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Chapter III: Women’s rights as International Norms
The following chapter is dedicated to the introduction of women’s rights as international norms.
It will first discuss the emergence of the norms and the role played by women’s rights transnational organizations between the end of the 19th century until the end of the Second World War. Then, it will explore how women’s rights were integrated into the United Nations’
framework. Finally, it will discuss the major obstacles encountered by transnational feminist advocacy groups.
3.1. Emergence and First Waves of Transnational Mobilization
Women’s rights started emerged and spread as international norms during the final decade of the 19th century, with the apparition of the first transnational women organizations.
During this period were created, for instance, the International Council of Women, the International Alliance of Women, and the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, which compose the first wave of feminist activists (Tripp 2006). All of them sought to generate an international social movement by conducting joint activities in different countries and creating local chapters or networks (Taylor and Rupp 2002). By the end of the First World War, women’s rights activists were active all around the world, organized in INGOs, transnational advocacy networks, and transnational coalitions (Tripp 2006).
During this period, feminist organizations were mainly focusing on obtaining civil and political rights such as the right to vote, the right to employment, or the right to obtain the husband’s nationality (Taylor and Rupp 2002, Tripp 2006). These movements were also advocating for peace before the two World Wars (Taylor and Rupp 2002, Tripp 2006). From the point of view of IR, these organizations also tried to include women’s rights on the agenda of the League of Nations through advocacy actions (Taylor and Rupp 2002, Tripp 2006). From the
Feminists’ efforts paid off after the First World War, as women obtained the right to vote in most countries. After having emerged and then cascaded, the norm was at the final stage of its socialization process. However, transnational feminists organizations continued to push forward and began to advocate for a better representation of women in politics, equality of chances, and against gender-based discrimination in the workplace (Paxton and al. 2006). This period also corresponds to the second wave of transnational mobilization, during which feminist
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organizations, started to be more grassroots and more independent from Western ideologies (Tripp 2006).
Women’s rights activists also continued to actively participate in international debates to make sure that their cause stays on the agenda of the United Nations and other IGOs. For instance, they worked to ensure the inclusion of the term “equal rights of men and women” in the 1945 United Nations Charter (Paxton and al. 2006). Therefore, women’s rights were progressively adopted and advocated by the UN in the second half of the 20th century.
3.2. Women’s rights as part of the UN Norms
The United Nations plays a central role in the ongoing spreading of women’s rights norms at the global level. The IGO organizes venues, offers space for discussion, and provides financial and logistic supports to women’s rights organizations worldwide (Snyder 2006). The UN is also a place were feminist NGOs, and INGOs can lobby governments to ensure that women’s rights stay on the international agenda (Synder 2006).
Between 1975 and 1995, the United Nations organized four World Conferences on Women (Mexico City, Mexico, 1975, Copenhagen, Denmark, 1980, Nairobi, Kenya, 1985, and Beijing, China, 1995). In the meantime, the UN established the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) in 1976 and the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) in 1979, which has been ratified by 189 countries since.9 The convention also stipulates the creation of the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, which is in charge of ensuring that parties are implementing the convention.
The number of attending NGOs the conferences doubled between 1975 and 1995, reaching 12 000 participants in Beijing.10 This increase is explained by the proliferation of grassroots organizations in developing countries and resulted in the expansion of the debate to include violence against women, women’s economic issues, women’s rights during wartime, and the conditions of women living in developing countries (Tripp 2006).
9 UN Human rights, Office of the High Commissioner, “Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women - Status of Ratification,” https://indicators.ohchr.org/
10 UN Women, “World Conferences on Women” https://www.unwomen.org/en/how-we-work/intergovernmental-support/world-conferences-on-women
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This enlargement was formally acknowledged during the 1995 UN World Conference on Women with the adoption of the “Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action,” which recognizes 12 critical areas where gender equality must be achieved:
1. Women and poverty
2. Education and training of women 3. Women and health
4. Violence against women 5. Women and armed conflict 6. Women and the economy
7. Women in power and decision-making
8. Institutional mechanism for the advancement of women 9. Human rights of women
10. Women and the media 11. Women and the environment 12. The girl-child
The parties also agreed on reviewing the implementation of the “Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action” every five years. In 1996, the UN created the UN Trust Fund to End Violence against Women. To this date, the institution has funded 462 initiatives in 139 countries and territories for a total of 128 million USD.11 In 1999, the UN General Assembly created the Optional Protocol to the CEDAW. Parties to the protocol agree to let the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women receive and consider complaints from their citizens.
