Gender-Sensitive
Budget Analysis: A Tool to Promote Women's Rights
Helena Hofbauer
Is
There a Woman in the House? Re/Conceiving the Human Right to Housing
Leilani Farha
Realizing
Women's Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights: Challenges and Strategies
in Nigeria
Joy Ngwakwe
Litigating
Social and Economic Rights in Canada in Light of International Human
Rights Law: What Difference Can It Make?
Reem Bahdi
Beyond
the Social and Economic Rights Debate: Substantive Equality Speaks
to Poverty
Gwen Brodsky and Shelagh Day
Book
Reviews
Gender in the Legal Profession: Fitting or Breaking
the MouldBy Joan Brockman
Lori G. Beaman
Colour-Coded:
A Legal History of Racism in Canada, 1900-1950 By Constance Backhouse
Dianne Newell
Still
on the Fringe or Part of the Mainstream? A Review of Lesbian and
Gay Rights in Canada: Social Movements & Equality Seeking, 1971-1995
By Miriam SmithAre We 'Persons' Yet? Law and Sexuality in Canada
By Kathleen Lahey
Claire F. L. Young
Articles
"Gender Comment": Why Does the UN Committee
on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights Need a General Comment on
Women?
Dianne Otto
This article
argues that the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights
(CESCR) needs to promote a substantive approach to equality in its
anticipated general comment (interpretive statement) on women's
equal enjoyment of the rights enumerated in the 1966 International
Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (Article 3). The
article begins by providing a general overview of the elaboration
of general comments by the UN human rights treaty committees, with
a particular focus on the CESCR's work in this area. Second, it
critically examines the trend to adopt general comments relating
specifically to women's enjoyment of human rights, which has followed
from the commitments to mainstreaming women's human rights that
were made at the Vienna World Conference on Human Rights and at
the Beijing World Conference on Women. Third, the article argues
that just "adding women" to the existing human rights
paradigm is not enough to ensure the indivisibility of women's human
rights, without also attending to the structural causes of women's
marginalization and exclusion. It suggests how an appreciation of
the historical, cultural, traditional, and religious contexts within
which women's inequality has been normalized could be incorporated
into the concept of equality elaborated by the general comment.
In addition, the article argues the need to recognize that an important
component of promoting structural change is the need to modify gender
stereotypes and hierarchies by changing notions of masculine privilege,
as well as female subservience, and that much can be learned from
the work of the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination
against Women in this regard.
Le
Pacte international relatif aux droits économiques, sociaux
et culturels, les femmes et le droit à la sécurité
sociale : des considérations et des propositions pour un
droit «universel» à la sécurité
sociale
Lucie Lamarche
Article 9
of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights
(ICESC) guarantees the right of everyone to social security, including
social insurance. Canada is a party to the ICESC, having ratified
it in 1976. But what are the rights of women to social security?
Since the ICESC is a universal instrument of human rights, how can
the right to social security be defined, given the wide range of
needs and specificities of developed and developing countries. Are
social security, social protection, and social assistance synonymous
concepts? The protection conferred by article 9 of the ICESC has
not yet received useful interpretation from the authorities entrusted
with the application of this treaty, as no general comment has been
issued. Needless to say, this situation leaves unclear the meaning
of social security rights for women. At a time when women's relationship
to work is being transformed and when the means of accomplishing
such work is being restructured, this article proposes a methodology
aimed at defining the substantive rights of women to social security
and identifying violations of these rights by raising the issue
from a historical, analytical, and gendered approach. The article
is divided into four main parts. First, it explores the normative
sources of the right to social security by examining the studies
and conventions of the International Labour Organization. Next,
it examines the gendered dimension of this right, then touches on
those aspects of the right to social security that are common to
both developed and developing countries. Third, it proposes a set
of criteria to help identify violations of the rights of all women
to social security. The object of this article is to facilitate
the appropriation by women and women's groups of the substantive
content of a right that has been too often and too long left to
political science experts and to decision-makers because of its
highly technical and economical dimensions
Gender-Sensitive
Budget Analysis: A Tool to Promote Women's Rights
Helena Hofbauer
Underlying
the polarizing effects of globalization are conventional, gender-blind,
economic frameworks that constrain the development of policies aimed
to empower women and to enhance economic justice. While budgets
have been instrumental in transmitting and reproducing gender biases,
they can also offer a possibility of transforming and redressing
existing gender inequities. This article explores the extent to
which gender-sensitive budget analysis can be a tool to promote
women's social and economic rights, by analyzing some of the results
and dynamics of the Mexican gender-budget initiative. It argues
that mainstreaming gender into budgets is therefore, fundamentally,
an issue of equality.
