Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Preface and acknowledgements
- Introduction: human rights and the fifty years' crisis
- I Theories of human rights
- II The practices of human wrongs
- 6 The challenge of genocide and genocidal politics in an era of globalisation
- 7 Transnational civil society
- 8 Global voices: civil society and the media in global crises
- 9 Refugees: a global human rights and security crisis
- 10 The silencing of women
- 11 Power, principles and prudence: protecting human rights in a deeply divided world
- 12 Learning beyond frontiers
- Index
10 - The silencing of women
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Preface and acknowledgements
- Introduction: human rights and the fifty years' crisis
- I Theories of human rights
- II The practices of human wrongs
- 6 The challenge of genocide and genocidal politics in an era of globalisation
- 7 Transnational civil society
- 8 Global voices: civil society and the media in global crises
- 9 Refugees: a global human rights and security crisis
- 10 The silencing of women
- 11 Power, principles and prudence: protecting human rights in a deeply divided world
- 12 Learning beyond frontiers
- Index
Summary
‘Human rights are gender neutral.’ This view dominated human rights thinking in theory, in law, in practice and in popular opinion, until the last few years, when it has been increasingly contested by feminist advocates in their writings and participation at international conferences. In fact, the belief in neutrality disguised trenchant masculine bias in the selective promotion and protection of human rights. This in turn contributed to the hierarchy between men and women, their legal capacities, and their approved behaviours.
The focal point of this chapter is the response by activists in the women's human rights movement to the built-in selectivity of the regime. The chapter charts their attempt to modify the regime in the period before the world conference in Vienna and afterwards. Given my vantage point, watching history being made from the front row, I am able to pose important general questions about the relationship between theory and practice. How has new thinking on women's human rights shaped the work of intergovernmental human rights agencies and non-governmental organisations? Specifically, the four parts of the chapter deal with key aspects of the feminist advocacy of women's human rights, drawing on illustrations of the tactics employed, surveying the changes wrought, and concluding with some thoughts on the prospects for the Universal Declaration fifty years on.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Human Rights in Global Politics , pp. 259 - 276Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1999
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