what are the social, political and/or economic issues connected to this sexual assult?
Department 3– PERSPECTIVES OF SPECIFIC GROUPS
The Purpose of Module 4
The purpose of this module is to provide an overview of the ESC rights of women.
The module
- summarizes the current ESC state of affairs of women internationally;
- discusses gender ideology and the touch on of a gender perspective on specific ESC rights;
- reviews the history of the struggle for women's rights to be recognized as human being rights;
- explores some conceptual issues related to women's rights;
- reviews international legal norms on women's rights; and
- identifies challenges and opportunities for integrating women's rights in ESC activism.
Introduction
When men leave their villages for better-paid jobs in cities or away, women get saddled with the farm piece of work likewise equally their domestic chores.� When bloated state en�terprises "rationalise" their workforces, women become laid off before male person "heads of household."� When sweatshops seek underpaid casual labour, women are the first to be recruited.
When newly rich men dabble in vice, village girls become dragooned into prostitution and eye-aged matrons current of air up divorced.� Yet when fast-changing lifestyles provoke a traditionalist backlash, patriarchy reasserts itself with a vengeance.� When inflation bids up dowries and social pressures depress nascence rates, girl babies get aborted or murdered in their cribs to make way for male heirs. When the resulting skew in the sex ratio makes for a shortage of marriageable women, a black market place arises for kid�napped brides. [1]
This excerpt from the magazine Far Eastern Economic Review graphically captures the mul�tifaceted bigotry and exploitation faced past women.� Processes of political and eco�nomic transformation that have changed the face of the world over the past decades have had a profound impact on the lives of women.� Many of these changes accept been positive.� Some, still, accept strengthened the bonds of subordination and discrimination against women, restricting them from enjoyment of their economic and social rights.� Internal conflicts and wars accept led to displacement and destruction of property and livelihoods, which place women in an ever more vulnerable position.� Military machine conflict likewise results in an increase in violence and criminal offense, and women and girls become detail targets.� Extremism and religious fundamentalism deny women'due south autonomy and subject them to the most fell and inhuman of punishments for "transgression" of norms laid out by those in power inside the hierarchies that rule these movements.�
The rapid globalization of the globe's economies has brought in its wake not only structural adjustment programs that weaken national economies and nation-states, merely as well promotion of forms of industrialization and agriculture that are more exploitative of both human and natural resource.� Statistics bear witness that the female labor forcefulness is the most affected.� In addi�tion, every bit the poor of the world get poorer, women get the poorest of them all; the "feminization" of poverty is a reality in the contemporary world.� A decrease in social spending—for example, on public health, education, transport, food and fertilizer subsidies—has been a critical function of the "structural aligning programs" imposed on many countries past the international fiscal institutions.� This decrease has had a disastrous affect on the quality of life of populations in full general, and on disadvantaged communities, such as women, in particular.� (See Module 26 for more on this issue.)
The United Nations Development Programme's Human Development Study 1993 high�lighted various areas in which women fare worse than men in accessing as well equally enjoying ESC entitlements:
Literacy—Women are much less likely than men to exist literate.� In Southern asia, female person literacy rates are only around 50% those of males . . . in Nepal 35% . . . Sudan 27%.� Women brand upwards two-thirds of the world'due south illiterates.
Higher pedagogy—Women in developing countries lag far behind men.� In Sub-Saha�ran Africa, their enrolment rates for third teaching are only a third of those of men.� Even in industrial countries, women are very poorly represented in scientific and technical study . . .
Employment—In developing countries women accept many fewer job opportunities, the employment participation rates of women are on average only 50% those of men (in Due south Asia 29% and in Arab States only 16%) . . . Wage bigotry is too a feature of industrial countries: in Nippon, women receive only 51% of male wages.� Women who are not in paid employment are, of course, far from idle.� Indeed, they tend to piece of work much longer hours than men . . .
Health—Women tend on boilerplate to live longer than men.� Just in some Asian and Northward African countries, the bigotry against women—through neglect of their health or nutrition—is such that they have a shorter life expectancy . . .
National statistics—Women are oft invisible in statistics.� If women's unpaid housework were counted equally productive output in national income accounts, global output would increment by 20-30%. [2]
Understanding Gender Ideology and Its Practice
The question of gender is unremarkably ignored in the development of policies or programs for dealing with economic, social and cultural issues.� The 1995 UNDP Human Development Report rightly stated, "For besides long it was assumed that evolution was a procedure that lifts all boats . . . that it was gender neutral in its impact.� Experience teaches otherwise." [3] � Information technology is thus essential to understand gender ideology and ensure that women's perspective is not ignored or undermined past activists working in the field of ESC rights.�
Differentiation based on gender (male-female person) forms the core of gender ideology.� Biological differences are existent (e.g., chromosomes, external and internal genitalia, hormonal states and secondary sexual activity characteristics) and lead to the determination of the male person or female sex.� Through gender ideology, however, these differences are extended to the social milieu and are taken for granted in establishing social position and hierarchy, providing access to re�sources and participation in society, and creating stereotyped roles for men and women.� On the basis of sexual practice differences, a superordinate-subordinate hierarchy is established, through which males accept access to land holdings, inheritance, skills, productive employment and the associated loftier status.� Women, on the other mitt, receive poor nutrition and medical care, and inferior education; they suffer violence and are even denied life (female infanticide).
