Women's rights: an outdated concept?

The term "women's rights" has become such a household term that many do not even bother to think what it - indeed, what the whole concept of women's rights - actually means and what it stands for. Some people believe that women's rights are no longer an issue, or that it is only an issue in non-secular states.

Women's rights do not mean that women are treated in the same way as men are. On the contrary, in human rights discourse, when one talks about equality, it means that similar cases are treated similarly while different cases are treated differently.

The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, (CEDAW) adopted by the United Nations in 1979, defines discrimination against women as being "any distinction, exclusion or restriction made on the basis of sex which has the effect or purpose of impairing or nullifying the recognition, enjoyment or exercise by women, irrespective of their marital status, on a basis of equality of men and women, of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural, civil or any other field."

Regrettably, CEDAW remains plagued by a great number of reservations. Ratification, in fact, did not necessarily mean that the state parties made policy and legal changes. Some countries that have ratified the convention have objected to Article 2, which obliges state parties to incorporate the principle of equality between women and men in their national legislation, establish legal protection of women's rights, and refrain from engaging in any discrimination against women, while ensuring that public authorities abide by the same obligation.

As the head of the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, Salma Khan of Bangladesh said, "when you enter a reservation on Article 2, you are violating and nullifying the whole concept and sense of the Convention.''

Apart from the issue of reservations, the US, Sudan, Iran and Saudi Arabia are among the countries which have not ratified the convention. Nonetheless, the CEDAW and its optional protocol remain the only international treaties devoted to the rights of women. Partly due to the success of CEDAW, there have been significant advances in women's rights in the 25 years since it was adopted, although much remains to be done.

In its report Progress of the World's Women 2002, the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), showed that sub-Saharan Africa had greater female representation in Parliament than some of the world's leading economic powers. UNIFEM pointed out that 13 developing countries in sub-Sahara - the poorest area on Earth - had higher proportions of women MPs than the US (12%), France (11.8%) and Japan (10%).

Meanwhile, seven European states, together with Argentina, Costa Rica, South Africa and Mozambique, made up the 11 nations to reach the target set by the 1995 Beijing World Conference on Women for Parliamentary Representation to have at least 30% of parliamentary seats taken by women. Despite these gains, however, women still accounted for only about 14% of MPs worldwide in 2002.

As Noeleen Heyzer, UNIFEM's executive director, stated, "There is much more to be done to ensure that women are accepted as equal partners in key decision-making processes. Real progress towards gender equality will be seen when women have more say in the decisions that affect their lives." UNIFEM said that Parliamentary representation was still the only indicator of advancement not tied to national wealth.

Increasing women's share of seats in parliament is not, however, a solution by itself; it can only level the playing-field on which women battle for equality, as UNIFEM warns in its report. UNIFEM found that, on non-political indicators of gender equality, the old rule that the richer a country is, the better conditions for women still largely held in 2002.

The economic empowerment of women is critical to the achievement of gender equality. Today, obstacles to gender equality and the empowerment of women remain in the forms of patriarchal structures and norms; socialisation processes based on rigid gender roles; discriminatory laws and practices; lack of access to education, health care, economic and other resources; inadequate sex-disaggregated data; and insufficient financial resources.

Far from being in a situation where the term "women's rights" can be abolished, it is increasingly becoming the case of people needing to be aware of what women's rights really are, of the plight of women around the world, and of the need to lobby the governments to ultimately ensure that women's rights are respected in their entirety.

For more information on women's rights, visit Amnesty International's Website, www.amnesty.org.

Ms Bezzina is a member of Amnesty International Malta Group