Quantifying CEDAW: Concrete Tools for Enhancing Accountability for Women's Rights

The Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrmination against Women ("CEDAW") is the most important binding international treaty for women. The only international human rights treaty with the principal goal of protecting and promoting women's rights and eliminating discrimin...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Harvard human rights journal 2021-04, Vol.34 (1), p.37
Main Author: Vijeyarasa, Ramona
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Accountability
Discrimination
Equal rights
Equality
Gender
Gender equity
Indexes
Legislation
Ratification
Treaties ratification
Women
Womens rights
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Summary:The Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrmination against Women ("CEDAW") is the most important binding international treaty for women. The only international human rights treaty with the principal goal of protecting and promoting women's rights and eliminating discrimination against women, it has achieved almost universal ratification. Despite this importance, it has been overshadowed by the sheer number of global indices designed to measure progress on gender equality that have emerged in the last two decades, particularly those promoted by the development sector. This Article is premised on the idea that attempts to quantify success in moving towards the goal of gender equality would be both more effective and meaningful if grounded in the women's rights standards established in CEDAW, an approach that is rarely adopted. This Article argues in favor of the "quantification" of CEDAW and offers practical ways, using the Gender Legislative Index, to demonstrate the feasibility of an index founded in international women's rights norms, in order to improve accountability for embedding women's rights in domestic legislation. In order to do this, this study first discusses the shortcomings of newer systems of quantification; second, it identifies how CEDAW, a living instrument that speaks to multiple forms of discrimination, better allows for systematic, comprehensive and universal monitoring of women's rights; and finally, it offers the Gender Legislative Index ("GLI") as an example of a legal index grounded in CEDAW. This Article gives readers a sense of the potential of such a CEDAWbased index to work concurrently with development sector indices in order to accelerate and cement progress on gender equality.
ISSN:1057-5057
1943-5088