Social institutions such as the family, religious groups or caste systems; political and legal structures; economic and educational institutions; and the mass media—all are permeated with norms and values that discriminate against women and legitimize and institutionalize social placements on the basis of gender.�
Invisible Work
Tanning of animal hides is a major consign earning industry in the State of Tamil Nadu, Bharat. Tanning is listed every bit one of the most hazardous industries in the state's Factories Act; information technology is considered vii times more hazardous than the next industry on the list. Employment of children and women in this industry is banned. A study on the tanning industry in the land found, however, that a large number of women are employed in contravention of the law. They are also involved in the most chancy stage of production. Since their employment is illegal, it is hidden. They are never recorded as workers, then they have no rights or any form of protection under the existing industrial laws. 4
Applying a gender perspective would change the fashion in which we clear ESC rights.� The following are some examples:
one.� Right to Piece of work and Rights at Work
From a gender perspective, the meaning of work would be changed to include unpaid work at home, on the family subcontract, and elsewhere, work that is currently not valued by social club.� A redefinition of work would recog�nize women's productive labor and enable women to profitably engage in home-based work.
Women are currently relegated to low-paid and low-skilled jobs; this needs to be rectified.� A fresh per�spective would aid ensure that women have flexible working hours and that they are reintegrated into the labor strength after time off for marriage and childbirth without penalty for absence.�
Rights at piece of work would include protection from sexual harassment in the piece of work place, trade unions and labor organizations.� They would too include provision of nursing breaks for breast-feeding mothers, and institution of cr�ches and day-care centers; separate toilet facilities and free access to them; provision of dayrooms for rest and recognition of men�struation-related health problems as the ground of residual breaks; and ensuring participation of women in trade unions past property meetings at times that are user-friendly to women. (See Module 10 for more on the correct to work and rights at work.)
two.� Land Rights and Right to Belongings
Women's claims to land bring into question their capacity to relish equal rights in every sphere—civil, political, economic, social and cultural.�� Women'southward rights to equal inheritance, to equal shares of matrimonial belongings, to recognition as legitimate and legal owners of land and property, who can purchase, sell, charter and raise loans on the basis of that belongings, are denied all over the world, in a broad range of cultures and communities.� (See Module eighteen.)
Zimbabwe'south Supreme Court Rules against Women's Inheritance
In a case involving inheritance rights, the Supreme Court of Republic of zimbabwe issued a landmark conclusion in April 1999, giving precedence to customary law over the Constitution. In this case, Venia Magaya, a 58-year-erstwhile seamstress, sued her half blood brother for ownership of her deceased father's state after her brother evicted her from the home. Under the Zimbabwean constitution, Magaya had a right to the land. However, the court ruled unanimously that women should not be able to inherit land, " because of the consideration in the African society which, amidst other factors, was to the effect that women were non able to await after their original family unit (of nativity) because of their commitment to the new family (through marriage)."
The court backed up its determination past referring to Department 23 of the constitution of Zimbabwe. This section recognizes exceptions to the general rule confronting discrimination when information technology involves adoption, spousal relationship, divorce, burial, devolution of holding on death or other matters of personal law and in applying African customary law. Essentially, past making this judgment, the Supreme Court elevated customary police beyond constitutional scrutiny. 5
3.� Right to Wellness
A gender perspective on health is not the same as focusing on women's health or, fifty-fifty more narrowly, on health conditions exclusively experienced past women as a consequence of their biology.� The post-obit passage provides a useful summary of key issues:
A gendered perspective on health includes, likewise examining differences in health needs, looking at differences between women and men in risk factors and determi�nants, severity and duration, differences in perceptions of illness, in access to and utilization of health services, and in health outcomes.����
The heaviest burden of ill-health is borne by those who are most deprived, not just economically, but also in terms of capabilities, such as literacy levels and access to information.� Substantial evidence exists to indicate that in almost all societies, women and men have differing roles and responsibilities within the family and in and so�ciety, different social realities, and unequal access and control over resources.� It therefore follows that gender is an of import social determinant of health.� Gender differences are observed in every stratum of order, and within every social group, across dissimilar castes, races, ethnic or religious groups.�
Men and women perform dissimilar tasks and occupy different social and oftentimes, differ�ent physical spaces.� The sexual division of labour inside the household, and labour marketplace segregation by sex into predominantly male and female jobs, expose men and women to varying health risks.� For example, their responsibility for cooking exposes poor women and girls to smoke from cooking fuels.� Studies evidence that a pollutant released indoors is 1000 times more likely to reach people's lungs than a pollutant released outdoors, since it is released at close proximity.� Thus, the segmentation of labour by sex, a social construct, makes females more vulnerable to chronic respiratory dis�orders including chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, with fatal consequences. ����� Men would in turn be more exposed to risks related to activities and tasks that are, by convention, male person, such as mining.�
Differences in the fashion society values males and females, and accepted norms of male and female person behaviour, influence the take chances of developing specific health problems every bit well as health outcomes.� Studies have indicated that son preference and the under-valuation of daughters skew the investment in feeding and in health intendance made for boys and girls.� This has potentially serious negative wellness consequences for girls, including avoidable mortality.� On the other mitt, social expectations about male exist�haviour may betrayal boys to a greater risk of accidents, and to the adverse wellness con�sequences of smoking and alcohol-employ.��
Patriarchal norms which deny women the correct to make decisions regarding their sexuality and reproduction expose them to avoidable risks of morbidity and mortality, be it through a sexually transmitted infection resulting from coercive sex, or death from septic abortion because access to rubber abortion has been denied by land legisla�tion.� The practice of unsafe sex by large sections of men who are well enlightened of the wellness risks cannot be explained except in terms of gender norms of acceptable and/or desirable male sexual behaviour.
