Equal and Represented?

Conflicts and Concepts in the Creation of an International Gender Equality Agenda at the United Nations

Valgerður Pálmadóttir

Master thesis in the History of Ideas

Department of Literature, Religion and History of Ideas

University of Gothenburg June 2010

Supervisor: Katarina Leppänen

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Preface

In fact, women throughout the world share so many problems that they can and must

support and reinforce each other in a joint effort to create a better world.1

Helvi Sipilä, the Secretary-General for the International Women’s year 1975.

The United Nations have played a leading role in the construction of an international

gender equality agenda.2 This international gender equality agenda has resulted in the

institutionalization of a gender perspective, which is a product of feminist activism

and theorizing. Theorizing about the inequality between the sexes, including its

origins and workings, affects the way emancipation is conceptualized, and thus gives

the idea of equality meaning. The gender equality agenda is one part of a larger

discourse on human rights and social development within the UN. In the 20th century,

the international community has witnessed the triumph of the liberal ideas of human

rights, which in turn are historically rooted in the ideas of natural rights that state that

every individual is born with innate equal value and bestowed with reason.3 Equality

is thus naturalized: “All men are born free and equal in dignity and rights”- as is

stated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.4 However, feminists and

women’s rights activists have argued that human rights instruments do not touch upon

1 Sipilä, 1975. cited in: Kouvo, Sari. 2004: Making just rights? Istus Förlag: Uppsala p. 125. 2 “Four world conferences on women convened by the United Nations in the past quarter of a century have been instrumental in elevating the cause of gender equality to the very centre of the global agenda. The conferences have united the international community behind a set of common objectives with an effective plan of action for the advancement of women everywhere, in all spheres of public and private life.” The United Nations Department of Public Information. 2000. The Four Global Womens' Conferences 1975 - 1995: Historical Perspective. http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/followup/session/presskit/hist.htm, accessed on 10 may 2010. 3 John Locke stated in 1689 that naturally and originally men are in a state of perfect freedom and equality. Locke, John, 1960: Two Treatises of Government. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge. Similar ideas were expressed by other enlightenment thinkers and they have since echoed in the French Declaration of the Rights of Man, the American Declaration of Independence and the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights which all present rights as natural, inalienable and sacred. Douzinas, Costas. 2000. The End of Human Rights. Hart Publishing: Oxford. 4 The United Nations, 1948: The Universal Declaration on Human Rights. http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/, accessed on 10. May 2010.

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the special discrimination women face on the grounds of their sex. This has resulted

in special women’s human rights instruments, which aim to secure the human rights

of women and to give account of the structural and cultural implications that hinder

women in gaining full and equal rights with men. The universality of human rights is

thus questioned and the critique addresses the cultural aspects and the normativity

present in the ideas of natural human rights.

In this thesis I question and scrutinize ideas of human rights as natural and de-

politicized that have been institutionalized as technical instruments dealing with

social inequalities.5 The Western liberal tradition of human rights, women’s rights and

gender-equality discourses have resulted in the conceptualization of differences as

either cultural, and thus the root of inequality, or as a naturalized resource for human

progress. In the tradition of international human rights, the political dimension of how

differences are produced and reproduced is not acknowledged. The struggle for

emancipation or liberation of disadvantaged groups is thus rationalized in technical

instruments as the political dimension, with its inherent conflicts, are veiled in the

name of an international consensus in the common project of human progress.

5 Regarding the phrase’technical instruments’ I aim at what political theorist Chantal Mouffe calls a consensus driven governance, that has been represented as a kind of third way and beyond political ideology, which tends to describe problems relating to social inequlities and conflicting interests as they could be solved rationally and technically. This can be defined as a technocratic move towards the end of politics. Mouffe, Chantal, 2005: On the Political. Verso: London & New York.

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Table of contents

PREFACE 2

TABLE OF CONTENTS 4

INTRODUCTION 5

Disposition 7

Material 8

Hypotheses and leading questions 12

Theoretical perspectives and method 14

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND 17

Women’s Rights in an International Context 17

Women’s Movements, Feminism and Equality 21

IDEAS AND ANALYSIS 26

Ideas of representation – being or speaking for 26

Representation in the CEDAW- opportunities and stereotypes 31

Representation in the PFA – voices, interests and resource 34

Ideas of equality – paradoxes of feminism 38

Equality in the CEDAW - rights and opportunities 41

Equality in the PFA - the concept of ’gender’ 43

DISCUSSION 45

Contested concepts and ideological differences 45

Universalism and the creation of a feminist subject 51

Concluding discussion - Language, strategies and feminist politics 53

REFERENCES 59

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Introduction This thesis deals with the women’s rights and gender-equality discourses in an

international context. Scholars who have studied feminist theory and practice have

argued that women’s movements have undergone profound changes in the 20th

century.6 These changes are situated both at national and international levels and

intertwined with general political and economical changes. In a recent anthology on

feminist movements, Crossing borders: Re-mapping Womens Movements at the turn

of the 21st century, it is stated that major shifts occur in the women’s movements and

in feminism on several and parallel levels. These changes can be defined as the

transformation of delimited women’s movement at national and international levels in

the early decades of the 20th century, into today’s looser networks like Non

Governmental Organizations (NGO:s) with feminist, social or other goals. On the

other hand, changes can be described in terms of an institutionalization of feminist

goals in transnational organizations such as the United Nations, the International

Labor Organization and the World Bank.7 In addition to this, the institutionalization

of feminist theorizing in the academia typified in women’s studies or gender studies

departments can also be mentioned as an important part of women’s movements

today, even as a result of the movement.

I intend to analyze and compare the United Nations Convention of the

Elimination of all Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) from 1979 and the latest

major official UN document concerning gender equality: the Beijing Declaration and

the Platform for action (PFA) from 1995. The analysis will shed light on ideological

conflicts and presumptions of sexual difference in the history of the international

women’s rights movements. The conflicts, in turn affect how gender equality

discourses are produced and reproduced in accordance with contingent meanings of

difference, political subjects, agency and democracy. In the following analysis focus

is put on the ideas of equality between men and women and political representation. I

will investigate how these ideas and concepts have been understood and given

6 Rupp, Leila J, 1997: Worlds of Women, The Making of an International Women’s Movement. Princeton University Press: Princeton, New Jersey. 7 Christensen, Halsaa and Saarinen, 2004: Crossing borders; Re-mapping Womens Movements at the turn of the 21st century. University Press of Southern Denmark: Odense.

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meaning in an international women’s rights context, as they are crystallized in the

United Nations CEDAW convention and the Beijing declaration and the Platform for

action.

This analysis gives an account of the contested meanings of the central

concepts in the history of the women’s movements struggle for placing ’women’s

concerns’8 on the international agenda as well as their struggle for equality.9 By doing

so I hope to be able to reveal some of the tensions that lie intrinsic in contemporary

gender equality discourse. My intension is not to reveal such tensions in order to find

a solution; rather I would like to outline the political history of the equality discourse.

Mapping the philosophical and political conflicts inherent in feminism and the

women’s movements does not have to lead to a dead end; on the contrary these

conflicts can be seen as being part of the driving force of the movements. I will thus

give an account of the leading ideas in the history of international and transnational

work for the status and advancements of women and analyze them from a critical

perspective.

This history is multifaceted, pluralistic, and it is a history of unarticulated

presumptions and conflicts regarding the meaning of sexual difference in relation to

the discourse on universal human rights. This becomes explicit for example in

normative but often contradictive assumptions on what constitutes a human being,

and in particular a sexed human being. This reflects how interests are defined in an

international political arena and how means and ends of gender politics are

conceptualized. I will not tell a linear history of the victories won by the women’s

movements and the progress made towards gender equality. That would mean that the

goal is clear, that what defines oppression or discrimination is obvious and self-

evident and that rights exist regardless of culture and historical context. Therefore, the

following text will give a genealogical investigation of the leading ideas and 8 In the following text single quotationmarks will be used to refer to phrases or concepts that are considered to be a part of the UN gender-equal discourse but not a direct citation to the texts in focus. 9 William E. Connolly has theorized about essentially contexted concepts in politics, he writes: “When the concept involved is appraisive in that the state of affairs it describes is a valued achievement, when the pracitce describes is internally complex in that its characterization involves reference to several dimensions, and when the agreed and contested rules of application are relatively open, enabling parties to interpret even those shared rules differently as new and unforeseen situations arise, then the concept in question is an ’essentially contested concept.’” Connolly, William E, 1993: The terms of Political discourse. Blackwell: Oxford UK & Cambridge USA. p. 10.