In parallel, feminists activists also worked to include women’s rights into the agenda of other UN agendas such as human rights and development policies (Tripp 2006, Moghadam 2005, Friedman 2003). For instance, women’s rights organizations participated in the side events of the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, the 1993 World Conference on human rights, in Vienna, Austria, and the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development, in Cairo, Egypt (Friedman 2003). As those events generally conclude with the adoption of a political agreement like a treaty or a convention, Defenders lobbied the delegates to ensure that the final text includes some dispositions to improve the status of women. For instance, the “Agenda 21” adopted in Rio had a chapter
11 UN Women, “UN Trust Fund to End Violence against Women,”https://www.unwomen.org/en/trust-funds/un-trust-fund-to-end-violence-against-women
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entitled ‘‘Global Action for Women Towards Sustainable and Equitable Development’’
(Friedman 2003).
After 2000, the inclusion of women’s rights into the UN framework continued. In 2010, UN Women replaced the UNIFEM, in 2015 of “Gender Equality” was adopted as one of the 17 goals of the “UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.”12
In 2020, the 64th Commission on the Status of Women, which also corresponds to Beijing+25, was supposed to be a new occasion to assemble the different women’s rights movements and review the implementation of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action.
A forum, hosted in Mexico City and Paris, was also planned to gather a coalition of stakeholders from IGOs, NGOs, and the private sectors.13 Unfortunately, all the events were postponed due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Nevertheless, the fact that these events were programed testifies the fact that women’s rights continue to be part of the international agenda, that transnational feminist advocacy groups pursue their activities, and, therefore, that a norm socialization process is still ongoing.
3.3. Main Challenges to the Spreading and Institutionalization of Women’s rights
Despite the successes encountered by feminist activists, women’s rights still face internal and external challenges that slow their progression.
Internal challenges are characterized by tensions between Western women’s rights organizations and their Southern counterparts. These tensions arose during the period of the four World Conferences on Women and were emblematic of the growing divergences between Western and Southern policymakers (Eyler 2015, Tripp 2006). Feminist organizations from developing countries were especially concerned by development policies and critical of their Western correlatives, sometimes depicted as representatives of Western imperialism (Eyler 2015, Tripp 2006). In addition, in some cases, Western TANs feminist support elite of educated women, at the expense of women living in rural areas or belonging to a minority, undermining the capacity of grassroots movements (Sperling, Ferree, and Risman 2001). Finally, some tensions find their sources in the activities conducted by Western transnational advocacy
12 UN Sustainable Development Goals, “Goal 5: Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls”
https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/gender-equality/
13 Generation Equality Forum https://forum.generationequality.org/about
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women’s rights norms (Sperling, Ferree, and Risman 2001).However, this internal conflict was eventually partially resolved during the 1990s when a consensus was reached regarding the broad definition of women’s rights and their inclusions in other international norms such as environmental standards and human rights (Tripp 2006).
Nevertheless, some feminist advocacy groups continue to consider women’s rights as Western norms related to Western values and do not entirely adopt nor promote them (Zwingel 2012).
This issue also points out that the institutionalization of women’s rights norms dramatically varies from one country to another as grassroots organizations’ visions and interests differ from the ones of INGOs and transnational organizations (Zwingel 2012, Levitt and Merry 2009, Friedman 2003).
Besides, women’s rights organizations are challenged by counter-movements, especially religious groups (Chappell 2006, Friedman 2003). Because they consider that women have to fulfill predefined roles and responsibilities and are motivated by religious beliefs, these groups are opposed to a certain aspect of women’s rights, such as the right to have an abortion (Chappell 2006, Friedman 2003). For instance, Christian and Muslim organizations attended the World Conferences on Women and at the other UN events to try to stifle the voices of feminist activists (Chappell 2006, Friedman 2003). The same as women’s rights organizations enjoy the support of liberal democracies. These groups are backed by religious-based governments such as Iran or the Vatican, which both actively fought the inclusion of terms that could encourage abortion laws in political agreements (Chappell 2006).
Ultimately, feminist organizations focus on urging the authorities to either apply their own regulations in terms of women’s rights or to create new ones to fill the gaps (Levitt and Merry 2009). For example, according to the Hong Kong-based NGO China Labor Bulletin, the PRC’s laws and policies are supposed to ensure women’s access to employment, but, in reality, female job seekers are often victims of discrimination.14 Besides, the government seems to turn a blind eye on the issue. 15
Thus, another critical obstacle that women’s rights activists have to overcome is to convince their government to adopt and implement their norms.
14 China Labor Bulletin, “Workplace discrimination,” Apr. 15, 2019.
15 Ibid.
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