Because of the socialisation of men and women to adhere to prevailing gender norms, women'south and men'due south perceptions and definitions of health and ill-health are likely to vary, as is their wellness-seeking behaviour.� Women may non recognise the symptoms of a health problem, non care for them as serious or warranting medical assist, and more commonly, not perceive themselves every bit entitled to invest in their wellbeing.�
Finally, because women and men do not have equal access to and control over re�sources such as coin, transport and time, and because their controlling power inside the family is unequal, with men enjoying privileges that women are denied, women's access to health services is restricted.�
At that place are other factors which compound women'due south vulnerability because of the way gild expects women and men to comport.� For the bulk of women, loftier risk ac�tivity can simply mean being married.� Social norms which accept extra-marital and pre-marital sexual relationships in men as "normal"; and women'southward inability to negoti�ate rubber sex practices with their partners are factors that brand it hard for women to protect themselves from sexually transmitted infections.�
To summarise, both "sex activity" and "gender" differences betwixt women and men, and the many ways in which the two are intertwined, contribute to differences in health risks, wellness seeking behaviour, admission to and utilisation of health services, and wellness outcomes between the two groups.� Research, policy and services aiming to improve the health status of a population will have to examine, understand and address these differences.�
A number of tools have been developed for monitoring how engendered a wellness pro�gramme is.� Some of the major questions to be asked include
- does the programme address gender differentials in health risks, health informa�tion and admission to wellness services?
- does the plan load all responsibilities for improved wellness on women rather than also involving men?� does the programme add to women'south work load?
- does the plan perpetuate gender biases?
- volition the programme contribute to redressing inequities in health past gender beyond various sections of the population?
- does the program address and help narrow gender gaps in terms of distribution of responsibilities and ability among health personnel ? 6
Run across Module xiv for more on the correct to wellness.
Women'southward Rights as Human Rights
Some history
Women have struggled in every historical epoch and in every role of the world for equal treatment. In the early office of this century, the correct of women to receive an education, to obtain paid employment, to enter professions, to vote and to represent elections were all highly contested issues.� Yet, past the finish of the century these rights, which could be de�scribed as a part of the "liberal autonomous" political agenda, have been both recognized and established through police force and customary practice in well-nigh societies.� However, women in many parts of the earth notwithstanding confront multiple obstacles in enjoying these rights.
Women'south ability to enjoy civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights is interlinked with the issue of bigotry.� Bigotry based on gender ideology and patriarchy was not initially considered equally part of the human rights calendar. Excluding sex bigotry and violence against women from the human rights agenda also results from a failure to see the oppression of women as political.� Female subordination runs and so deep that information technology is still viewed as inevitable or natural rather than as a politically constructed reality maintained by patriarchal interests, ideology, and institutions.7
For many years the women's motion has organized women at local, national, regional and international levels.� In recent decades, all the same, the motility has sought to apply the homo rights framework to mainstream women'south bug, rather than have the motion remain on the sidelines, benefiting from special programs, or standing as a motility carve up and apart from the remainder of the human rights movement.�
The Unfinished History
The history of women's rights can in a vicious simplification be described as circular. A very early on period of sexual activity equality seems to have been followed by a long period of retrogression, then by efforts to regain some of the lost equality . . .
Descriptions of a full general downwards tendency in societal recognition of women's equality hide their efforts to challenge inequality . . . Women martyrs are rarely known, simply in every society, in every generation, there were women who led the mode. For example, Fatimih Umm Salamih lived in Persia in the nineteenth century. She was born in 1817 and became known as Tahirih (The Pure One). She challenged the rules of the fourth dimension, which relegated women to inferiority, and championed equality between men and women. She was murdered in 1852 and her body was thrown into a well which was then filled with stones. She was killed but not silenced; her last words were recorded: "Yous can kill me as soon every bit you similar, but you cannot end the emancipation of women."
In the modern period, women take been agile in the labour movement.
The 1918 Rice Riots in Japan were triggered off when women port workers refused to load rice and were joined past other workers; this led to a long struggle and a political crisis. In Red china in 1922 many thousands of workers in 70 Shanghai silk factories went on strike, calling for increased wages and a x hour working solar day; this was the beginning important strike by Chinese women workers. In India and Sri Lanka, in the years after Globe War I, women workers were agile participants in militant industrial agitation and strikes. To give only i example from the region, the most militant activists of the Ceylon Labour Wedlock, which led strikes in Sri Lanka in the 1920s, were women manufacturing plant workers in Colombo; they used to clothes in red, were the about vociferous of the strikers and picketers, and formed a bodyguard for male trade spousal relationship leaders during demonstrations. In Iran, Egypt and Turkey women were to join with men in the germination of left-wing political groups and merchandise unions, in spite of repression and adverse conditions for mobilizing the people.viii
Women's man rights activism has focused on expanding existing definitions of rights to include more gender-specific sensitivity to abuse likewise as to provide gender-sensitive solutions and re�apparel.� In addition, it has focused on the inter-sec�tionality of rights, seeking to correlate the princi�ples enunciated in divide conventions and covenants with each other.� This has about successfully been washed with the Convention on the Elimina�tion of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (hereafter referred to as the Women's Convention).