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assumptions of contemporary gender equality discourse. It is a history of conflicts and

tensions as well as victories in specific matters. These conflicts result in, for example,

the changing of strategies during the years between the CEDAW to the PFA in order

to attain the goal of equality, and in that process the meaning of equality has

undergone changes.

With the tools of historical and conceptual analysis my aim is to scrutinize the

underlying ideas with the hope of introducing a new perspective of the equality

discourse, its limits and possibilities. Historical and conceptual analysis can, in my

view, enrich contemporary discussions by opening up horizons, worldviews and

sedimented ideologies that theory and politics are rooted in. My position is not one of

an uninterested observer rather I would say that I position myself as a critical insider

as my perspective is rooted in feminist theory.

Disposition

The disposition will be as follows; the thesis is divided in four sections that consist of

(1) an introduction, (2) a historical background to the primary texts, (3) a discussion

about the concepts equality and representation and analysis of the primary texts, and

(4) a concluding discussion.

The first section begins with an introduction to the material, after which

theoretical perspectives and method will be introduced, and lastly the hypotheses and

leading questions for the thesis will be presented.

The second section is intended to give a historical background to the

documents in question by tracing some moments in the history of women’s

movements and the United Nations. That historical background is divided in two sub

chapters, “Women’s Rights in an International Context”, and “Women’s Movements,

Feminism and Equality”. The chapters contextualize the ideas, issues and concerns of

the CEDAW and the PFA. In the historical background I rely on secondary sources,

which are works by scholars who have studied the international women’s movements,

and official documents published by the United Nations. This gives an introduction to

context in which the conventions and declarations in question came about. How did

the early international women’s rights advocates argue for equality and how did they

define equality? The story goes back to the establishment of the League of Nations

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and internationalization of women’s organizations in the inter-war era.

The third section is devoted to the actual analysis of the primary texts and

begins with a discussion about the concept of representation in a chapter called “Ideas

of representation – Being and speaking for”, which will be followed by a reading of

the primary texts. These chapters include examples taken from the primary texts in

order to shed light on how the concepts in question are used and understood. This will

be followed by a discussion of the concept of equality in the chapter: “Ideas of

equality – Paradoxes of feminism” and this will be followed by an analysis of the

primary texts following the same procedure as in the case of the concept of equality

before. Thereafter I will give a more concentrated comparison of the texts with a

philosophical and historical discussion on the implications that precede and follow the

uses of the concepts equality and representation and how they rely on ideas of

difference and universality.

The fourth and final section is devoted to the concluding discussion where the

more philosophical dimensions are related to some contemporary political discussions

about gender equality, democracy and feminist politics and theory. That section is

divided in three sub chapters called: “Contested concepts and ideological

differences”, “Universalism and the creation of a feminist subject” and “Language,

strategies and feminist politics”.

In the following text I variously refer to ’the women’s rights’ discourses and

instruments, sometimes to ’equality between men and women’ and then lastly to

’gender equality’ discourses depending on what era is in focus. These discourses are

interrelated in the multifaceted history of international feminism. The different

concepts and names are connected to historical change, strategy changes, and change

of perspectives. However, I choose to look at these discourses as parts of the history

of women’s movements struggle for equality irrespective of how that idea has been

interpreted in various contexts.

Material

The United Nations has initiated four World Conferences on Women, the first of

which was held in Mexico City in 1975. That year was also appointed The

International Women's Year, which then was prolonged to a whole decade dedicated

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to women and women’s status, which had the conceptual frame of Equality,

Development and Peace. This theme was intended to “crystallize the past and the

present long-term objectives of the women’s movement”.10 When calling for the

conference the General Assembly identified three key objectives that would become

the basis for the work of the United Nations regarding women: Full gender equality

and the elimination of gender discrimination; the integration and full participation of

women in development; an increased contribution by women in the strengthening of

world peace.11 These claims were met by the conference through the adoption of a

World Plan of Action that offered guidelines for governments and the international

community to follow for the decade in pursuit of the three key objectives set by the

General Assembly. The document focused on securing women’s equal access to

resources such as education, employment opportunities, political participation, health

services, housing, nutrition and family planning.12 The second conference was held in Copenhagen in 1980, at the midst of the

Women’s Decade. However, one year earlier, in 1979, the United Nations General

Assembly adopted The Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination

Against Women (CEDAW). It entered into force as an international treaty on

September third 1981 after twenty countries had ratified it. In the introduction to the

text of the convention it is stated that it “was the culmination of more than thirty years

of work by the United Nations Commission on the Status of women, a body

established in 1946 to monitor the situation of women and to promote women’s

rights”.13 It also states that:

The spirit of the Convention is rooted in the goals of the United Nations: to reaffirm

faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity, and worth of the human person, in

the equal rights of men and women. The present document spells out the meaning of

10 Pietilä, 2007: The unfinished story of women and the United Nations. NGLS Development dossier. United Nations. p. 42. 11The United Nations Department of Public Information, 2000: The Four Global Womens' Conferences 1975 - 1995: Historical Perspective. http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/followup/session/presskit/hist.htm, accessed on 10 may 2010. 12 Ibid. 13 CEDAW, Division of the advancement of women, Department of economic and social affairs. http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/cedaw/cedaw.htm, accessed on 10 may 2010.

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equality and how it can be achieved. (emphasis mine).14

The CEDAW convention is often described as an international bill of rights for

women and as is clearly stated above, it is aimed at defining the meaning of equality

between men and women. It consists of a preamble and thirty articles that define what

constitutes discrimination against women and sets up an agenda for national action to

end such discrimination. By the year 2000 the convention was legally binding for 165

states.15

The third United Nations World Conference on Women was held at the end of

the Women’s decade in Nairobi in 1985 where the progress of the past ten years was

reviewed in terms of the paragraphs in the CEDAW. The Nairobi conference has been

described as the birth of global feminism as the movement for gender equality was

thought to have gained true global recognition by that time. The women's movement,

is said to have been “divided by world politics and economic realities at the Mexico

Conference, had now become an international force unified under the banner of

equality, development and peace”.16 According to the history presented by the UN

there lay a decade of work behind this “unified global force” with a lot of

information, knowledge and experience that had been gathered through the process of

discussion, negotiation and revision.17 A document called the Nairobi forward

looking strategies was adopted by the conference. That document builds on insights

about structural obstacles and cultural conditions that prevented women from gaining

advancement other than their legally secured equal rights to men. These strategies

were evaluated further during the UN fourth, and up to now the latest World

Conference on Women in Beijing 1995, which resulted in the adoption of a

declaration called the Beijing declaration and a Platform for Action.

The Beijing Declaration consists of 38 paragraphs about the United Nations

and the States Parties commitments, convictions and determinations regarding the

advancement of women and equality between the sexes. The Declaration, along with 14 ibid. 15 The United Nations Department of Public Information, 2000: The Four Global Womens' Conferences 1975 - 1995: Historical Perspective. On the Human Rights day, the 10th of December 1999 an optional protocol to the convention was adopted and that enabled women victims of sex discrimination to submit complaints to an international treaty body. 16 Ibid. 17 Ibid.

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the Platform for Action is now the latest comprehensive document agreed upon by the

UN concerning the rights and status of women as well as guidelines towards equality

between men and women. Platform for Action, hereafter referred to as PFA, consists

of 361 paragraphs, in the printed version it makes 178 pages and it is much larger and

comprehensive in defining the situation of the world’s women than the CEDAW. The

PFA is divided into six chapters of which the Strategic objectives and Actions makes

up the greatest part. Actions to be taken by governments and non-governmental

organizations to meet the twelve critical areas of concern that are recognized in the

PFA are presented. These critical areas of concern are: women’s poverty, unequal

access to education and health care, violence against women, women and armed

conflict, inequality in economic structures and policies, inequality between men and

women regarding power and decision-making, insufficient mechanisms regarding the

advancement of women, lack of respect for the human rights of women, stereotyping

of women, gender inequalities regarding natural resources and discrimination and

violation of the human rights of the girl child.18

The documents differ in more than one aspect. The CEDAW is like a bill of

rights and is mainly concerned with legal equality between men and women. It has the

objectives of eradicating all legal discrimination against women compared to the

rights held by men. The PFA, on the other hand, gives a thorough description on the

social, economic and cultural obstacles facing women, which hinders them from

obtaining their equal rights: “It aims at accelerating the implementation of the Nairobi

forward looking strategies for the Advancement of Women and at removing all the

obstacles to women’s active participation in all spheres of public and private life

through a full and equal share in economic, social, cultural and political decision-

making”.19

The CEDAW is supposed to grant equal legal or formal opportunities for

women compared to men, that is, equality de juro. However, it also emphasizes the

importance of addressing women’s concerns in a special treaty in acquiring equality

de facto, and enlarging the concept of human rights to account for ’cultural

18 The United Nations Department of Public Information, 1995: Platform for Action and The Beijing Declaration. p. 34. From now on just PFA, paragraphs and pagenumbers or The Beijing Declaration as it has different paragraph system. It is published in the same book but I refer to it seperately in the text. 19 PFA, Paragraph 1, p. 17.

