Globalizing Concern for Women's Human Rights: The Failure of the American Model (review)

Globalizing Concern for Women's Human Rights: The Failure of the American Model by Diana G. Zoelle (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2000).

American women bear at least partial responsibility for the United States' failure to ratify the women's human rights treaty, The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). Like most Americans, they look inward, concentrating on achieving their own civil and political rights rather than seeing themselves as part of a worldwide women's movement.

They would do better, Zoelle argues, by understanding that discrimination against women is predicated on the identification of women with family. The family is seen as the private sphere in which governments and society do not intercede. Throughout human history men have been viewed, and often legally designated, as heads of families. Culture and the idea of the family as superior to women, dependent on women, and confining for women, define and constrain women.

The women's human rights treaty, CEDAW, is unique in that it does not mention "the sanctity of the family unit" ¹ as the UDHR does and because it covers economic and social rights as well as civil and political rights. Thus, if American women want to achieve full citizenship--have their productive and reproductive work valued and status enhanced--they would do well by promoting ratification and implementation of this remarkable international instrument. The author asserts that by including economic, social, and cultural considerations as well as civil and political, CEDAW is a far better framework for achieving full citizenship.

But American women are not the only ones to blame for lack of ratification of international human rights treaties. The American founding fathers and most of their successors, the author argues, failed to recognize "the differences between inherent human rights and conferred civil rights." ² Human rights cannot be granted; inherent rights define what it is to be human. Leaving women and minorities out of the definition of citizens in the US Constitution meant they were defined as the other, less than human. Since civil rights are only remedial rights in the author's view, she argues that "the existence of civil rights remedies in the United States, while encouraging, is not sufficient grounds to claim that the United States has reached a position where it may legitimately exempt itself from ratification and incorporation of international human rights instruments." ³

The one hope the author holds for US ratification of human rights treaties--including the women's human rights treaty--is that US non-governmental organizations, including women's organizations, will use their power to educate and pressure Congress and ultimately the president to attain ratification. But this will require American women to have an understanding that they are part of a global problem and a global effort. They cannot go it alone and be successful in eliminating discrimination.

The problem with this thoughtful and provocative book, as with many negative or failure arguments, is that in proving the negative the positive is lost. The book is more about the failure of the American model than about globalizing concern for women's human rights. But noting this failure is important. Ultimately, we in the US cannot hold ourselves above the world. We may be superpower but we cannot also be superstar. As recent elections in the United Nations indicate, there is a price to be paid for non-ratification of human rights and other international treaties.

CEDAW is a unique and positive document, despite its negative title. It sets out ways, means, and standards for governments in guaranteeing women full citizenship. Its seventeen substantive articles define discrimination and cover education, employment, health and family planning, and other economic and social rights as well as civil and political rights. Article 5 is key. It requires that parties to this convention shall take all appropriate measures "to modify the social and cultural patterns...