As a part of this exercise, violence against women has been framed equally a violation of the correct to life; the right not to be subjected to torture or to other cruel, inhuman or degrading care for�ment or penalization; the right to equal protection under the law; the right to liberty and secu�rity of person; and the right to the highest standard of concrete and mental wellness.� Freedom of expression and association have been additional disquisitional areas nether which various bug, ranging from the deprival of access to data regarding contraceptives to the forced veil�ing of women, have been considered.�
The mainstreaming of women's rights issues within the human rights movement and agenda has involved both conceptual and programmatic challenges:
Women'south rights—public and private sphere dissever
Because women are divers in most man rights instruments in terms of their child-bearing and familial responsibilities, and because the family unit, which is a site of violence and oppres�sion for many women, continues to be described as the primary unit of social club, there are se�vere limitations on the possibility of co-ordinate equal handling to women inside the existing human rights regime.
The division betwixt the "public" and "private" spheres constitutes the foundation for all forms of bigotry confronting women.� In the so-called individual arena, the equal treatment of women remains extremely controversial.� The primacy of woman's biological and reproduc�tive roles in defining her identity and her role in gild is reinforced past social and cultural norms the world over.� Critical areas of human life such as marriage, divorce, maintenance, custody of children and inheritance continue to exist adamant co-ordinate to religious, tradi�tional and customary practices in many countries.� Domestic violence, incest and marital rape are perceived as "individual" matters and therefore "outside" the purview of the police.� These at�titudes are also articulated through many, varied legal systems and frameworks.� Given this context, women's capacity to enjoy economic and social rights is oft constrained by eco�nomic dependence and social attitudes that affirm her secondary and subordinate status in society.
The right to be treated on an equal basis with men when information technology comes to domestic and family unit matters is essential for women'southward economic and social freedom.� The Women's Convention remains the instrument with the largest number of reservations past governments ratifying in�ternational human rights conventions.� The fact that about all of the reservations focus on the spirit of the Convention, which calls for irresolute unequal power relations between men and women in the private sphere, speaks to the resistance to this expanse of women's rights.
Since civil and political rights accept dominated human rights concerns over the last five dec�ades, the focus has been on the negative obligation of the state to refrain from activeness every bit op�posed to its positive obligation to intervene.� This, in turn, has strengthened the individual/public dichotomy; the land was expected to refrain from interfering in the private sphere.� The em�phasis on constraints of country power has meant that gender inequality has been seen as falling under development policy rather than every bit role of the state'south affirmative man rights obliga�tions.�
Understanding of the responsibleness of nonstate actors has, however, been evolving in recent years, and this has and will have a bearing on this individual/public sphere contend.� (See Module 9 for further word on this point.)
Women's rights and universality
The principle of universality—that human rights vest to all human being beings on an equal ba�sister (see Module 2)—is an extremely disquisitional, and sometimes hotly contested, concept within the struggle for women's human rights.� Many customary practices, traditions and religious beliefs relegate women to a secondary condition and sometimes even deny adult women their legal majority.� Nigh women define themselves, both every bit individuals and equally members of communities, in terms of cultural factors that are inextricably linked to the social and eco�nomic aspects of their lives.� In a world where conflicts based on differences and identities are rampant, the result of cultural rights remains 1 of the virtually controversial and divisive.� This makes the consideration of cultural rights from a women's rights perspective very problematic.� The Women's Convention reflects a articulate awareness of this dilemma; in article v(a) information technology calls on states parties to the Convention
to modify the social and cultural patterns of conduct of men and women, with a view to achieving the emptying of prejudices and customary and all other practices which are based on the thought of the inferiority or the superiority of either of the sexes or on stereotyped roles for men and women.
While respect for diversity and for diverse forms of social and cultural expression and identity must guide adherence to human rights princi�ples, women's rights activists argue for transformation of these practices and beliefs on the basis of recogni�tion of the nobility and worth of women as full homo beings.� Women's human rights groups, while organizing cantankerous-culturally, remain sensitive to the needs and de�sires of every region of the globe.� This sensitivity is a challenge for human rights activists in general and those involved in ESC rights activ�ism in detail.� Ar�ticulating and advocating for ESC rights requires a process that respects multifariousness as well as consensus.� (Run across Module 17 for a more in-depth discussion of cultural rights.)