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discrimination’ as well as formal legal discrimination. The PFA is about strategies of

how to acquire equal results, or achieve equal societies in practice or equality de

facto, sometimes also referred to as ‘substantial equality’. It emphasizes the

importance of ’gender balance’ in decision-making and introduces the strategy of

gender mainstreaming. That move was meant to change the focus from women as a

problem to gendered power relations and the structural discrimination imbedded in

the institutions of society.20

The documents that I use as my primary material of investigation are products

of institutionalized equality work, feminist activism and women’s rights advocates

that can be dated to at least the foundation of the League of Nations. They cannot be

said to be the products of one or more identifiable authors, rather they are created in

an interrelated fashion between political actors and theoretical and political

discourses. The discourses can be identified as humanist ideals of the enlightenment

and modernity, globalization, economics, and feminism: academic, state-

institutionalized and feminist grass root activism.

Hypotheses and leading questions

I do not assume that there is a consistent meaning about how sexual difference is

understood that somehow lies hidden behind the concepts representation and equality

in the documents. On the contrary, I would like to argue that their meaning is

constantly being contested and thus changes in relation to various cultural, historical,

economic and social contexts. Aims, means and strategies are all contingent and

dependent on a series of factors, political climate and ideologies as well as cultural,

historical and economic situations. In addition to that, these concepts have been

debated from various ideological standpoints. However, I would like to suggest that

one conflict persists, and that is how to deal with difference. Is difference understood

as a fact, which has to be considered when defining human rights? Or is difference

understood to be part of the problem of inequality, as the root or cause of 20 In this respect, the political theorist Carole Pateman has written about the ’disorder of women’ that refers to what she identifies as the threat women pose to the to western liberal political order. She maintains that women have been incorporated to the civil order differently from men. “Women have been included as ’women’; that is, as beings that whose sexual embodiment prevents them enjoying the same political standing as men.” Pateman, Carole, 1989: The Disorder of Women. Polity Press: Cambridge, UK. p. 4.

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discrimination that should thus be fought against, even eliminated? Or is it regarded

as a resource in creating a more just world?

CEDAW relies more on an understanding of gender equality interpreted as

equality of opportunities, equal treatment and elimination of discrimination compared

to the PFA where the focus has moved towards taking actions to secure equal results

and empowerment. This has to do with insights from feminist theorizing about social

structures as gendered and the interrelatedness of women’s issues with other social

and economic issues and thus widening understandings of equality.21 What follows is

that the secured legal rights of women compared to those of men are considered

insufficient.

Leading questions:

(1) How is sexual difference understood in the uses of the concepts: equality and

representation in the CEDAW and the PFA, and has their meaning changed? These

questions touch upon issues such as whether equal representation is an aim in it self, a

sign of gender equality? Or if it is regarded as a step towards gender equality,

implying that more women in high posts will change politics in a substantial way, and

thus contribute to further the common good?

(2) There has been a change in strategies from the CEDAW and the PFA, from a

woman-centered approach to a gender-centered approach and a new concept; gender

has entered the discourse by 1995, as a part of this strategy shift. Has that changed the

way the human rights instruments view difference or is it only a shift in language and

strategies that does not touch the ’problem of difference’ or radical alterity?

21 “For decades before the Fourth World Conference on Women at Beijing, feminists had been drawing our attention to the interrelatedness of women’s issues: peace, labour rights in the formal economy, worker rights in the informal economy, health, education, economic development priorities, institutions of political development priorities, institutions of political development, basic needs, minority or indigenous group rights, individual rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered, and intersexed, and questioning (LGBTIQ) people, and so on.” Ackerly and D’ Costa, 2009: “Transnational feminism and Women’s Human Rights” in ed. Goetz Governing Women, Womens Political Effectiveness in Contexts of Democratization and Governance Reform. Routledge/UNRSID Research in Gender and Development. p. 64-65.

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Theoretical perspectives and method

For the social philosopher, for the social scientist, words are not “mere”; they are the

tools of his trade and a vital part of his subject matter. Since human beings are not

merely political animals but also language-using animals, their behavior is shaped by

their ideas.22

This research revolves around ideas and concepts and the use of these concepts in an

international women’s rights discourse. The concepts that I focus on and analyze are

representation and equality and my aim is to analyze what kind of ideas about

(sexual) difference is presupposed when these concepts are used. The methods from

the field of history of ideas offer good tools of analyzing documents like these by

contextualizing and historicizing their main ideas and arguments. I am inspired by

Foucault’s genealogical approach to history and that is how I choose to approach my

primary texts. Foucault’s genealogical method to the studies of history opposes the

search for “ideal significations and indefinite teleologies. It opposes itself to

‘origin’”.23 Instead of searching for underlying origins and metaphysical essences,

Foucault “focuses on the ‘ignoble beginnings’ and the contingent fabrications of

historical phenomena”.24 Thus after having given a short historical survey of gender

equality politics and its origins in an international context, my aim is to look closer

into the way ideas of equality and representation are produced and how they function.

According to this perspective, things, objects or concepts, such as equality,

representation, democracy or sexual difference do not have fixed meanings; their

meaning is dependent on how they are used and in what context. They rely on and

produce simultaneously ideas about gendered/sexed subjects. Equality and

representation have thus had various meanings in the history of women’s movements

and the United Nations, depending on the context and the ideological frameworks in

which they have appeared.

22 Pitkin, Hanna Fenichel, 1967: The concept of representation. University of California Press: Berkeley, Los Angeles, London. p. 1. 23 Foucault, Michel, 1984: “Nietzche, Genealogy, History”. The Foucault Reader, edited by Paul Rabinov. Penguin Books: London. p. 77. 24 Howarth, David. 2000: Discourse. Open University Press: Buckingham, Philadelphia. p. 71.

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A hermeneutical reading elaborated by Gadamer has also inspired my

methodology. He emphasizes the importance of the context in interpreting texts, and

writes about the fusion of horizons between reader and text in the process of

interpretation. According to Gadamer, there is no objective reading because the reader

is always positioned in some thinking tradition and she encounters the text with a pre-

understanding, and moreover, every encounter creates something new.25 Furthermore,

I find the critical discourse theory developed by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe

useful in my analysis. They stress the crucial role that the discursive political

dimension plays in the shaping of political subjects. Their conception of discourse is

rooted in a critical approach to the traditions of structuralism, post-structuralism and

Marxism. They extend the scope of discourse theory to embrace all social practices

and relations and thus “regard them as ‘worlds’ of related objects and practices that

form the identities of social actors”.26 In this respect, the concept of discourse

captures the idea that all objects and actions are meaningful and they get their

meaning from contingent systems of differences. These systems of meanings are not

closed; they are open, contextual, never sutured, and rely on a constitutive outside. In

this regard we can consider the meaning of the concept ’equality’, it can have

different meanings and connotations depending on the ideological discourses that

constitute it, that is, make it meaningful.

Regarding the concept of representation, I have relied on the analysis made by

the political theorist Hanna Pitkin in her work The Concept of Representation.27 In

addition, a complementary perspective is introducing Gayatri Spivak’s post-colonial

view. As to how to treat the concept of equality I have mainly relied on discussions

from within feminist theory. The tension regarding the concept of equality is read

through Joan Scott’s theory of the paradox of feminism. By analyzing the ideas in the

documents in question and then comparing them as historical events or nodal points in

a gender equality discourse I strive at giving synchronic as well as diachronic analysis

of my material. As for general information about the history of women’s rights

instruments within the UN legal framework including theoretical perspectives on

gender and international law, Sari Kuovo’s work: Making Just Rights has contributed

valuable insights for my analysis. Kuovo has analyzed the background, development 25 Gadamer, Hans Georg, 2004: Truth and Method. Continuum: London & New York. 26 Howarth, 2000. p. 101. 27 Pitkin, 1967.

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and implementation of different strategies for the promotion of women’s human rights

and gender equality at the UN from a critical feminist perspective.28

As the thesis revolves around women’s representation in politics I focus on the

paragraphs explicitly concerning those matters, but will all the same consider the texts

in their entirety. The concepts are not necessarily explicitly used and worded in the

texts, however, according to my analysis ideas about equality, difference and

representation can be traced in the arguments of the texts. They function as implicit

prerequisites and assumptions taken for granted. With a hermeneutic terminology, we

could say that I am tracing a pre-understanding (or rather pre-understandings in a

plural form) of the concepts that are leading concepts in the gender equality discourse.

My working concepts are intertwined and relate to one and other in a

reciprocal way, that is, their meanings are conditioned by the understandings and

meanings applied to the other concepts. They make up one of the cornerstones of how

the means and ends of gender equality politics are understood and how implicit ideas

about them fashion work done in the name of gender equality. The demands of

increased women’s representation in areas of important decision-making and politics

are highly related to ideas of sexual/gender difference.29 Further, what is expected as

results from increased women’s representation in politics relies on how the idea of

gender-equality is understood. Now that I have given account of my theoretical

perspectives, position and method, I will give an introduction to the primary texts by

giving an account of the history of international women’s movements and the United

Nations which form the background of the PFA and the CEDAW.

28 Kouvo, Sari, 2004: Making just rights? Istus Förlag: Uppsala.29 By this I am not only aiming at the ontological, biological or psychological understanding of sexual difference although such ideas may “lie” behind as implicit preunderstandings. Ideas such as experience, difference of women, “gender roles”, interests, what makes a group and the role of politics are important points in this discussion.

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Historical background Women’s Rights in an International Context

The first paragraph of the United Nation’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights,

adopted and proclaimed in December 10th 1948 by the United Nation’s general

assembly reads as follows:

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with

reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

This is followed by a paragraph that states that every one, with no distinction of any

kind such as “race, color, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national

or social origin, property, birth or other status” is entitled to the rights and freedoms

set forth in the declaration.30

Regarding the universalism of UN human rights instruments, Kouvo writes

that the intentions and aspirations of the drafters of the Universal Declaration of

Human Rights and the General Assembly were clear as they emphasized the all

inclusive and sex-neutrality of the instrument by using words such as, all human

beings, all, everyone and no one.31 She mentions a persistent tension between the

promotions of women’s rights as general human rights and thus as part of universal

human rights instruments or through targeted, women’s human rights instruments,

such as the CEDAW and the PFA. In addition to battling with how to address

women’s issues as separate or as general human rights, the UN has struggled with

what strategies to use in the women centered instruments. Kuovo has identified three

types of women centered human rights instruments.

First, women’s human rights instruments adopted during the early years of the UN that

only aim at bringing attention to women, but that do not change the scope of the human

rights framework; secondly, women’s rights instruments adopted around the time of the

30 The United Nations. The Universal Declaration of Human rights. http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/ accessed on 10 may 2010. 31 Kouvo. 2004. p. 93-94.

18

UN decade for women (1976-1985) that began the transformative trend of substantially

adapting the UN rights framework to the inclusion of women as right holders; and,

thirdly, the integrative approach adopted during the 1990s that attempts not only to

transform how human rights are conceptualized at the woman margins of the UN

human rights framework, but the aim at bringing a new understanding of women’s

human rights to the core of the human rights system.32

The first category includes conventions such as the convention of the political rights

of women, the convention about trafficking of women and children and the rights to

behold the citizenship of birth country when marrying a foreigner. The CEDAW is an

example of the second and the PFA is a part of the integrative approach.

As is clear from the first paragraph of the Universal Declaration of Human

Rights, the wish to eradicate discrimination on the grounds of sex is present from the

start. At least two questions arise regarding that fact: Was equality between the sexes,

in terms of equal treatment and equal rights accepted from the very beginning in the

United Nations, and how did that come about? And further, related to the first

question, why then, was it considered necessary to have a special convention of

women’s rights? A short answer to the first question is that inter- and transnational

women’s organizations had had a great impact on the process during the

establishment of the United Nations and fought for the category of sex as one of the

illegitimate grounds for discrimination. The second question is more complicated and

is related to a tension regarding the understandings of the concept of equality.

Kouvo states that since the San Francisco Conference just after the second

Word War and the establishment of the UN, the issue of women’s human rights has

been a contested issue. By that time, “questions regarding women’s inequality were

forced into the UN agenda (…) and framed in human rights language”.33 This targets

the fact that the category of sex was added to the list of categories as illegitimate

grounds for discrimination. Since then the “UN has grappled with the question of

whether to address women’s humans rights issues as part of the core human rights

agenda”.34 This has resulted in a changing of perspectives and strategies over the

years where some approaches have been hegemonized while other appear as

32 Ibid., p. 104-105. 33 Ibid., p. 104. 34 Ibid.

19

discursive leftovers that may seem rather contradictive compared to the general

perspective of the document in question.

Women’s international activism during the so called post-suffrage era and

onwards resulted in the fact that issues regarding equality between men and women

have been addressed in the United Nations human rights instruments. In various texts

published by the UN concerning gender equality, it is stated that the founding of the

United Nations after the Second World War end was among the important events in

the political, economic and social liberation of women.35 However, the status of so

called women’s questions and gender equality programs and agendas in the United

Nations can be traced back to the formation and early days of its forerunner, the

League of Nations. Thus, women’s organizations were active in the international

cooperation for peace and development from the beginning.

When the League of Nations was established at the Paris Peace conference in

1919 just after the First World War, representatives of women’s international

organizations were present. They were there to pursue the interests of international

women’s movements and to lobby for concerns regarding women and women’s

rights. And, as Hilkka Pietilä states in a history about women and the United Nations

“in order to give their proposals regarding the Covenant of the League of Nations and

to prevent the exclusion of women from the provisions and decisions”.36 Although

The League of Nations was initially meant as a guarantor of peace, “it soon became a

venue for expressly international collective struggles for equality and justice”.37

At this point, women’s organizations that were active on the international

arena founded the Inter-Allied Suffrage Conference (IASC) and were granted the

right to send delegates to participate in certain peace conference commissions.

Delegates from IASC then demanded that women be given access to decision-making

positions in the League of Nations. The delegate also made proposals on issues for the

League to promote, such as universal suffrage rights in member states, recognition of

the rights of married women to keep their nationality when marrying a foreigner,

35 The United Nations, 1985: Nairobi Forward looking strategies. A historical background. Paragraph 1. http://www.un.org/womenwatch/confer/nfls/Nairobi1985report.txt, accessed 10 may 2010. 36 Pietilä, 2007. 37 Leppänen, Katarina, 2009: “The Conflicting Interests of Women’s Organizations and the League of Nations on the Question of Married Women’s Nationality in the 1930s” in Nora, Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research. Routledge: London. p. 248.

20

work for abolishing trafficking in women and children and to end state-supported

prostitution. These demands from the women’s movements were met in the Covenant

of the League of Nations.38

In 1931 the Liaison Committee of Women’s International Organizations was

established in order to unite the diverse organizations working for and promoting

women’s issues in the international arena. This group claimed to represent millions of

women in at least seventy countries and the Committees major aim was to coordinate

women’s international work. The committee affiliated ten of the largest transnational

women’s organizations; the International Alliance of Women for Suffrage and Equal

Citizenship, the International Council of Women, The International Federation of

Business and Professional Women, the International Federation of University

Women, the International Federation of Women Magistrates and Barristers, St Joan’s

Social and Political Alliance, the Women’s International League for Peace and

Freedom, the World Union of Women for International Concord, the World’s

Women’s Christian Temperance Union and the World’s Young Women’s Christian

Association. These organizations differed in terms of ideologies and how they defined

the interests of the organization as well as women’s interests in general. Some were

feminist, other pacifist, social reform groups or professional women’s groups. As

Carol Miller points out, “a spirit of compromise was needed to define common goals

among organizations as diverse as the Equal rights International and the World’s

Young Women’s Christian Association”.39

The Liaison Committee was to become an important arena for the women’s

organizations in pursuing issues they consented on and what they deemed as women’s

interests. This was the beginning of a dialogue between international non-

governmental organizations and the inter-governmental organizations of the League

of Nations. This international work by women’s organizations saw results in the first

international convention regarding gender equality providing women and men with

equal status in respect to nationality approved by the League of Nations in 1935. Two

years later, in 1937, the League of Nations established the Committee of Experts on

the Legal Status of Women. This Committee of Experts was authorized to conduct a

“comprehensive and scientific inquiry into the legal status of women in various

38 Pietilä, 2007. 39 Miller, 1994. p. 224.

21

countries of the world”.40 This committee was the predecessor of the Commission on

the Status of Women (CSW) that was established by the United Nations in 1945 and

became an autonomous and separate entity within the UN Economic and Social

Council in 1947.41

The conflict that arises from pointing out women as a disadvantaged group

while at the same time struggling for their inclusion in the idea of universal human

rights is a part of the paradox of feminism and the equality project that I will discuss

more thoroughly in later chapters. However, in the following chapter I tend to discuss

how this tension or conflict appears in different contexts both in relation to the

women’s organizations interaction with the UN and internal differences within or

between the women’s or feminist movements. This will then be related to theoretical

discussions about feminism and various understandings of equality.

