualism, e.g. in paying attention to the cultural context of identity formation of
actors and their ‘rational’ decisions (Kratochwil 1989; Meyer et al. 1997;
Checkel 1999). None the less, most contributions on global norms depart
from an international construction of ‘the global’ and do not go very far in
conceptualizing its interconnectedness with national or sub-national normative discourses. One widely discussed example for this line of thought is
Martha Finnemore and Kathryn Sikkink’s (1998) three-stage model of global
norm creation and implementation. At the first stage, norm creation, ‘norm
entrepreneurs’ (1998: 895) create a new norm and try to make it convincing
for key international actors, that is influential states. Transnational advocacy
networks have emerged as new global actors with considerable success in the
promotion of global norms. At the second stage, the global norm ‘cascades’:
after an initial period of contestation, support for the norm has been
growing until it crosses a threshold line and attracts an increasing number
of ‘norm followers’ (1998: 902). At the third stage, norm implementation,
the norm is basically uncontested on the global level and is taken up by
national institutions and bureaucracies to be implemented within national
contexts.
While this model has greatly contributed to the understanding of global
norm creation, it remains somewhat limited in two ways. First, the power
relations in the process of global norm creation are not sufficiently addressed.
Feminist scholars from the Global South have drawn attention to the fact that
so-called global norms are predominantly influenced by western values in
which experiences of women from the Global South are not substantially represented (Oloka-Onyango and Tamale 1995; Mohanty 2003). In a critical
assessment of the women’s human rights framework Inderpal Grewal (1999)
criticizes the construction of the universal woman as defined solely by her
gender. She maintains that it ignores the multiple subject positions of
persons termed ‘women’ that are also rooted in hierarchies caused by race
and class differences and by belonging to different nation states. Without
going much deeper into this line of reasoning, it can be argued that the ‘mismatch’ between global norms and ‘localized specificities of gender inequalities’ (Grewal 1999: 340) stems from the hegemonic character of the global
norm creation process, from which most voices on this globe are excluded.
From this perspective, transnational NGO activism does not automatically
add legitimacy to intergovernmental processes, but it may also perpetuate
the hegemonic international order in constructing an exclusive transnational
civil society.
The second limitation of the model is that it conceptualizes the stage of
norm implementation as a result of the global discourse, not as a process of
active appropriation or refusal of appropriation. This theoretical top – down
perspective is also implicit in the logic of international conferences: an international agreement, while often very hard to achieve, is seen as a normative
standard that subsequently should ‘trickle down’ to the domestic level and
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thus correct normative dissonances. This understanding has been particularly
obvious in the Beijing and Bejing þ 5 conferences; the Beijing Platform for
Action was constructed as an irreversible achievement, and those voices
opposing it were termed backward or fundamentalist – that is, non-legitimate
to renegotiate global standards. While it is strategically reasonable that proponents of a certain understanding of women’s rights aim at maintaining the
high international level once agreed upon, a more dynamic understanding
of appropriation of rights may be more effective in practice.
Based on the empirical findings presented in this article, I argue for a theoretical perspective that shifts from an overemphasis on international discourses
towards an inclusive view of norm creation and appropriation. The core processes of global norm creation are contextualized interpretations and practices
that make norms legitimate and, as a consequence, applicable instruments.
Thus, global norms have to be understood as intertwined international,
national, sub-national and, in the end, transnational normative discourses
and practices (Ackerly 2001; Nash 2002). This perception is based on three
assumptions:
The first assumption is that there is a common ground on which the parallel
efforts of human rights activists around the world can be acknowledged. In
other words, there are normative standards that can be agreed on beyond
specific contexts. However, these standards are not fixed, but open to renegotiation inspired by situated knowledge.