"Tradition" and Women's Rights
The extreme extent to which culture and tradition tin be used by those supporting patriarchical interests came to lite in the Land of Uttar Pradesh in Republic of india. A women's group, Vanangana, rescued an 11-year erstwhile girl who was being abused by her father. The organization helped the kid and her female parent seek protection and also took legal action against the male parent. The accused and his supporters in plow filed several false charges against, and published pamphlets attacking, the members of the women's organization. They charged that the system was destroying the institution of the family and attacking Indian civilisation.9
Women'south rights and the indivisibility of man rights
The experiences of women all over the earth point to the impossibility of their enjoying their ESC rights as a result of situations where their freedom and autonomy are constrained.�� For instance, the capacity of a woman worker to enjoy to the full her freedom to work, to receive equal pay, to organize or to be an active member in a workers' organization is restricted by the prescription of a conspicuously divers role for her within the family and the community.�� And so�cial expectations that she fulfill her office as wife, housewife and female parent combine with cultural sanctions that impose restrictions on her mobility and on her ability to interact on equal terms with male colleagues in public spaces.� Together these create a situation in which a woman worker'southward capacity to become a leader in the workers' movement is severely hampered.� Thus, a focus on the indivisibility of human rights is a critical part of women's activism.
Empowering Women
The Handpump Mechanics of Banda
The handpump mechanics projection in Banda in the Land of Uttar Pradesh in India is an example of empowering women through ensuring access to ESC entitlements. It is one of the most astern districts in the Country, known for its high degree of violence, including violence against women. The project was responding to the problem of h2o scarcity in the region. It began with teaching not-literate rural women to larn the skills of repairing handpumps. Acquiring a technical skill in a traditionally male domain was both a psychological and social breakthrough.
In becoming handpump mechanics, they had congenital confidence in their ability to learn, broken stereotypes, and entered into a spiral of learning. Of the 45 women mechanics, Sumitra (35) and Chamela (36) were probably the near technically competent. The cheeky laughter, scepticism and even hostility they had beginning encountered from the customs as they performed their new part, had grudgingly turned into respect. They had gradually become trainers as well. Travelling to different parts of the land as trainers had given them a wider exposure than almost women in their villages. These experiences were testimonies of changes in their lives. Change for them was non just a afar possibility, merely a concrete reality.
The women mechanics' date with the effect of water necessitated a move from literacy towards teaching. They had many questions for which they wanted answers. For instance, while dealing with acute water shortage in summer, they wanted to understand why the depth of hole-and-corner h2o varies in different areas or during different seasons in the year. Also, they became increasingly aware of quality of drinking water and health. They wanted more information on these inter-linkages.10
Violence confronting women as a human rights violation
The phenomenon of violence against women cannot be ignored if human rights are to be ex�amined from a gender perspective.� The post-obit is a summary from the Preliminary Written report by the Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women, which provides a useful perspective on the discipline.
Violence against women, in particular, has inhibited women as a group from enjoying the total benefits of human rights.� Women have been vulnerable to acts of violence in the family, in the customs and past States . . .
Women are vulnerable to violence because of their female sexuality (resulting in, in�ter alia, rape and female genital mutilation); considering they are related to a man (practice�mestic violence, dowry deaths, sati) or because they vest to a social grouping, where violence confronting women becomes a means of humiliation directed at the group (rape in times of armed conflict or ethnic strife).� Women are subject to violence in the family (battering, sexual corruption of female person children, dowry related violence, incest, impecuniousness of food, marital rape, female person genital mutilation), to violence in the com�munity (rape, sexual corruption, sexual harassment, trafficking in women, forced prostitu�tion) and violence by the State (women in detention and rape during times of armed conflict).�
Amidst the historical ability relations responsible for violence against women are the economic and social forces which exploit female person labour and the female person body.� Eco�nomically disadvantaged women are more vulnerable to sexual harassment, traffick�ing and sexual slavery.� They are also employed equally bonded labour and depression-paid la�bour in many economic enterprises throughout the world.� Equally migrant workers, they often face innumerable hardships in foreign countries.� Economical exploitation is an important aspect of modern female person labour.� In improver, a study of 90 societies in relation to wife beating found that economical equality was a key gene which pre�vented violence against women.� Denying women economic power and economic in�dependence is a major cause of violence against women because it prolongs their vul�nerability and dependence.� Unless economical relations in a lodge are more equitable towards women, the problem of violence against women will go on.��
In the context of the historical power relations between men and women, women must too confront the problem that men control the noesis systems of the world.� Whether it exist in the field of science, culture, religion or linguistic communication, men control the ac�companying discourse.� Women have been excluded from the enterprise of creating symbolic systems or interpreting historical feel.� It is this lack of command over noesis systems which allows them not only to be victims of violence, but to exist part of a discourse which frequently legitimizes or trivializes violence against women.� The ability to minimize women'south feel of violence ensures that no remedial action is taken by either States or individuals.� Office of the campaign to eliminate violence confronting women must be to challenge the systems of knowledge and the soapbox of individuals which trivialize women'south experience of violence.� Women are also denied admission to knowledge because they are refused educational activity in many parts of the world.� The right to female education must therefore be the beginning stride towards articulating a more sensitive history of violence against women.�
In improver to historical power relations, the causes of violence against women are also closely linked to the question of female sexuality.� Violence is ofttimes used as an musical instrument to control female sexual behaviour.� It is for this reason that violence against women often finds sexual expression.� Rape, sexual harassment, trafficking, female genital mutilation, all involve forms of violence which are an assault on fe�male sexuality.
Likewise history and sexuality, the prevalence of ideologies which justify the subordi�nate position of women is some other cause of violence directed against women.� In many ideologies a traditional legitimacy is given to using violence confronting women in certain instances.� In both the adult and the developing globe, there accept been cultural sanctions in the past for husbands chastising or beating their wives in certain circumstances.� These sanctions have been included in constabulary codes in different cultural heritages . . .
