Editorial
| Date | 01 December 1995 |
| DOI | 10.1177/016934419501300401 |
| Published date | 01 December 1995 |
| Subject Matter | Editorial |
Editorial
Human Rights Have Always Been Women's Rights
From its beginnings in the late 1960s, the international feminist movement has swept the
world, drawing women from all corners of the earth into its embrace. And it is indeed an
embrace: feminists at international conferences express unbounded compassion for each
other, holding each other literally as well as figuratively in a manner difficult for men to
emulate.
Despite feminism's wide embrace, it has taken some time for the international human
rights establishment to incorporate specific feminist concerns into its agenda. The Beijing
Conference pushes forward the inroads the feminist movement has made into the human
rights arena over the last five years, especially at Vienna in 1993. No longer can male
interpreters
of
human rights claim that their particular cultures permit discriminatory
actions against women: such assertions are now greeted with derision. At Vienna, the
international human rights establishment at last took note that violence against women is
not merely a private crime: it is a universal, systemic characteristic
of
patriarchy, the rule
of
men over women. And at Beijing, however moderate and ambiguous the language in
which it is couched, the United Nations has begun to recognize that women have both
reproductive and sexual rights, that women's bodies are not possessions to be controlled
by patriarchs or by the State.
On the other hand, it is unfortunate that some feminists are now in the habits
of
claiming that until these very recent events, human rights had little relevance to women.
Hilary Charlesworth, for example, claims that 'the definition and development
of
the three
generations
of
rights
have
much in common: they are built on typically male life
experiences and in their current form do not respond to the most pressing risks women
face'. This is an essentialist view of women.
It
reduces adult females to their gender roles
- in relationships with men, in the family - and ignores the many other pressing risks that
women, like men, face.
There are multiple ways that women, like men, suffer human rights violations. Women
as well as men starved and died in the Soviet Gulag, usually for reasons entirely
unconnected to their sex. Female as well as male Jews and Gypsies were murdered during
World War II: they were murdered because of their 'race', not their sex. Female Tutsis
and Hutus were slaughtered in Rwanda in 1994 because of their ethnic affiliation or their
disagreements with the ruling clique, not because of their sex. Female as well as male
Tibetans, Mayans, Bosnians and countless others suffer violations
of
their human rights
today for reasons to do with ethnicity and politics, not gender relations.
And women are more than a compilation of their various identities, whether gender,
ethnicity or religion. Women, like men, are actors in community and society. First
generation human rights especially protect women in their economic and political roles.
There is a long and honourable tradition of female worker activism: like their brothers in
the movement, women need the protections that international law provides to trade unions.
Women are also in desperate need of first-generation civil and political rights. They suffer
just as much when they are locked up and beaten because of their politics as they do when
they are locked up and beaten by jealous, patriarchal men.
Nor is this non-essentialist view applicable only to women's lives in the Western
world. Politically active women in the non-Western world are far more likely to die
of
torture than their politically active sisters in the West; first generation civil and political
rights provide the immediate protections they need so that they can go about their business
365
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