Women’s Movements, Feminism and Equality

In the early years of international cooperation for peace and development after the

First World War, women’s national as well as transnational organizations found the

context of the League an attractive arena to advocate their aims. Geneva became an

international center for the women’s movement during the inter-war years.42 Many of

the major transnational women’s groups set up permanent or temporary headquarters

in Geneva and some of these organizations even remain based there today.43 Geneva

thus shortly became a focal point for international feminists’ idealism and activism.

However, by the early 1930s it was clear that it was not a place of consensus and

harmony among different women’s organizations. Ideological conflicts arouse over

the meaning of feminism and equality, and there were differences regarding the best

means to enhance the status of women. Historian Marilyn Lake writes:

Those who styled themselves ‘equalitarians’ or left-wing or advanced feminists became

more impatient with, and dismissive of, activists associated with the International 40 Pietilä, 2007. 41 Ibid., p. 6. 42 Miller, Carol, 1994: “Geneva – the Key to Equality: inter-war feminists and the League of Nations”. Women’s History Review, 3: 2, 219-245, p. 219. 43 Ibid.

22

Suffrage Alliance, the International Council of Women and the Women’s International

League for Peace and Freedom, whom they characterized variously as ‘conservative’,

‘old fashioned’ and ‘sentimental’, concerned ‘only’ with ‘social reform or good

works’.44

In the inter-war years a new organization called the Equal Rights International (ERI)

was founded and based in Geneva, which took as its main project to work for an equal

rights treaty. Those who advocated this equal rights treaty were hoping for a League

of Nations Convention, which was supposed to secure women’s civil, political and

legal status, based on the principle of equality between the sexes. The ERI was a

transnational organization, but North American feminists such as the lawyer and

suffrage advocate Alice Paul played a great role in its foundation and agenda setting.

The United States were not members of the League of Nations45 but through

transnational women’s organizations such as the ERI, American feminists had great

influence on how its equality discourse was shaped in the inter-war years.46

Regarding the Convention on equal rights between the sexes, the Assembly

decided to refer the matter back to the member states and stated that more information

on the status of women was needed. Hence in 1937, the Assembly of the League of

Nations agreed to establish a comprehensive and scientific inquiry into the legal status

of women. This was in turn followed by an appointment of a Committee of Experts

and although it was emphasized that the work of the committee should be “objective”

eight of the largest international women’s organizations were represented there. Some

of them were outspoken feminists but others were social reform organizations.47

Women’s movements and feminism are heterogeneous phenomena and it is important

to make distinctions between them when writing about it from a theoretical as well as

historical perspective. In the beginning of the internationalization of women’s

concerns or issues relating to the status of women, various women’s movements or

44 Lake, Marilyn, 2001: “From Self-Determination via Protection to Equality via Non-Discrimination: Defining the League of Nations and the United Nations” in Womens Rights and Human Rights edited by Grimshaw, Holmes and Lake. Palgrave: Great Britain. 45 The member states of the League of Nations were 54, including all of the Nordic countries, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Spain and Canada. The United States and the USSR were not members. For more information see: http://www.indiana.edu/~league/pictorialsurvey/lonapspg6.htm, accessed 27 may 2010. 46 Miller, 1994.47 Lake, 2001. p. 261–261.

23

groups were for example divided into social reformists or humanists and militant

equalitarian feminists.48 The term ’feminist’ was used to name those who were

fighting for equal rights, mainly focusing on legal rights between men and women,

both by the feminists themselves and others. Some women activists refused the term

and saw themselves as ideological opponents to the feminists. Among those were the

social reformists and the spokespersons for the workingwomen’s organizations, which

were promoting further legal inequalities49 through protective labor legislation for

women. Historian Carol Miller claims that the international women’s movements

were polarized over matters of strategy, that the conflict reflected competing

conceptions of gender equality and gender difference.50 Most of these women

activists, however, saw themselves as representatives for women and claimed to speak

for their collective interests.

In the inter-war years at the League of Nations two different conceptions of

women’s rights and of strategies to secure those existed. One group consisted of

“those who saw women’s subordination as being occasioned by their sexual

degradation and forms of exploitation specific to their sex stressed distinctive rights

for women”, Marilyn Lake explains.51 Their main focus was thus on what they

deemed as the right to self-determination, which included the right to sanctity of the

person and women’s right to inviolability. The other group, were feminists that had

from the late 1920’s and onward become impatient with this politics of protection and

they demanded that women be given the same rights and status as those of men.

Protection was seen as locking women into subordination. This tension was

characterized as an opposition between equality and social reform or sameness and

difference. This tension within the international women’s movement led ultimately to

48 The ideological opponents in this battle have been labeled militant equalitarian feminists on one side and social reformers or humanitarians on the other side, and historically the views of the former group can be said to have won the battle as their views came to dominate the international equality discourse for the next decades. Pfeffer, Paula F, 1985: “’A whisper in the assembly of nations’ United States’ participation in the international movement for womens rights from the League of Nations to the United Nations” in Womens Int. Forum, Vol. 8. No. 5, pgs. 459–471. Printed in Great Britain. 49 Note that the term inequalities in this context is meant to refer to an absence of equal treatment, and that gives a hint to interpret the idea of equality primarily meaning equal treatment. However, inequality has a more negative tone than for example differentiated treatment. This expression is taken from Carol Millers article (see footnote 8). 50 Miller, 1994. p. 221. 51 Ibid., p. 264.

24

that the US, UK and Canadian delegates opposed the creation of a separate

commission on the Status of Women at the founding United Nations conference in

1945. The opposition was grounded in the idea that equality entailed a disavowal of

sexual difference.

Equalitarian feminists associated with groups such as the ERI demanded

equality with men with no distinctions. That is understandable in the historical context

of the Great Depression and uprising of fascism with increasing attacks on the

liberties and rights of women, especially their right to work. In this respect, Offen

writes: “with the onset on the severe economic depression that began in 1929,

antifeminist opponents continued vociferously to oppose women’s employment

outside the home in the name of jobs for men. They preferred what they considered to

be a more ’natural’ gendered division of labor”.52 The demands of the equalitarian

feminists were a “response to an earlier politics of protection that promised self-

determination, while consolidating political subordination”.53 However, some

historians have argued that this insistence on equal rights as universal and equality as

equal treatment with no distinction between the sexes had other consequences.

Among other things it made it more difficult later on for the Commission on the

Status of Women to secure recognition of women’s special interests and abuses

suffered by women on the grounds of their sex.

As has been stated, not all of these women’s groups were feminist. However,

it would be anachronistic not to take into account the contested meanings concerning

the term feminism and the changes it can be said to have undergone the past century.

By the 1930’s many who later have been labeled feminists would probably have

refused the term as they disagreed with feminists on the issue of equality. The

disagreement revolved around whether women should be considered distinct from

men on account of their physiology and reproductive roles or if that difference should

be disavowed for the sake of equality of rights as those of men.54 There was also a

discussion by some women’s rights advocates about replacing the term feminism with

52 Offen, Karen, 2000: European Feminisms 1700-1950. Standord University Press: Stanford, Califorina. p. 253. 53 Lake, 2001. p. 269. 54 Offen, Karen, 2001: “Women’s Rights or Human Rights? International feminism between the wars” in Womens Rights and Human Rights edited by Patricia Grimshaw, Katie Holmes and Marilyn Lake. Palgrave Publishers: Great Britain.

