In This Article

Gender, the Body, and Disability Rebecca Kluchin Women at Play in Popular Culture M. Women, War, and Revolution Kate Haulman She is the author of The Ties That Buy: She is the author of For the Freedom of Her Race: Black Women and Electoral Politics in Illinois, and articles on Puerto Rican women's independence activism and African American women's internationalism. Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.

It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Academic Skip to main content. Choose your country or region Close. Not to be confused with History of feminism. Women's suffrage Muslim countries US. First Second Third Fourth. Lists Articles Feminists by nationality Literature American feminist literature Feminist comic books. The Literary Scholarship of Sandra M. Retrieved 6 October Women of ideas - and what men have done to them from Aphra Behn to Adrienne Rich.

Women's Rights: People and Perspectives - ABC-CLIO

A Retrospective from the United States". Journal of Women in Culture and Society. A Feminist View from East Berlin". Patriarchy and the Challenge of Feminism. Ecofeminism Feminist method Hegemonic masculinity Women's history Women's studies. Retrieved from " https: Feminism and history Women's history. Articles with short description. Views Read Edit View history. This page was last edited on 3 December , at By using this site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Part of a series on. Women's suffrage Muslim countries US Other women's rights.

Lists and categories Lists Articles Feminists by nationality Literature American feminist literature Feminist comic books Conservative feminisms Countries by women's average years in school Ecofeminist authors Feminist art critics Feminist economists Feminist philosophers Feminist poets Feminist rhetoricians Jewish feminists Muslim feminists Feminist parties Suffragists and suffragettes Women's rights activists Women's studies journals Women's suffrage organizations.

Women's rights by country Feminists by nationality. The political opportunity structure refers to the broader institutional context that provides opportunities for or imposes constraints on NGOs engaged in framing processes McAdam et al. While institutions and the actors comprising them are an important part of the political opportunity structure, it is not limited to them.

A number of scholars have also stressed that noninstitutional elements can present a window for activists to make their voices heard, such as, for example, symbolic events like the end of the Cold War.

Women's Rights

These are individuals and organizations that bring with them a wealth of organizing experiences, are well connected, and have vision and charisma. Furthermore, the building and extension of networks that support and lend credibility to the movement has been a critical factor as has the accumulation of expertise, both with respect to the issues promoted and to the norms and rules that prevail in the international institutions in which they were active Joachim Women have been struggling for the recognition of their rights for centuries.

The equal treatment frame is premised on the idea of equal access and opportunity. It identifies the unequal treatment between men and women to be the main source of discrimination. Compared to men, women are granted fewer human rights and opportunities.

According to equal treatment proponents, this is less a problem of international human rights law itself, which they view as authoritative, than the failure of states and nonstate actors in the past to apply and enforce these rights Reanda Disadvantages suffered by women can be redressed by a simple requirement of equal treatment.

It ignores the impact of patriarchy in the home and its interactions with capital to produce gendered organizations which systematically disadvantage women. It discounts the impact of other forms of unequal power relations, for example, those which accrue as a result of class or racial oppression and discrimination. Although the equal treatment frame might stand a better chance of being accepted by policy makers, its impact is, in the eyes of Walby, most likely to be less substantial Walby Put differently, international human rights law reflects a male view of the universe Charlesworth Proponents of this frame call, therefore, for separate conventions, institutions, and positive affirmative action.

However, it too has problems. Rather than speaking of women and men, gender is introduced to highlight the social construction of alleged differences between men and women. Injustices and inequalities exist, according to this perspective, because relations and institutions are gendered. Women are neither viewed as a monolithic group nor are men exclusively perceived as deliberate oppressors. Instead, the gender frame takes into consideration not only the ways in which class, culture, or race contributes to and compounds differences, but also that men, like women, can be dis- empowered by social arrangements.

Finally, the assumption of privacy is misleading because the family is highly political.


  1. SPINECHILLER (Paranormal Trilogy).
  2. Also Available In:.
  3. Women’s Rights as Human Rights;
  4. Leave A Comment.

The violence that occurs within the family Bunch The distinction between civil and political rights, on the one hand, and social, economic, and cultural rights, on the other hand, is equally problematic. The gender frame is transformative, calling for a just and fair distribution of resources. Gender needs to be recognized within all areas, including human rights. Like the other frames, so too has that concerning gender mainstreaming been subject to criticism e. Woodward ; Hankivsky ; Rees If no specific institution is tasked with taking gender into consideration, so the argument goes, nobody will take responsibility for it.

