The Politics of Oppression and Action

Abstract

The problems of women will not become visible if they are not sustained over time on local and national agendas. But women’s issues will continue to be fragmented as individual, local, and single issues if an international human rights perspective is not added to the political agenda. Separation of local and global politics on behalf of women is possible only in a geographical sense. In large measure, the essence of the political agenda is astonishingly similar; only the details differ with the locality. Agenda setting is the means by which issues are selected and adopted for governmental consideration and solution.

Women’s rights, men’s rights — human rights — all are threatened by the ever-present spectre of war so destructive now of human material and moral values as to render victory indistinguishable from defeat.

Rosika Schwimmer, Speech, Centennial Celebration of Seneca Falls Convention of Women’s Rights, 1948