New Directions in Human Rights Research: The Question of

Women’s Rights
Human Rights up till now had as its focus the cases of prominent violations of civil and
political rights in the world today. They have been discussed as violations in themselves,
perpetrated by the state or its agents, and as objects of social science research. Of course,
a key area concerning the rights of specific groups like children, women and so on have
been left out. A need has been felt to give new directions in human right research,
looking at the whole discourse of human rights beyond their statist frames. This, indeed,
constitutes new direction in human rights research, drawing us away from a state-centric
perspective and look at specific cases of violation of human rights within a given cultural
or economic system, and the role played by non-state actors like the transnational
corporation in promoting human rights worldwide.

Women and Human Rights: The inclusion of women’s rights as a category of human
rights is not a recent development in the field. The United Nations Convention on the
elimination of Al Forms of Discrimination Against Women was adopted in December
1979 and became a law in September in 1981. Among the many provisions in the
Convention, one important demand is made in Article 5(a), which requires states to take
all appropriate measures:
To modify the social and cultural patters of conduct of men and women, with a view to
achieving the elimination of prejudices and customary and all other practices which are
based on the idea of the inferiority and the superiority of either of the sexes or on
stereotypical roles for men and women.
This rather innocuous passage seems at first to be saying much the same, but contained
therein is an important additional recognition – the rights of women are very often
violated not in the civil and political sphere but in the realm of culture., of customs and
practices. In so far as the discourse on human rights has struggled for some time with the
inclusion of abuses, which take place within the non-state (specifically, the cultural)
domain, various areas of concern, which are specific to women, have served to highlight
the need to intellectually incorporate these abuses within the wider framework. Indeed,
among the many important issues raised by the feminist critique of human rights is the
traditional discourse maintains the distinction between state and non-state, between
public and private.
So far the narrow definition of human rights, recognized by many in the West as solely a
matter of state violation of civil and political liberties, impedes consideration of women’s
rights. As discussed above, some important aspect of women do not fit into the civil
liberties framework, but much of the abuse against women is part of a larger socio-
economic web that entraps women, making them vulnerable to abuses which cannot be
delineated as exclusively political or solely caused by states. The inclusion of “second
generation” or socio-economic human rights to food, shelter, and work-which are clearly
delineated as part of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights-is vital to addressing
women’s concerns fully. Further, the assumption that states are not responsible for most
violations of women’s rights abuses, although committed perhaps by private citizens are
often condoned or even sanctioned by states.
The most insidious myth about women’s rights is that they are trivial or secondary to the
concerns of life and death.