The Missing Link in Women’s Human Rights – Yakin Erturk

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The Missing Link in Women’s Human Rights

 

 

By Yakin Erturk
– 6 March 2015

 

Gender incompetent policies and hierarchical
understandings of rights dominate global economic governance programmes.
Integrating a feminist political economy into the analysis reveals the
interconnections of structural inequalities that underlie women’s
subordination.

 

 

Violence Without Borders: the paradigm, policy and practical aspects of
violence against women

 

The continuation of the war on women in an escalated and
violent fashion in many parts of the world has provoked me to write a book
reflecting on my human rights monitoring experiences of the past two decades.
One of the central challenges of the book, Violence Without Borders, has
been to unpack the hierarchy of rights that deny women access to critical
resources so needed in enhancing their capacity to resist transgressions on
their rights. This article stems from a chapter of the book which argues that introducing
a feminist political economy approach into the analysis can unravel the missing
link in women’s human rights.

 

The problem

 

The recognition of violence against women (VAW) as a
human rights violation was a turning point in the human rights movement. The
1993 Declaration on
the Elimination of Violence against Women affirmed that “…violence
against women is a manifestation of historically unequal power relations
between men and women, which have led to domination over and discrimination
against women by men and … violence against women is one of the crucial social
mechanisms by which women are forced into a subordinate position…”.

 

Since the adoption of the Declaration, violence against
women rose to prominence on national and international agendas at the expense
of compromising its feminist content as the responses to the problem became
dominated by a welfare oriented approach. Thus VAW is treated in a selective,
compartmentalized and isolated manner, largely disconnected from gender
inequality and women’s socio-economic rights, which impedes their capability to
escape violence.

 

Although Article 3 of the International
Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights urges states to
ensure women’s enjoyment of their economic and social rights, governments have
failed to adopt measures to enhance women’s empowerment and access to
productive resources. The detachment of VAW within the human rights movement
from the broader struggles for social and economic equality, eradication of
poverty and unemployment, livelihood security etc, reduced women’s human rights
issues to one of ‘protection’ and women into victims in need of being saved.

 

Feminist economists’ and women’s rights advocates for
long have emphasized the importance of women’s economic autonomy and called for
integrating a gender perspective into macro-economic policies. This has become
particularly urgent under neo-liberalism and the international financial
crisis. The likely adverse impact of the crisis on women’s employment,
livelihood security, the realization of the full range of their rights,
including the potential for increase in violence against them as well as on the
achievement of the Millennium
Development Goals to slash poverty, hunger, infant and maternal
mortality, and illiteracy by 2015, has occupied the debates.

 

The exposure of socio-economic rights as the missing link
within the women’s human rights movement made integration of a political
economy perspective into the feminist approach to women’s right compelling.
Political economy offers a materialist understanding of society that reveals the
interconnections among the economic, political, and cultural/ideological
spheres and incorporates race, class, and culture into feminist analysis. Such
an analysis; (i) goes beyond mere distributional aspects of access to economic
and social rights; (ii) identifies discriminatory policies, practices and
entitlement structures that determine the gendered manifestations of these
rights; and (iii) draws attention to the feminist
critique of the hierarchy of rights resulting from the differential
treatment of ‘first generation’ and ‘second generation’ rights, i.e. the Twin
Covenants.

 

The assumption that violation of rights, poverty, and
exploitation is not random, but embedded in structural inequalities, is the
central principle of the feminist political economy perspective.

 

Unravelling structural hierarchies

 

Power operates not only through coercion but also through
the structured relations of production and reproduction that govern the
distribution and use of resources, benefits, privileges and authority in the
home and the society at large. Identifying how the institutional and
ideological formations of society shape gender identities and statuses and
where the boundaries of rights and freedoms are drawn provides viable entry
points for altering and re-configuring these structures towards achieving
equality.

 

Applying a political economy approach to women’s rights
has been particularly useful in unraveling three interrelated structural
factors that underlie women’s subordination and heighten the risk of violence
against them.

 

The first factor is sexual-division of labour
within public and private spheres, with corresponding patriarchal gender
ideologies. Within this context, women are held primarily responsible for
unremunerated and often invisible work in the household, thus undermining their
bargaining power vis-à-vis men and other women acting on behalf of male power.
Similarly, care related work in the labour market, where women are
concentrated, is also devalued. Globalization has extended sexual-division of
labour to the transnational realm and as women from developing countries
migrated to provide care services for families in wealthier countries
reproductive work became internationalized.

 

The strict division of roles in the domestic sphere constrains
women’s public sphere participation and limits the economic opportunities in
domestic or transnational markets, thus entrapping many women into potentially
abusive and violent environments.

 

The second structural factor concerns neo-liberal
market forces. In the contemporary global era, capitalist competition has
fuelled the demand for cheap, flexible and unregulated labour to maximise
profits locally and transnationally. Within this context, the relocation of
industries to the periphery disrupted, at times destroyed, local economies and
unleashed a ‘free-floating labour-force’ in search for alternative sources of
livelihood. Markets, intersecting with gender hierarchies in developing
countries encountered dislocated young women and drew them into wage employment
in export processing zones or in the care/service sectors of global cities on a
scale unseen before.

