Women's Rights, Human Rights and Domestic Violence in Vanuatu

1996 ◽  
Vol 52 (1) ◽  
pp. 169-190 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margaret Jolly
Keyword(s):  
Domestic Violence ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Women's Rights ◽  
Domestic Politics ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Cultural Relativism ◽  
Women’S Rights ◽  
Political Rights ◽  
Recent Debate ◽  
The Individual

There has been much recent debate about women's rights and their relation to human rights. Debates about domestic violence in Vanuatu are situated in this global frame but also in a regional and historical context dominated by the relation between kastom (tradition) and Christianity. This article depicts the dynamics of a conference on Violence and the Family in Vanuatu held in Port Vila in 1994, in terms of the competing claims of universal human rights and cultural relativism. The allegedly western character of human rights which focus on the individual and civil and political rights is often contrasted with the non-western stress on collectivities and the rights to economic development and self-determination. These sorts of ideological oppositions in international politics reverberate in domestic politics as well, and especially in those which situate women and men as subjects in conflict, as they are in many domestic disputes.

Women’s Constitutional Rights

2021 ◽  
pp. 176-212
Author(s):  
Berihun Adugna Gebeye
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Women's Rights ◽  
Cultural Relativism ◽  
Women’S Rights ◽  
Constitutional Rights ◽  
Substantive Content ◽  
General Investigation ◽  
Standard Of Comparison ◽  
Design And Practice

This chapter explains how legal syncretism influences and manifests itself in the design and practice of constitutional rights—with a particular focus on women’s rights—in the constitutional systems of Nigeria, South Africa, and Ethiopia. The chapter demonstrates how the interaction between the liberal and indigenous conceptions of rights in a constitutional space produces unique regimes of women’s rights in these countries. The chapter first presents a brief theory of women’s rights as a standard of comparison and evaluation; this is done through a more general investigation of women’s rights in international law. This is then followed by a more focused discussion of women’s constitutional rights in Nigeria, South Africa, and Ethiopia. Such discussion explores the substantive content and the way in which women’s rights are constitutionalized, as well as their practical and judicial applications. The syncretic nature of women’s rights in these countries sheds some light on the importance of looking beyond the universalism versus cultural relativism debate when trying to enforce human rights in Africa.

2. Feminist and Activist Approaches to Human Rights

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ackerly Brooke
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Women's Rights ◽  
Political History ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Cultural Relativism ◽  
Women’S Rights ◽  
Moral Legitimacy ◽  
Marginalized Groups ◽  
History Of

This chapter explores the theoretical and political history of human rights that emerges out of the struggles that have been waged by feminists and other non-elites. It first considers the bases for the moral legitimacy of human rights and challenges to those arguments before discussing three aspects of feminist approaches to human rights: their criticism of some aspects of the theory and practice of human rights, their rights claims, and their conceptual contributions to a theory of human rights. It then examines the ways in which feminists and other activists for marginalized groups have used human rights in their struggles and how such struggles have in turn shaped human rights theory. It also analyses theoretical and historical objections to the universality of human rights based on cultural relativism. Finally, it shows that women’s rights advocates want rights enjoyment and not merely entitlements.

Authoritarian Institutions and Women’s Rights

2018 ◽  
Vol 52 (5) ◽  
pp. 720-753 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniela Donno ◽  
Anne-Kathrin Kreft
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Women's Rights ◽  
Authoritarian Regimes ◽  
Coalition Building ◽  
Women’S Rights ◽  
Political Rights ◽  
Authoritarian Institutions

While dictatorships perform worse than democracies in respect for most human rights, a large number of autocracies have prioritized the advancement of women’s rights. We present a theory of authoritarian rights provision that focuses on the incentives for dictatorships to secure women’s loyalty, and we identify the particular capacity of institutionalized party-based regimes to supply—and capitalize from—women’s rights policies. Analyzing a comprehensive sample of authoritarian regimes from 1963 to 2009, we find that party-based regimes are associated with greater economic and political rights for women irrespective of whether they hold multiparty elections. A comparative exploration of authoritarian Uganda, Tanzania, and Kenya sheds further light on these findings and examines alternative explanations. Our account of women’s rights as a tool of autocratic party coalition-building contrasts with the provision of civil and associational rights—so-called “coordination goods”—which represents a concession to the opposition and tends to accompany liberalization.

International human rights regime, neoliberalism, and women’s social rights, 1984–2004

2011 ◽  
Vol 52 (6) ◽  
pp. 503-528 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eunhye Yoo
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Women's Rights ◽  
Structural Adjustment ◽  
Women’S Rights ◽  
Social Rights ◽  
Political Rights ◽  
Global Culture ◽  
World Polity ◽  
Nation States ◽  
Neoliberal Restructuring

World polity scholars posit that the diffusion of world culture and norms increasingly influences human rights as well as women’s rights. However, previous research on women’s rights and policies often neglects women’s social rights and focuses mainly on women’s political rights. In part due to neoliberal restructuring, women’s social rights still lag behind women’s political rights. This research focuses on changes in women’s social rights, as measured by the CIRI human rights index, in 140 countries from 1984 to 2004. To interpret these data, I incorporate world institutionalism and neoliberalism into one single theoretical frame. My analysis reveals that the longer a country is exposed to a neoliberal structural adjustment program, the more governments’ practices regarding women’s social rights deteriorate. Among various linkages to the world polity, only the ratification of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) increases nation-states’ likelihood of having improved women’s social rights. These findings suggest that global neoliberal restructuring has a deleterious effect on women’s social rights and challenge the claim that the spread of global culture necessarily leads to improvements in governments’ practices relating to women’s social rights.

Reformist Islam and Women’s Rights

2020 ◽  
pp. 273-304
Author(s):  
Mohsen Kadivar
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Criminal Law ◽  
Women's Rights ◽  
Women’S Rights ◽  
Political Rights ◽  
Women's Issues ◽  
Human Reason ◽  
Women In Islam ◽  
Traditional Islam

This chapter critically analyses the challenges of traditional Islam in addressing the notion of human rights as it relates to women’s issues, and provides a solution using Quranic teachings. It starts with requirement of justice in women’s rights, and continues with the evolution of the approach of human reason in the arena of women’s rights and factors in the development of women’s rights. The chapter compares two different perspectives on women in Islamic texts: one view is more Qur’anic: woman is a different kind of human but she stands alongside man. No inferior characteristics are seen in this first view. The second view is more a view from the standpoint of fiqh. This viewpoint paints an inferior, a second-class person, vulnerable and needy picture of women who need the protection of men. The chapter addresses some of these rulings that consider women as an inferior creature, in three brief sections: Women’s Civil Rights, Women’s Criminal Law, and Women’s Political Rights. The chapter ends with the discussion of conditions for permanent Shari‘a rulings. Immoral, unjust, unreasonable or less functional rulings related to women in Islam cannot be accepted as a shari‘a ruling or an Islamic teaching.

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