And understanding the relations of power and subordination endorsed by the law can suggest methods of reform that will not fall into the same trap. In the following historical section, I will show how the different frames have been interacting within the specific circumstances of different contexts, been subject to conflicts, and have either been privileged or marginalized depending on how compatible they were with other already accepted frames.

The second wave stretches from the s to the late s, with the UN Decade for Women —85 and the three World Conferences held in Mexico City in , Copenhagen in , and Nairobi in , constituting important focal points. They reflected the views of mostly upper class North American and European women comprising the international movement. International conferences organized by either women themselves or by intergovernmental organizations, such as the League of Nations and later the United Nations, provided opportunities for women to mobilize governmental support for their concerns. The convention also sparked the formation of the first international networks and organizations.

Since this was not a suffrage organization per se Stienstra These organizations were heavily Euro-American. In addition, many of the women were experienced activists and had been at the forefront of social reform movements at the national level, such as, for example, the temperance, antislavery, prostitution, and penal reform movements in the US.

First, women demanded access to intergovernmental meetings, which until then had been the exclusive realm of heads of states, foreign ministers, and diplomats, and second, through their well-prepared proposals, they placed on the international agenda what had previously been perceived as exclusively domestic issues Miller In , government delegates adopted the Convention on the Nationality of Women in Montevideo, which provided a blueprint for the international Convention on the Nationality of Married Women adopted in within the framework of the United Nations.

The campaign about equal nationality rights is interesting because it highlights the conflictual nature of framing processes.

People and Perspectives

While the first group, the so-called reformers, aimed for equal treatment only in certain areas, such as nationality rights, but special and protective legislation in all other areas, the other group, the so-called equalitarians, called for equality across the board. Quite frequently they were met with opposition, ridicule, or even outright hostility. Women were entitled to rights because of the distinct contribution they made to the welfare of their respective societies. As Nitza Berkovitch notes:.

Editorial Reviews

The campaign for suffrage was predicated on the construction of women as being essentially different from men and as having higher ethical standards and superior characteristics. If the scope of equal treatment was still contested at the outset of the nineteenth century, the frame became firmly rooted in the United Nations. According to Kaufman Hevener, they contained, for the most part, protective or corrective provisions which reflected a societal concept of women as a group which needed special treatment Kaufman Hevener This was particularly true for the conferences in Mexico City and Copenhagen, with delegates from developing countries tabling resolutions that called for a new international economic order or condemning apartheid, racism, imperialism, and Zionism and Northern governments voting against them see also Fraser The conflicts around the UN conferences and the rejection of patriarchal, governmental structures prompted some women to organize outside of intergovernmental structures.

Bringing together more than two thousand women from over forty countries and modeled after the war tribunals in Nuremberg and Tokyo, the tribunal saw participants testifying about the male violence they had suffered from and condemned all human forms of oppression as a crime against women Russell and Van de Ven ; see also Joachim Southern women had joined what had until the late s been a Northern movement.

They brought with them different concerns, including survival, the provision of basic needs, and racism Berkovitch While most of its statues had been written in nondiscriminatory language emphasizing equal treatment between men and women Kaufman Hevener In contrast to the pre- and immediate postwar years, women activists by the time of the Decade no longer referred to their reproductive capabilities or their moral superiority to justify their claims.

Instead, they began to link their concerns and demands to already accepted mainstream discourses. However, and as Zinsser points out, traditional images of women had still not entirely vanished. They demanded not only that state responsibility for human rights violations be extended from the exclusive focus on violations in the public sphere to that perpetrated by private actors in the family, but also that rather than being treated as separate, political and civil rights, on the one hand, and economic, social, and cultural rights, on the other hand, are indivisible Friedman Building upon previous achievements, the final document called for strategic action in twelve areas, including poverty on women, education, health care, violence against women, the effects of armed or other kinds of conflict on women, inequality between men and women in sharing power and decision making, access to and participation in communication systems, inequalities in the management of natural resources and safeguarding the environment, and the rights of the child.

Following the wars in Bosnia and Herzegovina, governments at the UN condemned the massive, organized, and systematic detention and rape of women in Resolution calls for the integration of women in all conflict resolution processes as well as actions for resettlement, rehabilitation, and post-conflict construction.

Feminism in Sweden

It also recommends special training for all peacekeeping personnel on the protection, special needs, and human rights of women and children in conflict situations UN Security Council Although the term gender was eventually kept, over twenty governments issued reservations with the final document Friedman The remainder of this essay, therefore, proposes four venues for future research.

The choice of the issue was no coincidence. It offered a unifying agenda for women across the globe Mertus and Goldberg However, the narrow focus on sex-based harm also raises questions.