Second, national or local contexts are not secluded cultural entities, and
they enshrine diverse sources of knowledge and legitimacy. The understanding
of situatedness by geographer Doreen Massey (1994) goes beyond the social
construction of the local as a concrete, demarcated, non-universal, unchanging and culturally homogeneous space. In contrast, Massey (1994:
4 – 5) thinks of space as:
constructed out of the multiplicity of social relations across all spatial scales,
from the global reach . . . through the geography of the town, the settlement,
the household and the workplace. . . . The identities of place are always
unfixed, contested, and multiple. And the particularity of any place is, in these
terms, constructed not by placing boundaries around it and defining its identity
through counter-position to the other which lies beyond, but precisely (in part)
through the specificity of the mix of links and interconnections to that ‘beyond’
While local contexts do have a ‘character of their own’, they consist of differing and yet overlapping experiences. This notion defies a homogeneous definition of ‘cultural context’, but rather acknowledges its polyphony.
Accordingly, the legitimate representation of a ‘culture’ consists of a wide
range of voices, including those of women in their diversity.
Third, national and local activism produces appropriate strategies for
change, including contextualized interpretations of international norms.
Thus, the acknowledgement of both general normative standards and their
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contextualization transcends the polarization of universalism versus cultural
relativism ‘by looking at the ways in which claims to rights are embedded in
highly specific local contexts and struggles’ (Stivens 2002: 2). Stivens
(2002: 24) argued in reference to the Asian region that it is too simple to
understand human rights as ‘imports’ from western liberalism or neo-colonialism. Instead, the claims for human rights made by women in postcolonial
situations can be read as distinct voices from within a discourse of ‘long-circulating, modern ideas about democracy, rights, equality and justice’ that
articulate locally produced ideas in a universal spirit of human dignity.
In sum, global norms only unfold their value in ongoing and collective
interpretations and re-interpretations within local practices, or in other
words, they need ‘contextualization without relativization’ (Stivens 2002: 2).
This process of appropriation implies that the articulation of universal
human rights is ‘contingent on the state of current cross-cultural and intracultural dialogues. As these dialogues continue, the substantive meaning of
human rights will change’ (Ackerly 2001: 345).
CONCLUSION
CEDAW came into being as a women’s rights regime following an intergovernmental logic, but international, national and sub-national activists have
started to transform it into a transnational implementation network of
women’s rights. Part of this transformation has been the strengthening of
CEDAW’s international dimension, achieved mainly by the CEDAW experts
and women’s rights advocates within the UN. Part of it has been the
growing awareness of state institutions, and especially women’s policy
agencies in terms of their responsibilities under the Convention, and part
has been non-governmental activism that has connected women’s voices
from local contexts with international norms and national policy development. The empirical findings presented here from the four different contexts
– intergovernmental, international, national and transnational – indicate that
the more these debates are interconnected, the more sustainable the enforcement of a normative framework becomes. The opposite dynamic seems also
to hold true: if an instrument created by intergovernmental co-operation is
not connected to domestic norms and discourses, it will not have much
impact beyond its realm of creation – e.g. beyond intergovernmental rhetoric.
Many international instruments regarding the status of women25 created
before CEDAW were destined to non-implementation because of those
missing links. The political strategies described aim at bringing overlapping
value systems together instead of separating them. In my view, both international organizations and governments could be by far more proactive in
supporting those connecting discourses. For example, of the seven human
rights treaty bodies at the UN only the committee on the rights of the child
disposes of an institutionalized body that links national NGO coalitions with
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the reporting procedure and thus strengthens domestic follow-up processes. In
contrast, the case of CEDAW has shown that the initiative for and establishment of a transnational implementation network has almost entirely been
the work of NGOs. Yet such a process does not only need innovative thinking
and commitment, but also a considerable amount of resources. Arguably, it
would be of benefit for all involved actors, including governments and international organizations.
Theory building has to follow the complex practices more thoroughly.
