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Systematic violations of women’s rights indicate that human rights all too often fail to deliver on their stated moral objectives
This question will disturb many women’s rights activists as human rights appear to provide a compelling moral authority to women’s groups everywhere.
In fact, most activists draw heavily upon human rights in their continuing struggle against women’s discrimination and inequality.
The human rights-based approach includes a raft of international legal instruments, at the heart of which is the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), ratified by 189 UN member states.
Given all of this, few would consider even questioning the relationship between human rights and the rights of women.
It is, however, precisely a profound concern for the lives of so many women and girls which compels re-evaluating the predominant global approach to gender inequality.
While a robust international legal framework has been established, women and girls continue to suffer systematic discrimination, oppression, and worse.
More than 200 million girls and women alive today have undergone female genital mutilation.
Over 700 million women alive today were married before the age of 18.
It is estimated that 35 percent of women worldwide are victims of domestic abuse.
Sex selective abortion results in some 100 million ‘missing’ girls, a phenomenon which has been labelled as gendercide.
According to a World Economic Forum 2016 report, it will take 170 years to eliminate the global gender pay gap.
Finally, the so-called leader of the so-called free world has dismissed his boasting about sexual harassment as mere “locker room talk”.
Given all of this pathology (and many more depressing statistics and examples have been omitted), it would be morally irresponsible not to question whether the human rights-based approach is effective.
Some feminists have questioned the effectiveness of human rights. While many issues have been raised, three concerns are particularly important and relevant.
First, the distinctly legal character of human rights. Second, the potential for rights to religion and culture to reinforce gender inequality, and finally, the individualistic philosophical grounding of human rights.