 

This phenomenon, often referred to as “feminization of
migration” and “feminization of labour-force”, had contradictory consequences
for women. While women became empowered by gaining independence and autonomy
from the family, due to the volatile nature of work conditions new
vulnerabilities and risks confronted them. At the same time, women’s
integration into the labour market, more often than not, destabilized the
patriarchal family and created a crisis in masculinity, increasing the risk of
domestic violence.

 

Neo-liberal policies also created an enforcement gap in
both property rights and labour contracts as state capacity to regulate the
labour market and to tax profits eroded. Lack of enforcement coupled with the
withdrawal of the state from social services created a vacuum in human security
at large. Unskilled and marginalized women, who lack access to resources and
basic capabilities, became particularly burdened and poverty stricken.

 

Community based enforcement and support mechanisms were
quick to respond to the vacuum left from the withering away of the welfare
state, thus strengthening communal/tribalizing tendencies and allowing non-state
actors to seize the opportunity for legitimate representation of identity
politics as well as monopolizing service provision  to impoverished
groups. These trends have reinforced the culture/religion-based discourses that
challenge the universality of human rights norms and reject women’s claims for
rights and equality.

 

The third structural factor is related to the gendered
dimensions of war, peace and security, which are intimately connected to
patriarchy and the neo-liberal global economy.  Violent conflicts, often
arising from contestation over land, resources and power are indicative of
shifts in hegemonic relations locally as well as globally. When warfare
strikes, VAW by state and non-state actors, perpetuated with impunity, becomes
heightened, generalized and the norm. Sexual violence as a weapon of war became
a salient feature of recent conflicts.

 

 Women alone, no doubt, bear the burden of war,
which is often indiscriminate of sex, age, color or creed. However, it is the
systematic, patterned and odious ways, in which they are targeted, both within
the community and by the “enemy” side, is what makes their case in need of
scrutiny.

 

Values that motivate war do not necessarily preclude
women as soldiers, just as the fact that the ‘motherhood’ motive does not rule
out war-prone acts. Women are known to have chosen to take up arms for various
reasons, including protecting their children and themselves.

 

Conflict and war and the security agendas impose
trade-offs between military spending and spending for development and human
rights protection, particularly that of women. In the post-conflict phase
investment in reconstruction projects are prioritized over human security
concerns and may involve privatisation of public services and infrastructure
that often threatens household survival and places greater burden on women’s
labour.

 

A political economy analysis unveils the intimate link
between peace and justice; peace without justice is not sustainable. The
prioritization of national security and electoral machinery by governments over
human security in many post-conflict situations has proven to be destabilizing
in the long run. When women are excluded from access justice, physical security
and socio-economic rights, the distinction of war and peace may not be all that
meaningful. The war on women transcends conventional notions of  war and
peace.

 

Hierarchy of rights

 

The preferential treatment of civil and
political rights (ICCPR) over economic, social
and cultural rights (ICESCR), stands as a major constraint to
transforming the conditions that underlie gender inequality and VAW.  The
Committee on ICESCR noted at the 1993 Vienna
Conference that, “…states and international community as a whole
continue to tolerate all too often breaches of economic, social, and cultural
rights, which, if they occurred in relation to civil and political rights,
would provoke expression of horror and outrage and would lead to concerted
calls for immediate remedial action”.

 

States continue to perceive civil and political rights as
“obligatory” and economic and social rights largely as “aspirational”. It is
assumed that the latter can only be progressively realised depending on the
resources available to a country, where as the former rights must be guaranteed
immediately without compromise. Critics have argued that progressive
realization also applies to civil and political rights as both Covenants impose
positive duties on governments in their effort to comply with their obligations
without discrimination. Budgetary implications of the implementation of human
rights norms cannot excuse
a state of non-discriminatory compliance with its obligation to improve the
socio-economic conditions of people within its jurisdiction, or to adopt
macro-economic policies that might undermine the requirements of the ICESCR.

 

Shared responsibility for women’s human rights

 

Despite these human rights obligations, states in
responding to violence against women (VAW)  have tended to focus more on
reforming juridical and legal structures, and less on altering economic and
social structures. Combating VAW and ensuring women’s human rights
imposes a positive obligation on states to effectively comply with their
obligations under the Twin Covenants. In the context of global restructuring
and financial crises, economic and social rights are particularly crucial – not
only to women’s enjoyment of their rights, but also for preventing the
deepening of gender disparities.

 

While patterns of economic destabilization associated
with neo-liberal economic policies that facilitate the integration of global
markets have varied from country to country, inequalities and vulnerabilities
for women, including opportunities for their access to paid work have shown
similar cross-country trends. Gender inequality, unequal entitlement
structures, economic insecurities of global capitalism, as well as weakening
state capacity for regulation and distributional justice have to a large extent
determined how women experienced globalization. Poor women who are
systematically denied access to economic social rights are particularly at risk
of greater hardship and abuse.

 

It is important to note here that globalization has
increased the role of corporate power over macro-economic processes. This calls
for expanding the concept of positive obligation to include these transnational
non-state entities. Sovereignty in the new global order must be understood
as shared responsibility of states, the international community and non-state
actors alike. The promotion and protection of a holistic view of women’s human
rights must be pursued transnationally.

 

Yakin Erturk’s forthcoming book, Violence Without Borders:
the paradigm, policy and practical aspects of violence against women, will be
published in April 2015 (Istanbul: Metis Publishers)