The consequences of violence directed against women are hard to ascertain be�crusade the crimes are oft invisible and there is very little data on the subject.� How�ever, information technology is very clear that fearfulness is possibly the greatest consequence.� Fearfulness of violence prevents many women from living independent lives.� Fear curtails their movements, and then that women in many parts of the world do not venture out alone.� Fear requires that they dress in a mode that is "unprovocative" so that no one can say that "they asked for it" if they are violently assaulted.� Fear of violence requires that they seek out male protection to forbid violence being directed at them.� This protection can result in a situation of vulnerability and dependence which is not conducive to women'due south empowerment.� Women's potential remains unrealized and energies which could exist directed towards the amelioration of society are oftentimes stifled.
In certain cultural contexts, peculiarly those in which female genital mutilation is practised, a woman is denied her existence equally a sexual being with needs and expecta�tions.� This denial of female sexuality through the mutilation of the body has to be seen as a violation of a fundamental human correct.
Women who are at the receiving end of violence accept serious health problems.� In re�cent times, studies have been conducted on the harmful physical and emotional im�pact of violence confronting women, such as on the harmful effects of female person genital mu�tilation on the health of women.� Other forms of abuse likewise result in physical injury to the body of the victim.� In add-on there are psychological effects.� Abused women are subjected to low and personality disorders.� They manifest high levels of anxiety and somatic disorders.� These psychological effects take a negative effect on the women as they paralyse them and inhibit their self-determination.
Violence in the family unit, in detail, has serious consequences for both women and children.� Children frequently bear witness signs of post-trauma stress and have behavioural and emotional disorders . . .
In terms of development, violence prevents women from participating fully in the life of the family and the customs and in society.� Energies which might be directed towards social good and development are curtailed.� Women's potential and their contribution towards development and growth is an important aspect of the develop�ment procedure.� Violence against women prevents women as well as society from re�alizing their full potential.
The price to society in terms of violence against women is phenomenal.� Much of the price is hidden since statistics on this issue are rare.� The material toll of the conse�quences of violence is superseded past the more intangible costs relating to the quality of life, the suppression of man rights and the denial of women'south potential to par�ticipate fully in their lodge.11
Women's Rights—Norms and Standards
The principle of nondiscrimination is a cornerstone of human rights principles.� Discrimina�tion based on sex is amidst the forms of discrimination prohibited.� This prohibition is en�shrined in the Universal of Declaration of Man Rights.� The commitment to nondiscrimi�nation was conspicuously reiterated by the international community in common article 2 of the 2 International Covenants—on Civil and Political Rights and on Economical, Social and Cultural Rights.
The Un declared 1975 the International Year of the Adult female, with the first Earth Con�ference on Women being held in Mexico.� The year was extended to a decade, with conferences in Copenhagen (1980) and in Nairobi (1985).� The Fourth Earth Con�ference on Women was held in China in 1995.� The NGO Forum for the Beijing briefing was attended by tens of thousands of women from all over the world.� The Platform for Action of the Beijing conference identified the hu�man rights of women as a disquisitional area of business organization.� Most of the other areas take a directly bearing on eco�nomic and social rights—poverty, educational activity and training, health, the economic system, power and decision-mak�ing, the media and the environment.�
Women'due south concerns were also cen�trally featured at the World Conference on Environment (Rio de Janeiro, 1992), on Human being Rights (Vienna, 1993), on Population and Evolution (Cairo, 1994) and at the World Summit on Social Development (Copenhagen, 1995).���
There are at nowadays two Un conventions that are women-specific: the Convention on the Political Rights of Women (1954)12 and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Dis�crimination confronting Women (1979) (the Women'due south Convention).13� In November 1999, the UN General Associates adopted an Optional Protocol to the Women's Convention, which will en�able private women to bring their complaints about noncompliance with the Convention to the attention of the Convention's monitoring committee, the Commission on the Emptying of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW).� The Optional Protocol volition come into force when it is rati�fied by ten countries.
Convention on the Emptying of All Forms of Bigotry confronting Women
The United nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women is all-time described as an international bill of rights for women every bit it sets out in particular both what is to be regarded as discrimination against women and the measures that have to be taken in gild to eliminate this bigotry.� Women's rights are conceptualized as human being rights and a "nondiscrimination" model is adopted, and then that women's rights are considered violated if women are denied the same rights every bit men.
The Women'south Convention defines discrimination every bit: "any distinction, exclusion or restriction made on the basis of sexual activity which has the effect or purpose of impairing or nullifying the rec�ognition, enjoyment or exercise by women, irrespective of their marital status, on a footing of equality of men and women, of human rights and key freedoms in the political, eco�nomic, social, cultural or any other field."
Thus, the Women's Convention defines discrimination against women broadly.� The ele�ments of the definition are:
- Whatsoever distinction, exclusion or brake made on the basis of sex is discrimination.
- The Convention covers both the effect and the purpose of such distinction, exclusion or restriction based on sexual practice that hampers the enjoyment by women of their man rights.
- It covers discrimination in political, economic, social, cultural, ceremonious or whatsoever other field.
- It covers discrimination in public and private ("or any other") deportment.
- Information technology prohibits intentional or unintentional discrimination.