Is
There a Woman in the House? Re/Conceiving the Human Right to Housing
Leilani Farha
The right
to housing is one of the most considered human rights in the International
Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. For the human
right to housing to be meaningful to women, it must be interpreted
and implemented in a manner that addresses housing disadvantage
as actually experienced by women. Starting from the premise that
women's experiences with respect to housing are predominantly informed
by discrimination and inequality, this article analyzes how the
right to housing must be interpreted to ensure women its equal enjoyment.
The first part of the article argues that the right to housing must
incorporate a substantive understanding of women's equality rights
and must be implemented in a way that ensures equal outcomes for
women. The second part of the article assesses the extent to which
the right to housing as formulated in international law conforms
to the requirements of substantive equality. This assessment focuses
on the interpretation of the right to housing and the constituent
right to be free from forced eviction as articulated in General
Comments 4 and 7, which were adopted by the United Nations Committee
on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR) and which are considered
to be the foremost legal authority on these rights. In its conclusion,
the article suggests that incorporating substantive equality and
non-discrimination in the right to housing not only renders the
right to housing more responsive to women's experiences of housing
but also provides the potential to force governments to be more
responsive. According to international human rights law, the discrimination
and equality rights provisions of the ICESCR (Articles 2(2) and
3) impose immediate obligations on governments to respect, protect,
and fulfill women's right to equality.
Realizing
Women's Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights: Challenges and Strategies
in Nigeria
Joy Ngwakwe
This article
examines some of the discriminatory practices against women that
result in the denial of their economic, social, and cultural rights
in Nigeria, including discrimination in gaining employment, obtaining
education, developing a career, and in receiving loans from lending
institutions. This examination provides a backdrop for an account
of some of the remedial strategies and activities undertaken by
the Nigerian-based Social and Economic Rights Action Centre (SERAC).
In particular, the article describes SERAC's research on the gender-specific
effects of forced evictions on women in Nigeria and the organization's
efforts to assist forcibly evicted women through its micro-credit
project. As a result of this focus on forced eviction and its effects
on women, the discussion concentrates on discriminatory practices
that affect women's economic self-sufficiency and on how their condition
is exacerbated by the practice of forced eviction. SERAC's research
discovered that women's attachment to the home, both as a residence
and the place from which they earned their living, meant that they
were more profoundly affected by forced eviction than men.
Litigating
Social and Economic Rights in Canada in Light of International Human
Rights Law: What Difference Can It Make?
Reem Bahdi
This article
explores the judicial use of international human rights law in Canadian
courts for the purposes of analyzing international law's efficacy
in promoting social and economic rights for women. The Inter-American
human rights system is given special attention. An examination of
the judicial use of international law in Canada reveals that judges
employ five interdependent, yet distinct, rationales in support
of their reliance on international norms. As judges become more
familiar with international norms, Canadian advocates and scholars
can no longer afford to ignore them. They can take advantage of
the multi-faceted relationship that exists between the national
and international in Canadian courts by harnessing international
human rights norms to social and economic rights litigation. Louise
Gosselin's case is used throughout this text to highlight some of
the benefits and limits of advocacy based on international norms.
