Women's Rights: Small Guides to Big Issues (Smalll Guide to Big Issues) - Hardcover

Terry, Geraldine

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0745323499 ISBN 13: 9780745323497

Verlag: PLUTO PR, 2007

Inhaltsangabe

All over the world, women and girls are being denied their social, economic, political and civil rights. The aim of this book is to expose this systematic discrimination wherever it occurs – in education, access to public services, in reaping benefits from trade, and elsewhere. The book also explores violence against women and looks at how the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Africa is linked to the denial of women’s rights. Geraldine Terry looks at positive examples of women acting to transform inequalities and oppression by asserting their rights. Terry argues that promoting women’s rights is not only a moral issue but also a very effective way to pursue poverty reduction goals worldwide.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorinnen und Autoren

Elaine C. Hagopian is Professor Emerita of Sociology, Simmons College, Boston.

Geraldine Terry is a social development consultant specialising in gender issues. She has worked for Oxfam, and various other non-governmental organisations, and currently works on development aid projects funded by the British government's Department For International Development and the European Union. She has a wide experience of working with women in developing countries.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Women's Rights

By Geraldine Terry

Pluto Press

Copyright © 2007 Geraldine Terry
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-7453-2349-7

Contents

Series preface, vi, 
Acknowledgements, viii, 
List of boxes, ix, 
List of abbreviations, xii, 
1. Interconnections, 1, 
2. Women's human rights: a closer look, 24, 
3. The threat of cultural relativism, 41, 
4. 'Not a fax from heaven', 51, 
5. The podium and the polling booth, 64, 
6. Women's economic rights in a globalising world, 81, 
7. 'Sowing a seed': the right to education, 101, 
8. The violence against women pandemic, 121, 
9. Women's rights abuses help to spread HIV/AIDS, 137, 
10. The future is already happening, 152, 
Resources, 163, 
Notes, 176, 
Bibliography, 190, 
Index, 192, 

CHAPTER 1

Interconnections

This book is about the interlocked issues of women's human rights, world poverty and international development. There are different ways of looking at poverty but, however it is defined, it is generally accepted that the majority of poor people across the world are women. Discrimination against women drastically limits their life-chances, and is a brake on development in the global South. Changing this status quo should be at the heart of the development process, and this means helping women to exercise their rights.

There is a connection between the facts and figures in Box 1.1 and the story of Seema and Sukarmani in Box 1.2; women's human rights. Every one of the statistics in Box 1.1 represents denials and violations of women's human rights on a massive scale. This is because women have rights in all these areas, written down in the form of international human rights agreements and, in many countries, domestic legislation. When I first came across the story of these two young women, it struck me that their defiance illustrates what development should be about: poor, marginalised women feeling strong enough, despite multiple disadvantages, to use their rights as a weapon to defeat social injustice together.

Women's rights: a key to development

Discrimination against women, whether direct or indirect, is one of the most destructive forces in the world today. It causes vast poverty and suffering and is a major brake on development. In this short book, I will try to show how the scandal of mass poverty and many of today's most pressing issues, such as the HIV/AIDS pandemic, are bound up with the denial and abuse of women's human rights. The focus will be on the global South rather than the world's high and middle-income countries; by global South I mean the world's low-income countries. This does not mean to imply that women in affluent parts of the world, which I refer to as the global North, are free from discrimination, but that is not what this book is about. Neither do I want to lump together all women in the global South and imply they are all poor. All women encounter discrimination on the grounds of their sex, but there are a lot of other factors, such as their class, race, ethnic group, age, caste, sexual orientation and so on, that combine to shape their particular experience, and they may be privileged in other ways. So the focus is specifically on poor women in the global South.

In this chapter, I will outline how thinking on poverty and development has changed over the last few decades. The most progressive development-aid organisations now support poor women's empowerment, rather than just addressing the material dimensions of their poverty. At the same time, organisations like Oxfam now focus on poor people's rights when they work on eliminating poverty. Chapter 2 briefly charts the development of women's human rights, in the shape of international treaties and agreements. It also gives some examples of how feminist activists in the global South have been able to use this international legislation, and the ideas that inspire it, as tools in their work for justice. Chapters 3 and 4 look at two explicit challenges to the foundational principle that human rights are universal and apply to all women alike: so-called 'cultural relativism', and the rise of fundamentalisms. Chapters 5-9 cover different areas of women's human rights and how their rights are being denied or abused. Chapter 5 is about women's right to take part in politics, Chapter 6 looks at women's economic rights in relation to today's trade system, Chapter 7 is about girls' and women's right to a meaningful and empowering education, Chapter 8 looks at the pandemic of violence against women, and Chapter 9 outlines how this is helping HIV/AIDS to proliferate, with particular reference to sub-Saharan Africa. In Chapter 10, I talk to specialists about two phenomena that are likely to have a huge impact on women's human rights in the coming decades: the development of new technologies that, among other things, are redefining how human beings are created, and climate change, which is already a clear and present danger for many poor women in the global South. Apart from Chapter 10, all the chapters end with one or more examples of interesting, often cutting-edge, development work or activism that in some way supports women exercising their rights in relation to the chapter theme.

Women's poverty: a marginal issue?

What do official pronouncements on world poverty have to say about discrimination against women in the global South? Let's look at the British government. Prime Minister Tony Blair and Chancellor Gordon Brown have both publicly declared their commitment to ending world poverty, and have led some very good initiatives. Gordon Brown launched a crusade to end world poverty in 2005, with a powerful speech in which he called for increased development aid, fairer trade policies and debt relief; it signalled a welcome attack on the hypocrisy of many Northern governments and institutions. But he made only one glancing reference to the overwhelming discrimination against which women struggle in the global South, as in many other parts of the world. There was also a complete absence of any such reference in the communiqué on 'Africa, Climate Change, Energy and Sustainable Development' that issued from the G8 summit at Gleneagles later that year, while another important official document, the first report of Prime Minister Tony Blair's Commission for Africa, paid the perfunctory lip service that is all too common in official statements about world poverty (Box 1.3).

At the global level, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are the latest development policy initiative from the United Nations (UN) (see Box 1.4). They have been cautiously welcomed by many anti-poverty campaigners, who see them as concrete commitments that can easily be monitored. Others, like Caribbean activist Peggy Antrobus, are more sceptical; she says MDGs should really stand for 'Most Distracting Gimmick'. So, what do the goals have to say about discrimination against women? Two of them, MDGs 3 and 5, specifically concern women.

MDG3 is to 'promote gender equality and empower women', which sounds very promising. But because it is so wide and ambitious, the UN decided to aim for a narrower 'target' within MDG3: 'Eliminating gender disparity in primary and secondary education preferably by 2005 and in all levels of education no later than 2015'. The choice of this particular target has been questioned by many activists. While the huge educational gender gap in sub-Saharan Africa and parts of South Asia is indeed a critical issue, there is a lot more to women's poverty and subordination than not going to school. Cynics...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: PLUTO PR
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2007
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0745323499
• ISBN 13: 9780745323497
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 201
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar