Featured Image
Why is it important?
As an early account of the first universal international law treaty binding on states to prohibit discrimination against women, CEDAW was historic. Readers familiar with the expanded architecture existing today through international law, civil society organizations and UN agencies like UN Women, and the decades of experience and jurisprudence developed in the Commission on the Status of Women and the Optional Protocol adopted will find this 1981 article gives context and a sense of how far the world's women have come -- and where progress has stalled. In the year where seven women were candidates for the position of UN Secretary-General, it is worth reviewing one of the legal landmarks for women's equality and gender equity.
Perspectives
As a participant at the Copenhagen Mid-Decade Conference on Women in 1980, and a panelist during this historic meeting with women from every continent, I directly experienced how this context for the opening for signature of CEDAW was created momentum to make national laws reflect the new international law. The energy, spirit and commitment of those who drafted and negotiated the treaty has been an inspiration for men and women, and the treaty itself has spurred so many other documents, studies, agreements and programs.
Dr. Catherine J. Tinker
Seton Hall University School of Diplomacy and International Relations
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Human Rights for Women: The U. N. Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, Human Rights Quarterly, May 1981, JSTOR,
DOI: 10.2307/761855.
You can read the full text:
Contributors
The following have contributed to this page
