Institute of Development Studies

CEDAW at 30

18 December - Andrea Cornwall

CEDAW, the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, is 30 years old on 18 December 2009. As the only comprehensive international treaty guaranteeing women’s human rights and the prevention of discrimination against women, CEDAW is a powerful instrument in women’s struggles for equality and justice the world over.

CEDAW and Women’s Rights

CEDAW is a bill of rights for women, a tool for change that activists around the world can use to press for justice for women. But as we all recognise, it takes more than a declaration of intention to bring about the kind of changes that will guarantee women equal rights, respect and dignity. To realise CEDAW’s promise calls for strategies that can make these rights real.

Pathways of Change

The Pathways of Women’s Empowerment RPC set out not only to study how change happens, but to be in itself – where possible – a catalyst of change. To do this, we are both studying and actively engaging in processes that offer the prospect of achieving greater justice and equality. Rosalind Eyben, author of our first Pathways working paper Conceptualising Policy Practices in Researching Pathways of Women's Empowerment, explores different ways of thinking about policy as a pathway that can foster women’s empowerment – and highlights the kinds of strategies that activists have used to bring about change.

Mobilising for Women’s Rights

A number of Pathways studies explore how successful mobilisation in favour of women’s rights can be a pathway of positive change for women – whether in terms of workers’ rights and recognition, sexuality and reproductive rights, or women’s capacity to exert voice and influence in spaces of power. At a recent Pathways workshop in Bellagio facilitated by Pathways South Asia hub convenor and researcher Maheen Sultan and Sohela Nazneen, activist-academics from Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Latin America analysed strategies and tactics for amplifying women’s voice.

Changing Laws, Changing Lives?

In Egypt, Pathways researcher Mulki Al-Sharmani has been examining the extent to which reforms in family law that are the fruit of feminist advocacy are actually empowering women. Her fine-grained ethnographic fieldwork, pursuing cases through the new courts, offers valuable insights into what it takes for laws to facilitate women’s empowerment.  Mulki is currently working on a book that uses examples from around the world to ask what it takes for legal reform to be a pathway of empowerment.

Monitoring Implementation

There are many examples in the Consortium’s work where there is direct resonance with ongoing efforts to address issues raised in CEDAW reports and shadow reports, and by the CEDAW Committee. In Brazil, for example, when one of the most progressive domestic violence laws in the world was passed in 2006, in the following year the CEDAW committee urged the government to ensure that implementation was monitored. Cecilia Sardenberg, Pathways Latin America Hub convenor, is working with a team of Brazilian researchers and activists to do just this. An observatory has been established that will work across Brazil to track change and highlight emerging bottlenecks to implementation. By documenting the process, Pathways aims to share lessons with activists in other countries. 

Confronting Prejudice

Pathways researchers have questioned prejudices about women – about their bodies and sexualities, capacities and competencies, and about their role in bringing about more just and equal societies. In another Pathways working paper, Charmaine Pereira, who convenes Pathways work on sexuality, challenges the heteronormativity of the development establishment, and highlights the need to change narratives of sexuality as a vital part of women’s empowerment strategies.  Pathways collaborated with the IDS Sexuality and Development Programme, convened by Susie Jolly, to host a recent international gathering that highlighted the power of pleasure as an entry point for positive change.

Exchanging Strategies

Such exchanges– of ideas, of strategies, of people, of documentation – have been a priority for Pathways. Sierra Leonean researcher Hussainatu Abdullah recently participated in one of these exchanges, traveling to Brazil to talk at an international symposium on Women and Republics about the gains that women’s rights activists have achieved in Sierra Leone. These include a number of laws collectively referred to as the 'Gender Acts', passed in 2007 - just a month after the CEDAW Committee had called for them to be prioritised.

Documenting Success

There is so much to be learnt and shared from stories of success. While always recognising the importance of context in shaping what is possible,  stories of change can be powerfully inspiring. They can offer women’s rights activists food for thought and tools for action. Pathways worked with the Realising Rights RPC to document strategies for advocacy and action on the urgent women’s rights and development issue of unsafe abortion. One of the most inspiring is the story of Colombia’s landmark judgment on the partial decriminalization of abortion in 2006, in which CEDAW and other international treaties were cited.

Andrea Cornwall is a Research Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies.

Photo: Panos.

Related Projects

• Pathways of Women's Empowerment Research Programme Consortium - International research and communications programme finding out what works to enhance women’s empowerment (Ongoing)