25

humanism after the suffrage was gained.55

In addition, it is more accurate to speak about feminisms, that is, in a plural

form. Although some of the movements mentioned did not unite under the term of

feminism, many would probably be classified so from contemporary perspectives.56

Distinction has been made between women’s movements, women’s rights

movements, various kinds of feminisms and politics aimed at gender equality.57

Feminisms have further been divided into classic liberal feminism, classic and

modern Marxist feminism, utopian socialist feminism, modern equal opportunity

feminism, modern socialist and/or radical feminism and poststructuralist feminism.58

At this point I would like to cite the political theorist Drude Dahlerup as she wonders

about the common core of feminism.

Reading the 19th century feminists, it soon becomes clear that their ideas of women’s

and men’s different biological constitutions are very far from contemporary feminist

thinking about the social construction of gender. The goal of feminism has found its

expression in concepts as different as equal opportunity, equality of result, different but

equal, emancipation, liberation and many others. 59

Looking at histories of women’s movements it varies and is not always clear what is

considered as goals and what are thought of as means to those goals. What defines

liberation or emancipation? Are these concepts or ideals parts of the more general

idea of equality or is equality part of those, as higher ideals? In other words, is

55 Offen, Karen. 2000: European Feminisms 1700-1950. Stanford University Press: Stanford, California. p. XV. 56 It is not the aim of this essay to take a stand in what defines feminism or who can claim the term, rather I use the context of international womens rights to analyse how agents of involved movements have understood and used concepts regarding their struggle. However, “Feminism” is a central ideology in this context. As an example of definition on feminism is one developed by Nancy Cott: “1. Opposition to sex hierarchy, 2. Women’s condition is socially constructed rather than predestined by God or nature, 3. Women are not only a biological sex but also a social grouping. Thus feminism implies some identification with “the group called women”.” cited in Drude Dahlerup. 2004: “Continuity and Waves in the Feminist Movement” in ed. Christensen et. al. Crossing borders: Re-mapping Womens Movements at the turn of the 21st century. 57 Not all women’s movements are considered feminist according to scholars who have theorized about this subject. And there is also a debate about whether to describe the (feminist) women’s movements as a part of a larger continuous movement from 1800th century onward or not. See for example Christensen et al. 2004. 58 Dahlerup, 2004. 59 Ibid.

26

equality a mean to emancipation and liberation or vice versa? It is also important to

historicize and contextualize the various issues that women’s movements have fought

for. Regarding this, historian Karen Offen writes: “Feminist claims are primarily

political claims, not philosophical claims”.60 Furthermore, feminist claims never arise

in or in a response to a sociopolitical vacuum. On the contrary they are put forward in

concrete settings and pose demands to a change some specific political situation. The

issue of representation in political assemblies and decision-making is a clear example

of this. However, that is also a theoretical problem relating to what is meant by gender

equality and to the discussion about goals, means and presumptions about sexual- or

gender difference, and last but not least about political strategies. In this chapter I

have sought to give a view of the international women’s movements as a site of

conflict regarding the women’s rights and concerns. In the following chapter I intend

to introduce my method and theoretical perspectives regarding the analysis of the

primary texts more closely.

Ideas and Analysis

Ideas of representation – being or speaking for

What is a representation? How are women represented? What is the UN seeking by

requesting that women and men should be equally represented? In this chapter I will

introduce some theoretical perspectives on the ideas of representation. Thus I intend

to give an account of the various meanings the concept has and how it has been

interpreted and what implications these understanding have for a feminist project.

The political scientist Hanna Pitkin gives a thorough philosophical analysis of

the concept of representation in her work, The Concept of Representation.61 Her

analytical method and account of the concept of representation and the various

understandings of it in contemporary Western representative democracies have

bestowed me with valuable insights in the analysis of the women’s rights and equality

discourse. Pitkin is inspired by the language philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein and

J.L. Austin and he describes her method as:

60 Offen, 2000. 61 Pitkin, 1967.

27

attending carefully to the way in which we ordinarily use words when we are not

philosophizing or wondering about their meanings. It means not merely attending to

’representation’ itself, but to the entire family of words on the root ’represent’,

including ’representative’ (both noun and adjective), ’represent’, ’misrepresent’,

’misrepresentation’, and ’representational’.62

Pitkin’s aim was to shed some light on the diverse meanings the concept has in

discussions regarding political representation in contemporary Western democracies

i.e. in representative-government systems. Pitkin asserts that in order to reveal the

connotations the concept has, she has “looked beyond political contexts to all areas of

human life in which this family of words is used”, because these understandings and

uses are interrelated.63 She says that in order to understand what political

representation means in the context of representative government we have to consider

how it is used in for example representational art, what is meant by representative

example, how actors represent characters on stage and how contract law treats the

making of representation.

From this point of view, words and concepts are considered to get their

meaning from the various contexts where they are used. It follows that it would be

misleading to talk about a words correct meaning detached from the everyday uses.

However, the etymology of a concept or a word can still say much about its meaning

by describing the history of concepts as to how it has been used. Often it can reveal

assumptions or cultural connotations that are not obvious to contemporary language

users. Pitkin maintains that the concept of representation is very complex but still has

kept its basic meaning since the seventeenth century: “Representation means, as the

words etymological origin indicates, re-presentation, a making present again”.64

However, she states that this has still always meant more than a literal bringing into

presence. Pitkin then tells us that the concept has had the connotations of making

something present again in some sense, that is, as something. And further, what is

presented is neither literally nor actually present at that moment.

Pitkin thus makes clear the fundamental dualism or paradox that is built into

the concept of representation because it is about something being present and not

62 Ibid., p. 6. 63Ibid., p. 6.64 Ibid., p. 7.

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present at the same time.65 I will come back to this philosophical notion of the

concept later in the discussion about political organizing and the making of political

subjects. But let’s first look at Pitkin’s analysis of the various understandings and

interpretations of the idea of representation in representative governments.

The first definition Pitkin gives an account of is the authoritative view. This

understanding refers to formal arrangements “which precede and initiate it;

authorization, the giving of authority to act” (emphasis added).66 Pitkin relates such

an understanding to the writings of Edmund Burke. From this perspective, the

representative can be a King, who has inherited his authority and represent his

subjects or a UN delegate who has been given the authority to speak on behalf of his

or her nation. Another use is where the representation is defined by certain formal

arrangements that follow and determinate it, that is accountability or the holding to

account of the representative for his or her actions. What makes a representative is the

fact that he or she can be held accountable for actions, she or he acts for those who are

represented and they have the power to approve of these actions. Whereas in the

authoritarian view, those who are represented do not have anything to say about how

the representative represents.

Descriptive representation as ’standing for’ occurs when a representative body

consists of an accurate correspondence or resemblance to what or whom it is

supposed to represent. The metaphors often used in this context are that the

representatives should mirror the nation ’without distortions’ or be like a miniature of

the constituency. In this respect Pitkin cites James Wilson, one of the signers of the

American constitution: “that as the portrait is excellent in proportion to its being a

good likeness”, so “the legislature ought to be the most exact transcript of the whole

society”, “the faithful echo of the voices of the people”.67 From this perspective a

representative democracy is only the second best compared to a direct democracy,

which would be preferred as the ideal, where everyone’s voice was heard.

Accordingly, the representatives must consist of a true proportional sampling of the

constituency or the group it is meant to represent. Pitkin takes these arguments further

and tells us to imagine a political system where, instead of elections we would

conduct random samplings as is done in the social sciences, to get a ’truly 65 Ibid., pgs. 8-9. 66 Ibid., p. 11. 67 Ibid., p. 60.

29

representative‘ body in government. Such a change, Pitkin writes: “would mean an

end to political parties, to professional politicians, to the regarding of elections as an

occasion for reviewing policy or authorizing or holding to account”.68

Pitkin introduces yet another perspective of ’standing for’ in the form of the

representative as a ’mouthpiece’ for the voices of the people, she or he would not be

supposed to have any agency of her own. The representative should act instead of the

ones he or she represents as if they were acting themselves, according to the

constituencies wishes, feelings and opinions. The critique she sets forth regarding this

version of representation is that it represents a very static picture of the will of the

people. It seems to imply that “as though everyone has opinions ready on every

possible question, and hence the only political problem is to get accurate information

about a national opinion that already exists”.69

The understanding of representativeness is thus dependant on the purpose of

the representation. In the context of policy or decision-making in a representational

government Pitkin is highly critical of the descriptive model of representation. Perfect

accuracy of correspondence is impossible, she maintains, not only in politics “but also

in representational art, maps, mirror images, samples and miniatures”.70 There is

always a selection of characteristics, so the question of what differences matter

remains open. That in turn, is a political question dependant on interpretations. We

could add here that from this perspective when women unite under the banner

’women’, that is a political act, a political decision to emphasize a difference as

politically relevant in a particular situation.

