GENDER AND WOMEN IN INTERNATIONAL LAW
Women and gender are at the center of the global economy. Globalization today is encouraging greater involvement by women to become activists who protest the socio-political-economic conditions born from the global impetus for “free trade” and contributing to phenomenal levels of global feminized poverty and systematic violence against women. Continue reading…
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United Nations’ Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) (1979).
The NOW Campaign to have the U.S. Ratify the CEDAW.
Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women (1993).
Beijing Declaration, Fourth World Conference on Women (without Platform for Action) (Sept. 15, 1995).
INTERNATIONAL RULES GOVERNING RAPE
Article 27 of Geneva Convention for the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War (1950).
GLOBAL PROTEST
In recent decades the influence of neoliberal economics helped to shape the ideas behind the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA, 1992), other free trade pacts and the recent Central America-Dominican Republic Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA, 2005).
By the late 1990s, the harmful effects of “free trade” agreements designed more to protect the interests of foreign investing multinational corporations than the rights of workers and migrant laborers were being felt. Workers were complaining of dramatic drops in wages, unsafe working conditions, exposure to toxic chemicals, exploitation and abuse of young female workers, sexual harassment and sexual abuse, invasive forms of pregnancy testing, and environmental pollution caused by corporations dumping near workers’ residences.
In 1999 a massive protest took place in Seattle, Washington, at the annual gathering of the business and political elites who are members of the WTO against the impact of unregulated free trade. The massive protest movement shocked the global business community. It brought together thousands of individuals gathered under banners seeking to protect everything from women’s rights to worker’s rights, human rights and environmentalism.
The record of this historical moment has been collected by the WTO History Project.
Other forms of protest against globalization continue in the practice of conscious boycotting.
Other protests have emerged from college and university campuses across the nation, organized by the United Students Against Sweatshops.
The World Trade Organization, along with the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund are the key financial institutions that set the rules for international free trade today.
RECOMMENDED READINGS OR WEBSITES
Activist Websites on Women’s Issues
Carmen Gonzalez, An Environmental Justice Critique of Comparative Advantage: Indigenous Peoples, Trade Policy, and the Mexican Neoliberal Economic Reforms, 32 U of Pa J of Int’l Law 723-803 (Spring 2011). Synopsis.