Beyond
the Social and Economic Rights Debate: Substantive Equality Speaks
to Poverty
Gwen Brodsky and Shelagh Day
The empirical
evidence that reveals the extent and depth of women's poverty, and
the harms that it causes, supports the claim that a substantive
approach to equality requires that there be positive rights against
governments to ensure that everyone has adequate food, clothing,
and housing. Unfortunately, some courts have accepted the classification
of a claim as 'social and economic' as an excuse to treat it as
non-justiciable. Support for the treatment of social and economic
rights as not 'real rights' is said to be provided by the division
of rights in international human rights law into two categories:
civil and political rights and economic, social, and cultural rights.
However, international human rights law does not, in fact, support
treating these rights in a hierarchical manner. The idea of a hierarchy
between the two sorts of rights comes from an old-fashioned constitutional
paradigm, which clings to a negative rights model of human rights,
envisioning them only as restraints on harmful state action. A formal
conception of equality rights fits well within this outmoded negative
rights paradigm, but a substantive conception of equality rights
does not. Rather, substantive equality, by definition, requires
governments to take positive steps towards remedying group disadvantage,
including the poverty of women
Book
Reviews
Gender in the Legal Profession: Fitting
or Breaking the Mould By Joan Brockman
Lori G. Beaman
Joan Brockman
explores the insidious nature of discrimination against women in
the legal profession. Her sample, and main source of data, is a
carefully chosen random selection of fifty men and fifty women who
are members of the Law Society of British Columbia. The data was
gathered through semi-structured interviews, which explored four
general areas: career advancement; the conciliatory-adversarial
continuum in the practice of law; gender bias, discrimination, and
sexual harassment; and the balancing of careers, children, and chores.
A strength of this book is Brockman's presentation of the participants'
voices. The reader gets a strong sense that she knows these people
and what they love and what they hate about the practice of law
by the end of the book. The reviewer raises some questions that
emerge from Brockman's study and points to directions for future
research.
Colour-Coded:
A Legal History of Racism in Canada, 1900-1950 By Constance Backhouse
Dianne Newell
Constance
Backhouse's study builds on her previous work on women and the law
in the colonial era by focusing on both the early twentieth century
and race. From the cases and statutes of the period, she selects
six cases representative of a legal history of race and racism in
Canada. Backhouse discovers a history of racism that was rooted,
multi-layered, and systematic across Canadian society. Even where
racism did not have statutory backing, "white" (a designation
that she uses intentionally to break through the colour code) legal
authorities routinely failed to intervene to right the wrong. The
cases in this work include Re: Eskimos (1939), Wanduta (1903), and
Sero v. Gault (1921); the Yee Clun challenge of 1924 to the white
women's labour law; the Ku Klux Klan attack on a "mixed-race"
sexual liaison (R. v. Phillips, 1930); and the implicitly segregationist
case of the black Nova Scotian businesswoman, Viola Desmond (Desmond,
1946).
Still
on the Fringe or Part of the Mainstream? A Review of Lesbian and
Gay Rights in Canada: Social Movements & Equality Seeking, 1971-1995
By Miriam SmithAre We 'Persons' Yet? Law and Sexuality in Canada
By Kathleen Lahey
Claire F. L. Young
The period
from the 1980s to the present has seen a myriad of legislative changes
with respect to the legal recognition and protection of the rights
of lesbians and gay men and the extension of many "spousal"
rights and responsibilities to same-sex couples. In 1999, the University
of Toronto Press published two very important contributions to the
literature by women, namely political science professor Miriam Smith's
Lesbian and Gay Rights in Canada: Social Movements and Equality
Seeking, 1971-1995, and law professor Kathleen Lahey's Are We 'Persons'
Yet? Law and Sexuality in Canada. Lahey's focus is the denial of
full legal personhood to sexual minorities, while Smith considers
the political evolution of lesbian and gay rights organizations
over a twenty-five-year period from 1971 to 1995. Both authors engage
with the role and impact of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms
and are ambivalent about its ability to effect meaningful change,
although they reach their conclusions in different ways. They also
consider the role that feminism and feminists have played in the
struggle for lesbian and gay equality, although they reach different
conclusions about this issue. Both books make a key and distinct
contribution to the literature on lesbian and gay struggles for
equality.