Pitkin holds the view that representatives in politics should represent as

’acting for’ in terms of accountability. In an existentialist tone she maintains that, “In

any case, a man can only be held to account for what he has done, not for what he

is”.71 The representative should not represent as being like or resemble something

rather he or she should represent or look after the interests of the respective groups he

or she represents, Pitkin writes: “In the realm of action, the representatives

characteristics are relevant only so far as they affect what he does”.72

68 Ibid., p. 80. 69 Ibid., p. 82. 70 Ibid., p. 87. 71 Ibid., p. 90. 72 Ibid., p. 142.

30

Pitkin’s analysis reveals that language is filled with contextual meanings, it

beholds values and perspectives that we take for granted in our daily use. The uses of

one concept can reveal assumptions that are the effects of ideological constructions.

Together these sedimented worldviews and ideologies make up the hegemony of

meaning that is closely tied to power structures. Pitkin does not apply the notion of

hegemony and power in her analysis. She does discuss the concept of interest, but

solely from a language-analytical point of view.

Literary theorist Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak has also theorized and written

about representation from a somewhat different perspective. 73 She makes a

distinction between representation as Vertretung and Darstellung. These concepts are

German and Spivak borrows them from Karl Marx. She defines Vertretung as

’stepping in someone’s place or to tread in someone’s shoes’ and she relates this to

political representation, in terms of speaking for the needs or desires of somebody.

However, Darstellung she defines as re-presentation, a ’placing there’, such as a

proxy or a portrait. She hence emphasizes that the difference between these ideas

must be kept apart, that is, that the complicity between speaking for and portraying

should be kept in mind. Pitkin and Spivak make similar points: representing

something or someone in terms of giving a good or exact example or picture of it, or

representing something as acting on behalf of someone, should be kept apart.

However, Spivak also accentuates the problems regarding representation as ’speaking

in the name of’. She states that “it is not a solution, the idea of the disenfranchised

speaking for themselves, or the radical critics speaking for them; this question of

representation, self-representation, representing others, is a problem”.74 She thus

recommends what she calls a persistent critique to guard against “constructing the

Other simply as an object of knowledge, leaving out the real Others because of the

ones who are getting access into public places due to these waves of benevolence and

so on”.75 Now that I have introduced some theoretical problems regarding the concept

or the idea of political representation I will look at the primary texts, the CEDAW and

73 Spivak, Gayatri, 1988: “Can the subaltern speak?” in ed. Nelson and Crossberg, Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture. University of Illinois Press: Urbana and Chicago. 74 Spivak, 1990: The post-colinal critic, Interviews, Strategies, Dialogues. ed. Sarah Harasym. Routledge: New York & London. p. 63. 75 Spivak, 1990. p. 63.

31

thereafter the PFA. The aim in the next chapters is mapping interpretations and

assumptions of the concept in the documents.

Representation in the CEDAW- opportunities and

stereotypes In this chapter I will give a short survey of how the ideas of representation function in

the CEDAW.76 The word representation does not appear explicitly in the text but the

idea of representation is crucial for the text. Regarding political representation in the

CEDAW, the focus is laid on the right to participate, the right to vote and to be

eligible for election. It does not refer in detail to a wanted outcome or that women

have to be represented in the sense of being present in the legislative assemblies, so

that women’s needs or interests are considered. However, article four opens up the

possibility of special measures aimed at accelerating equality de facto, and it opens

for applying quotas in politics or other areas of society even though quotas are never

mentioned in that context.77 According to the general tone of the CEDAW, women, as

well as men, should instead, it is implied, have the right to be eligible as

representatives in the political system as elsewhere in society. Women should have

the same opportunities as men in society, and shall thus not be discriminated against

because of sexual difference. It is possible to interpret this as saying that sexual

difference shall be made irrelevant in areas of politics and major decision-making in

society. Article 7 thus states that:

States Parties (…) shall ensure women, on equal terms with men, the right:

76 From now on when I refer to the text of the CEDAW I write CEDAW and article or paragraph numer in footnotes or historical introduction which precedes the articles. 77 Article four of the CEDAW has been interpreted as to open up the possibility for implementing temporary special measures such as gender quotas in politics. However, it was not until after 1995 (the PFA) that the method got a success. Drude Dahlerup writes: “On the global level, UN conferences and the CEDAW convention have been espessially important for the issue of women’s political representation.” However, she emphasizes that the PFA may be seen as a discursive shift in relation to women in politics. In that contexts Dahlerup mentions gender quotas: “The Beijing Platform has been very influential, and women’s movements all over the world have attempted to give the controversial demand for gender quotas legitimacy by referring to the Platform for Action.” Dahlerup. 2006: ”Introduction” In Dahlerup et al. Women, Quotas and Politics. Routledge: London & New York. p. 4.

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(a) To vote in all elections and public referenda and to be eligible for election to all

publicly elected bodies.

(b) To participate in the formulation of government policy and the implementation thereof

and to hold public office and perform all public functions at all levels of government.78

Another testimony for the status of sexual difference regarding the concept of

representation in the CEDAW can be found in article five which deals with

’stereotyped roles for men and women’. This relates to the theme of enlarging the

understandings about the concept of human rights to give “formal recognition to the

influence of culture and tradition on restricting women’s enjoyment of their

fundamental rights”.79 Article five of the CEDAW hence states that the States Parties

shall take all appropriate measures:

To modify the social and cultural patterns of conduct of men and women, with a view

to achieving the elimination of prejudices and customary and all other practices which

are based on the idea of the inferiority or the superiority of either of the sexes or on

stereotyped roles for men and women.80

That is, the States Parties should strive to change the way persons behave or act if it is

deemed stereotypical.81 In addition, negative prejudices regarding either sex should be

eliminated. It is not specified further in the document what should be regarded as a

negative stereotyping or unwanted conduct. The reason for being evasive can be that

it should be open for discussion and interpretation. However, it leaves the question

about sexual difference partly open, there is negative and false cultural difference and

78 CEDAW, article 7. 79 CEDAW, Historical intruduction. 80 CEDAW, article 4. 81 Stereotype: An over-simplified mental image of (usually) some category of person, INSTITUTION, or event which is shared, in essential features, by large numbers of people. The categories may be broad (Jews, gentiles, white men, black men) or narrow (women’s libbers, Daughters of the American Revolution), and a category may be subject to two or more quite different stereotypes. Stereotypes are commonly, but not neccesarily, accompanied by prejudice, i.e. by a favourable or unfavourable predisposition towards any member of the category in question. Bullock and Stallybrass ed. 1977: The Fontana Dictionary of Modern Thought. Fontana Books: London.

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then there is some natural or even positive and preferred sexual difference that

persists. The question is how to draw the line between wanted and unwanted sexual

difference, or natural and cultural. This can be related to Pitkin’s and Spivak’s

discussions about the concept of representation. Stereotypes of men or women are

representations of men and women and they are often regarded as bad, or false, or

simplified. Hence, the idea of stereotypical representations of the sexes implies that

there is something to represent that exist prior to the representation. The concept of

mis-representation (stereotyping) does not contest the category that is represented.

According to this line of argument, the categories of men and women are not thought

of as constructed in the act of representation; rather they stand outside the sphere of

representation. The sexual difference or the original ideas of men and women, that

exists but is absent at the time of representation is that which is represented. The idea

of stereotypical views or descriptions of men and women thus imply that there are

original or real men and women who are distorted in the cultural representation.82 As

a consequence of such arguments, what is regarded as socially constructed or

influences of culture and tradition, and what is left to ’nature’, remains undetermined.

But there is still a line drawn between natural and cultural where natural sexual

difference is unproblematic, even as something that is aspired or strived for.