Artificially separated scholarly fields of IR, Comparative Politics, Ethnology
and Anthropology have to be connected in order fully to envisage global discourses on normative standards. Those discourses are not restricted to international arenas. On the contrary, contextualized appropriation is the crucial
mechanism to make norms pervasive. Often only parts of the global set of
norms are accepted in a certain context, and even these parts have to be
very specifically interpreted to improve concrete living conditions of individuals and communities. Norm realization is a highly complex process that
cannot be analysed with concepts limited to classical IR, such as international
power constellations and ‘strong’ enforcement mechanisms as the only way to
bring ‘deviant’ states to comply with international standards. Especially in the
field of human rights, this notion has always failed – military interventions in
the name of human rights are the most blatant example of this. The concept of
human rights implies the concept of human dignity and self-determination on
the individual and community level, and a responsibility to enhance and
promote this goal on the state-level. The puzzle today is how to increase transnational co-operation around a set of norms that is universal primarily as an
ideal of human dignity, but universally contested when it comes to its global
realization.
Susanne Zwingel
Faculty for Social Sciences
Ruhr University, Bochum, Germany
E-mail: susanne.zwingel@rub.de
Acknowledgements
For thoughtful and constructive comments on earlier versions of this article I
would like to thank Millie Thayer, Elisabeth Prugl, Ilse Lenz, Ulrich Widmaier,
Kasia Polanska, Danica Webb and, in particular, the two anonymous reviewers
of IFjP. Further, I am grateful for the support I received while writing this
article from the Five College Women’s Studies Research Center, the APSA
Special Fund for the Study of Women and Politics and the APSA Centennial
Center for Visiting Scholars.
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417
Notes
Between 2000 and 2002, over thirty expert interviews were conducted with
persons who have been directly involved in the CEDAW procedure or have used
the Convention in developing public polices or non-governmental strategies.
2 I use the terms intergovernmental, international, national and local/sub-national
in the following sense: ‘intergovernmental’ refers to activism taking place predominantly between states, but also within international organizations; ‘international’ describes the dynamics within an international organization such as
the United Nations as well as activism that is directed to the shaping of mechanisms of global governance; it is, thus, less influenced by governmental interests,
but nevertheless connected to them. ‘National’ stands for governmental activism
directed towards the domestic sphere and enshrines the understanding of different
degrees of state sovereignty and agency. ‘Local/sub-national’ refers to a situated
context of changing social relationships mostly shaped by civil society actors
within the national sphere. The distinctions are made based on the understanding
that the different categories are, in reality, not entirely separable from each other.
3 Some scholars have drawn attention to the high and probably increasing relevance
of regional institutions and discourses for the realization of normative claims, e.g.
in the context of the European Union (Liebert 2003) or of Africa (Tripp 2004). For
reasons of space, this dimension cannot be considered here.
4 There were other disagreements in the drafting process, for example if the Convention should cover discrimination against women or gender-based discrimination,
or if protective measures at the workplace were useful or harmful for women. As
the opposing positions in those matters were not antagonistic, they could be settled
in compromise provisions (Rehof 1993).
5 Apart from provisions such as adopting appropriate legislation, article 2 also
obliges states to prevent discrimination against women ‘by any person, organization or enterprise’ (art. 2e) – thus, states have an explicit responsibility to
prevent discrimination committed by private actors.
6 The entire text of the Convention can be found at http://www.un.org/women
watch/daw/cedaw/cedaw.htm, April 2005.
7 Nonetheless, the vagueness of the Convention in defining ‘compatibility’ has led to
a range of problematic reservations (Clark 1991).
8 In contrast, the influence of women’s movements was minimal in the drafting
process. It was ‘by and large, the work of member states, although established
non-governmental organizations dedicated to issues of concern to women contributed’ (Connors 1996: 160 –1).
9 In 1993, the Division for the Advancement of Women, as the administrative body is
called today, moved to New York, where the CEDAW sessions have been held ever
since.
10 There are six other human rights treaties that provide for monitoring procedures
similar to CEDAW: the Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination
(entered into force in 1969), the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1976),
the Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1976), the Convention
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1
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11
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12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
against Torture (1987) and the Convention on the Rights of the Child (1990);
additionally, the Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant
Workers and Members of Their Families entered into force in 2003 and its monitoring committee started working in March 2004. For further details see
www.unhchr.ch, April 2005.