- The rights enshrined in the Women's Convention apply to all women irrespective of their marital status.
The Women's Convention is the Un treaty that most conspicuously brings together civil and politi�cal rights with ESC rights.� In addition, since its inception, the committee (CEDAW) estab�lished under the Convention has issued a number of General Recommendations (GR) that elaborate on the articles of the Convention.� Among the virtually disquisitional have been: GR 12 and 19 on violence (1989 and 1992); GR thirteen on equal remuneration for piece of work of equal value (1989); GR fourteen on female person circumcision (1990); GR xv on unpaid women workers in rural and urban family enterprises (1991); GR 21 on equality in marriage and family relations (1994); and a new GR on health (1999). (See the pages that follow this module for excerpts of certain GRs).
Substantive equality
The Convention promotes a model of substantive equality.� The concept of equality has traditionally been problematic, because the term "equality for women" is conven�tionally understood to hateful "the right to be equal to men."� The fact is that women face gross inequalities in relation to employment opportunities, wages, access to and enjoyment of health, rights within the family, citizenship, etc.� Remedying these ine�qualities has been interpreted to mean that women should have the same rights as men.� Problems arise, however, if women must be treated exactly like men if they are to gain equality with men.� The "right to be equal to men" obscures the fact that women are dissimilar from men.�
The substantive model of equality that the Convention promotes adopts a corrective approach, one which recognizes deviation.� In particular, the Convention recognizes that the function of child begetting is one exclusive to women and argues that that function cannot exist used as a ground for discrimination against women.�
The Convention presumes that women are in an unequal position because they face electric current discrimination or behave the effects of past discrimination, and that the envi�ronment in the family and in the public sphere is hostile to women's autonomy.� This approach assesses specific provisions or rules to determine whether the latter contrib�ute to women's subordination in the curt or long term, whether they build on exist�ing subordination (thereby reinforcing it) or help to overcome it.
Furthermore, the corrective arroyo requires that socially constructed differences, such every bit the traditional roles ascribed to women and men, as well as cultural practices that see women every bit junior, must be inverse.�
The substantive model of equality is concerned with equal opportunity, but fifty-fifty more than and then, with equality of results.� It stresses equal treatment also as equal admission and equal benefits.� It recognizes that women and men may have to be treated differently in lodge for them to do good equally.� This may accept the form of providing enabling conditions and/or affirmative action. fourteen
Standards on the Elimination of All Forms of Violence against Women
The CEDAW'south Full general Recommendation 19 deals entirely with the question of violence confronting women.� The committee stated that "gender-based violence is a form of discrimina�tion that seriously inhibits women's ability to enjoy rights and freedoms on a basis of equal�ity with men," and concluded that the definition of "discrimination against women" in article i of the Women'southward Convention includes gender-based violence.� Such violence may violate specific provisions of the Convention regardless of whether violence is mentioned in those specific provisions.� The committee defined gender-based violence as "violence that is directed against a woman considering she is a woman or that affects women disproportionately.� It includes acts that inflict concrete, mental or sexual harm or suffering, threats of such acts, coercion and other deprivations of freedom."
A Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of Violence against Women was adopted in 1994 past the UN General Associates.� Based on the Annunciation, the Un Commission on Hu�man Rights appointed a Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women, Its Causes and Consequences.� The Rapporteur submits annual reports to the Commission.� The economic, social and cultural causes of women's vulnerability to violence also equally the economic and social consequences of women existence exposed to violence within the family, the community and in public life form cardinal components of the Rapporteur's investigations.
Civilisation and Women'southward Rights
Female Genital Mutilation
Most communities have their own rituals, which are practiced to respond to or accomplish certain social needs and goals, such as protection or purification. Some of these rituals and rites are linked to specific age phases. Female genital mutilation is a widespread ritual, which is likewise known equally a "rite of passage." Information technology is usually practiced when young girls are inbound womanhood. Information technology is a way of restructuring women's bodies, every bit a symbol, to adapt to the prevailing social norms, values and traditions with regard to women's sexuality.
Such rituals usually interact with other elements of the specific culture, such every bit religion, which confers sanctity and sacredness on the ritual, and then that, in the long term, the boundary between what is religious and what is ritual becomes vague. The ritual becomes transformed into an essential component of the cultural identity of the communities practicing it.
Female circumcision/genital mutilation is not mentioned in the holy books of the Bible or the Qur'an, and however information technology is proficient among some of the followers of these books every bit if it were ordained by them. For example, some religious leaders in Arab republic of egypt support FC/FGM as condoned by Islamic teachings, although the overwhelming majority of both Arab and Moslem countries do not do FC/FGM, and many Moslem scholars in Arab republic of egypt condemn the practice as confronting Islamic teachings. Studies in Arab republic of egypt take highlighted the fact that FC/FGM is practiced by Moslems and Christians akin. The primary reason given for the do is: "It is our tradition."
Struggles to cease the practice have gone on through the past few decades, for the nearly role with no tangible success. However, in the 1990s efforts accept made increasing inroads in many countries. One main change in the campaigns confronting FC/FGM was the shift in advocacy from a wellness framework to a human rights framework, thanks to the involvement of feminist and human rights activists. The health framework emphasized the hazardous health effects of FC/FGM, which channeled most efforts into improving the practice to decrease pain, bleeding and infection. Thus health workers were increasingly doing the cutting in individual and public health facilities using sterile instruments and anesthetics; these changes in many cases entrenched the practice and led to its medicalization. The homo rights framework, on the other hand, presented the practice equally a violation of many of women'due south homo rights, regardless of who does it, where it is adept, and whether or not complications arise from it.
