Abstract
The time has passed for isolated, remedial action by the state. Any effective remedy to the oppression of women is at this point in history, ultimately, an international one: a remedy that reaches into the private realm (or parallel state)2 in which women are found globally and within which their particular harms are contained. The International Convention on Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), the most comprehensive treatment of women’s international human rights in existence, is comprised of 30 articles that penetrate the traditional boundary between public and private areas of life and expose for remediation harms to women that have previously been denied full definition. Yet, the United States is among the few states that have not ratified the treaty.
The full and complete development of a country, the welfare of the world and the cause of peace require the maximum participation of women on equal terms with men in all fields.1
—UN Treaty Series
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Notes
Celina Romany, “State Responsibility Goes Private: A Feminist Critique of the Public/Private Distinction in International Human Rights Law,” in Human Rights of Women: National and International Perspectives, ed. Rebecca Cook (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994).
The Bricker Amendment has been cited as the defining document with regard to U.S. Senate attitudes toward ratification of international human rights treaties. For an excellent discussion of the debate, see Natalie Hevener Kaufman and David Whiteman, “Opposition to Human Rights Treaties in the United States Senate: The Legacy of the Bricker Amendment,” Human Rights Quarterly, vol. 10, no. 3 (1988): 309–337. They write, “Our main conclusions are that proponents of the Bricker Amendment were primarily concerned with human rights treaties, that contemporary arguments against passage of human rights treaties have not changed substantially from arguments presented in the 1950’s, and that the legacy of these earlier deliberations is still apparent in the attitude of those considering the treaties now.”
United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Convention on Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, 101st Congr., 2nd Sess., August 2, 1990 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1991).
United States House of Representatives Subcommittee on Human Rights and International Organizations, International Human Rights Abuses Against Women, 101st Congr., 2nd Sess., March 21 and July 26, 1990 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1991). Neither committee has since discussed human rights abuses against women (except to recognize abuses in China) or the possibility of CEDAW ratification.
Hilary Charlesworth, “What Are ‘Women’s International Human Rights’?” in Human Rights of Women: National and International Perspectives, ed. Rebecca J. Cook (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994), pp. 58–84.
Susan James, “The Good-Enough Citizen: Female Citizenship and Independence,” in Beyond Justice and Equality: Citizenship; Feminist Politics; Female Subjectivity, eds. Gisela Bock and Susan James (New York: Routledge, 1992), p. 48.
Catharine MacKinnon, Feminism Unmodified: Discourses on Life and Law (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987).
Jane Mansbridge, Why We Lost the ERA (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986).
Jane M. Pickering, “Law and the Status of Women in the United States,” in Law and the Status of Women: An International Symposium, ed. The Columbia Human Rights Law Review (1977): 311–344.
Adriana Cavarero, “Equality and Sexual Difference: Amnesia in Political Thought,” in Beyond Equality and Difference: Citizenship, Feminist Politics, Female Subjectivity, eds. Gisela Bock and Susan James (New York: Routledge, 1992), p. 45.
Dorothy McBride Stetson, Women’s Rights in the U.S.A.: Policy Debates and Gender roles (Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks/Cole, 1991), p. 31.
C. B. MacPherson, The Life and Times of Liberal Democracy (London: Oxford University Press, 1977), 19–20.
Ava Baron, “Feminist Legal Strategies: The Powers of Difference,” in Analyzing Gender: A Handbook of Social Science Research, ed. Beth B. Hess and Myra Marx Ferree (Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1987), pp. 474–503.
David P. Forsythe, The Internationalization of Human Rights (Lexington, KY: Lexington Books, 1991, p. 135.
Belinda Clark, “The Vienna Convention Reservations Regime and the Convention on Discrimination Against Women,” The American Journal of International Law, vol. 85 (1991): 282–283. In this article, Clark reports that as of December 31, 1980, one hundred states were party to the Convention, of which forty-one had entered substantive reservations.
Laura Reanda, “UN Approach to Women’s Rights,” Human Rights Quarterly, John Hopkins University Press, vol. 3, no.1 (1981): 11–31.
John Gray, Liberalism (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986), pp. ix–xi.
Natalie K. Hevener, International Law and the Status of Women (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1983).
See also, Rebecca J. Cook, “Reservations to the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women,” Virginia Journal of International Law, vol. 30 (1990): 643–716.
Leslie Calman, “Are Women’s Rights ‘Human Rights’?” Working paper 146 (New York: Barnard College, 1987).
Jyl Josephson, Gender Families and the State: Child Support Policy in the United States (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1997).
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© 2000 Diana Zoelle
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Zoelle, D.G. (2000). The Convention on Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women. In: Globalizing Concern for Women’s Human Rights. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780312299699_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780312299699_3
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