The inquiry procedure in Mexico concerns the murder of more than 300 young
women in the state of Chihuahua since 1993 and the failure of government investigation to identify the perpetrators and bring them to justice (Stern 2004). In the
case of Germany, the NGO Ban Ying filed an inquiry regarding the working
conditions of female domestic workers in the households of foreign diplomats
(Ban Ying 2004).
As of April 2005, 71 out of 180 states parties to CEDAW have ratified the Optional
Protocol.
Disaggregated by world region, the states that are not party to CEDAW are:
Somalia and Sudan from Africa; Brunei Darussalam, Iran, Marshall Islands,
Nauru, Oman, Palau, Qatar and Tonga from Asia and the Pacific; and the USA
from Western Europe and Other Developed Regions. Latin America and the Caribbean have achieved universal ratification. The United States signed the Convention
in the early 1980s, yet the Senate has been refusing ratification to date. For the
domestic debate on the issue see Zierler (2004).
‘State Party’ is the correct legal term referring to any state that has ratified the
Convention and thus, has become a party to it.
For example, Austria and Germany entered reservations to article 7 on gender
equality in political and public life, because their constitutions prohibited
women to serve in the armed forces; both states recently withdrew their reservation (in 2000 and 2001 respectively, UN-Doc. CEDAW/SP/2002/2).
Generally speaking, cultural affinity with the Convention varies across the world
regions. The Latin American continent has universal ratification of CEDAW.
Western Europe and Other Developed Regions and Latin America and the Caribbean
display a high affinity, which is expressed in a low number of reservations. In the case
of Asia and the Pacific, a high number of reservations indicates the difficulty of many
states in reconciling the principles of the Convention with their national understandings of women’s status. Africa has also expressed ideological differences with the
Convention in a considerable number of reservations based on culture or religion.
The literature on cases of CEDAW implementation has been growing in the last
years and shows that a considerable number of states have tried to put their international obligations regarding women’s rights into practice (UNIFEM 1998;
Afsharipour 1999; McPhedran et al. 2000; Weiss 2003).
There are other examples of governmental use of CEDAW, e.g. in South Africa, the
Department of Justice developed a Gender Policy within the broader transformation of the post-apartheid justice system which was guided by the principles of
CEDAW (UNIFEM 1998: 32 –3).
In many cases, both governmental institutions and NGOs make use of CEDAW:
sometimes they co-operate, such as in the Constitution building processes in
Colombia and Brazil (UNIFEM 1998: 10 –16), or in developing policies to put
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20
21
22
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23
24
25
the committee’s recommendations into action, as in Bangladesh (Afsharipour
1999); sometimes NGOs use the Concluding Comments of the committee to
monitor the Government and to pressure it to fulfil its obligations (e.g. Zimbabwe,
UNIFEM 1998: 35 –6).
Until 2001, a woman could only undergo a sterilization after the age of 32, being the
mother of four children and with her husband’s consent (La Morada et al. 1999). After
the amendment of the law in 2001, these conditions have ceased to apply.
In most states, the judiciary has remained rather inactive in using CEDAW despite
its legally binding character. One reason for this is the widespread unawareness of
international law development within domestic legal systems (United Nations/
Division for the Advancement of Women 2000).
For an illustration of this point, see the debate on the compatibility of CEDAW with
Islam as interpreted in the context of Pakistan (Weiss 2003).
Both organizations have extended their activism towards other instruments,
especially towards the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.
Different approaches are subsumed under the catch-all category ‘constructivism’;
Locher and Prügl (2001) observe that in US-American debates, it is understood as
an alternative to rationalist approaches, whereas in the European context, constructivism stands for a ‘middle ground’ position between rationalism and postmodernism.
For example the Convention on the political rights of women of 1952, the Convention on the nationality of married women of 1957, the Convention on consent to
marriage, minimum age for marriage and registration of marriages of 1962 (Office
of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, www.unhchr.ch/html/intlinst.htm,
April 2005).
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