In prior decades many UN bodies refrained from open up condemnation of the practice, because of the "cultural specificity" argument, focusing on the health consequences of the practice. Yet, post-obit the Vienna Briefing on Man Rights in 1993 and the international proclamation on violence against women, Un bodies such every bit WHO and UNICEF came out with a firm position against FC/FGM every bit a violation of women's rights. 15
In 1995, a new, regional convention entitled the Inter-American Convention on the Preven�tion, Punishment and Eradication of Violence confronting Women came into strength.� The Inter-American Committee on Human Rights may investigate cases brought under the Conven�tion.� A new Women's Commission is authorized to receive complaints and resolve them in cooperation with the Inter-American Commission.� Any person or group of people or NGOs from a state party to the Convention may petition the Inter-American Committee.� Persons belonging to countries that have not ratified the Convention may arroyo the Women's Commission for relief.
ILO Conventions and Other Standards
In addition, the International Labour Organization has adopted a series of conventions re�garding women'due south employment; subjects include maternity benefits, equal pay and equal treatment.� The Globe Health System, the Un Fund for Population Activities and UN/AIDS accept over the years developed a series of policy guidelines regarding women'south wellness that increasingly focus on issues of reproductive and sexual rights.� UNESCO has sev�eral documents that focus on women'south rights to education and training.
Decision—Challenges and Opportunities
Promoting and protecting the ESC rights of women provides a unique opportunity to link with strategies for defense force of civil and political rights.� It also challenges many existing as�sumptions regarding women's role in society and can pb to substantive changes in the une�qual power relations between men and women.
One strategic surface area of work for the promotion of women'southward economic and social rights is that of building alliances betwixt women'due south rights groups and human being rights groups.� In add-on, it is of import to support linkages between women's groups and other social movements that piece of work in the area of economic and social justice.� Trade unions, farmers' organizations, groups working for media and cultural freedom, environmental rights groups, groups piece of work�ing for the rights of minority and indigenous communities should become natural allies in this work.� Bringing a gender-sensitive arroyo to the work of these diverse groups, how�ever, remains a major challenge.
Developing conceptual bridges between forms of gender-based discrimination and other forms of discrimination based on differences such as race, ethnicity, language, faith, age and sexual preference would also be of strategic importance for linking non but our nether�standing of the issues but also our activism across sectors and across national and regional borders.
Writer: This module is based on a paper prepared by Sunila Abeyesekera following the Phi Phi Island workshop, which was modified to incorporate comments made by the participants at the Yogyakarta workshop.
USING MODULE 4 IN A Training Plan
NOTES
1. Lincoln Kaye, "To Bear any Burden: Asia's Women Pay a Unduly High Toll for the Region'south Economic Smash." Far Eastern Economic Review 158 (1997): 42-3.
two. UNDP Human Evolution Report 1993, 25, quoted in International Human Rights in Context: Law, Politics and Morals by Henry J. Steiner and Philip Alston, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), 894.
three. United nations Development Programme, Man Development Study 1995 (New York: Oxford University Printing, 1995), 1.
�iv.� Taken from Study of a Workshop on Integrating Women's Rights in Human Rights Activism (Bangkok: Asian Forum for Human Rights and Development, 1998), eight.
�5.� Taken from Republic of zimbabwe: Urgent Action Alert, from Sisterhood Is Global website: www.sigi.org/Alarm/zimb0699.htm
6. Taken from T.K. Sundari Ravindran, "Engendering Health," seminar (New Delhi, 2000) (forthcoming).
seven. Charlotte Bunch, "Transforming Human being Rights from a Feminist Perspective," in Women's Rights, Human Rights: International Feminist Perspectives, eds. J.S. Peters and Andrea Wolper (New York: Routledge, 1995), eleven-17.
�eight.� Katarina Tomasevski, Women and Human Rights (London: Zed Books, 1993), 1-4.
�9.� ����� Narrated by Huma Khan, fellow member of Vanangana, February 2000.
ten. Windows to the World: Developing a Curriculum for Rural Women (New Delhi: NIRANTAR, 1997), iii-6.
xi. Commission on Human being Rights, Preliminary Report past the United nations Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women, Ms. Radika Coomaraswamy, United nations Doc. East/CN.4/1995/42 (1995), 20-21.
12. Convention on the Political Rights of Women, opened for signature 31 Mar. 1953, entered into force 7 July 1954, 193 UNTS 135.
13. Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Bigotry confronting Women, adopted 18 Dec. 1979, GA Res. 34/180, 34 Un GAOR Supp. (No. 46), UN Medico. A/34/46 (1980), 1249 UNTS 13, entered into strength iii Sept. 1981, reprinted in xix ILM 33 (1980).
14. This section on substantive equality is taken from IWRAW Asia Pacific typhoon training fabric, 1997.
15.� Adjusted by Amal Abd El Hadi from "No Retreat: The Experience of an Egyptian Village" (Cairo: Cairo Constitute for Man Rights Studies, 1998).
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