In addition to the natural or cultural dichotomy regarding representations of

the two sexes there is also an indicator of sameness in the CEDAW. The principle of

the elimination of prejudices can be interpreted as a sameness principle; women

should enjoy the same rights as men on the grounds of being like men. Because men

and women really, underneath all the cultural layers are the same, equally human,

then they should be entitled to the same rights. That interpretation is in line with the

principle of the universalism of human rights. Human rights are universal and

inalienable to every human and the quality of being human unites all the ones eligible

for those rights. The fact of being human is the smallest common denominator of all

82 In this context I would like to refer to Slavoj Zizek’s critique of the “prejudice discourse” in modern, liberal (multucultural) democracies. Zizek writes: “Let us examine anti-semitism. It is not enough to say that we must liberate ourselves of so-called ’anti-Seminitic’ prejudices and learn to see jews as they really are(...). We must confront ourselves with how the ideological figure of the ’Jew’ is invested with our unconscious desire (...). The proper answer to anti-Semitism is therefor not ’Jews are really not like that’ but ’the anti-Semitic idea of Jew has nothing to with Jews; the ideological figure of Jew is a way to stitch up the inconsistency of our own ideological system’. Zizek, Slavoj. 1989: The Sublime Object of Ideology. Verso: London & New York. p. 48.

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the different types of individuals or groups joining in on the idea of universal human

rights. The status of the sexual difference in this context leads to the interpretation

that cultural difference is the source of the inequality between the sexes. According to

this have women been discriminated against because of false prejudices, thus the

hierarchy between the sexes is grounded in a misrepresentation of women.

Now it is time to look at the PFA that appeared in the UN political arena some

sixteen years later.

Representation in the PFA – voices, interests and resource

A worldwide movement towards democratization has opened up the political process in

many nations, but the popular participation of women in key decision-making as full

and equal partners with men, particularly in politics, has not yet been achieved.83

While appreciating the democratization after the end of the cold war, the PFA

emphasizes the inequality evident in the underrepresentation of women regarding

politics. It seems that the PFA rests on ideas that increasing women’s representation

in decision-making will change (other) women’s situation to the better and there is an

assumption about women’s common interests. The chapter on women and decision-

making states:

Equality in political decision-making performs a leverage function without which it is

highly unlikely that a real integration of the equality dimension in government policy-

making is feasible. (…) Women’s equal participation in decision-making is not only a

demand for simple justice or democracy but can also be seen as a necessary condition

for women’s interest to be taken into account.84

The uses of the concept of representation in the PFA regarding political representation

reveals that it is in accordance with Pitkin’s analysis of proportional representation,

according to which the decision-making assemblies are supposed to mirror the

society, which will in turn give the institutions of decision-making increased

83 PFA, paragraph 15. p. 23.84 PFA, paragraph 181, p. 109.

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legitimacy. The idea that ’equality in decision-making performs a leverage function’

bears with it assumptions about female politicians who identify themselves with

women or look at themselves as representing other women. The PFA thus represents

sex as an essential category and does not take account of other social categories or

identities that politicians may have, not to mention their possible political or

ideological standpoints or views. That leads back to Pitkin’s discussion about the

concept of representation in politics. Her criticism resembles the critique of ’identity

politics’, which has to do with which identities matter and what differences are

politically relevant?85 She writes: ”Think of the legislature as a pictorial

representation or a representative sample of the nation, and you will almost certainly

concentrate on its composition rather than its activities”.86 However, that is what is

done in the PFA, namely, a connection is made between women as a category and

women’s interests.

The idea of a gender-balance is another theme that gets great attention and

paragraph 181 states that:

Achieving the goal of equal participation of women and men in decision-making will

provide a balance that more accurately reflects the composition of society and is

needed in order to strengthen democracy and promote its proper functioning.87

Equal participation of the sexes is meant to balance society. The demand is not

surprising if one considers how societies tend to be segregated by sex in terms of

political power, economical situation and responsibility. In 1995 globally the

percentage of women members of parliaments was less than 12%.88 In addition to

drawing attention to the skewed composition of national parliaments, the emphasis on

gender-balance makes sexual difference politically relevant. The message of the PFA

is thus that not only have women been discriminated against in terms of being

85 “The laden phrase ’identity politics’ has come to signify a wide range of political activity and theorizing founded in the shared experience of injustice of members of certain social groups. Rather than organizing soleley around belief systems, programmatic manifestos, or party affiliation, identity political formations typically aim to secure the political freedom of a specific constituency marginalized within its larger context.” Heyes, Cressida, 2007: “Identity Politics”. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/identity-politics/, accessed 18. May 2010. 86 Pitkin, 1967. p. 226. 87 PFA, paragraph 181, p. 109. 88 Online Women In Politics. 2009. http://www.onlinewomeninpolitics.org/statistics.htm#wip, accessed on 18. May 2010.

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excluded from decision-making; their difference is required to balance the masculine

bias. The PFA harbors ideas of women as a resource in the common project of

attaining economic growth and peace:

Recognizing that the achievement and maintenance of peace and security are a

precondition for economic and social progress, women are increasingly establishing

themselves as central actors in a variety of capacities in the movement of humanity for

peace. Their full participation in decision-making, conflict prevention and resolution

and all other peace initiatives is essential to the realization of lasting peace.89

Women’s capacities to resolve conflicts are regarded as a resource for the world

community in the struggle for peace. This view gives some connotations to an idea of

a loving and understanding mother that instead of using force or violence sits down

with the arguing partners to talk things over. This line of thought is not new as there is

a history of arguments relating women and women’s nature or their role as primary

caregivers and pacifism.90 The arguments of the PFA could also be related to feminist

theorizing about women’s standpoints as different from men’s and theories about the

ethics of care, developed by the psychologist Carol Gilligan.91 She maintains that

women develop a different kind of ethical standpoint which is more context based

with a sensitivity for situations rather that ethics that is rooted in principles of justice.

Gilligan was a great influence for the standpoint feminism of the 1980s and 1990s and

it is possible that ideas about women as a resource found in the PFA and ideas about

women’s and men’s different socialization, and thus different perspectives on ethics,

are related.

From the paragraph above it is also possible to interpret women’s

representation as a way to attain a women’s perspective in order to reach the even

higher goal of ’economic and social progress’. This can be related to a general

demand for, and a discourse about, economic growth and progress in the aftermath of

the cold war and the de-politicization of matters previously considered political.

Neither is this idea new, Enlightenment thinkers did express this kind of ideas; 89 PFA, paragraph 23. p. 25. 90 Karen Offen cites the editors of Englishwoman’s Review from who in 1870 wrote: “Our moral is—give women all over Europe political power, and a great peaceful influence will thus be created, which will immediately tend to diminish the frequency of wars, and may ultimately put an end to war altogether”. Offen, 2000. p. 145. 91 Gilligan, Carol, 1982: In a different voice, psychological theory and women’s development. Harvard University Press: Cambridge, Massachussettes.

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Charles Fourier did for example connect the advancement of the condition of women

with social progress.92 Ideas such as these have thus appeared in various times and

contexts before. Arguments like these do not view women’s demands for equal

participation and more power as antagonistic to men’s interests and the general

common good, rather as its prerequisites. However, the same tensions exist in the

PFA as in the CEDAW between ideas about women’s perspectives and the value of

women’s difference on one hand, and the struggle against stereotypical images of

women on the other. Paragraph 33 discusses the responsibility of media and their

misrepresentation of women. This emphasis on stereotypes has parallels in the radical

feminists’ criticism of the porn industry for giving false and demeaning

representations of women.93 Further, this relates to Spivak’s theory of Darstellung,

which is representing as portraying in some particular way.

In the past 20 years, the world has seen an explosion in the field of communications.

With advances in computer technology and satellite and cable television, global access

to information continues to increase and expand, creating new opportunities for the

participation of women in communications and the mass media and for the

dissemination of information about women. However, global communication networks

have been used to spread stereotyped and demeaning images of women for narrow

commercial and consumerist purposes. Until women participate equally in both the

technical and decision-making areas of communications and the mass media, including

the arts, they will continue to be misrepresented and awareness of the reality of

women’s lives will continue to be lacking. The media have a great potential to promote

the advancement of women and the equality of women and men by portraying women

and men in a non-stereotypical, diverse and balanced manner, and by respecting the

dignity and worth of the human person.94

I have cited the whole paragraph because it reveals how different uses of the concept

of representation are connected to understandings of equality. It is emphasized that

men control the media and that they ’misrepresent’ women and women’s lives. So it

seems that only women can represent, in the meaning of Darstellung (portraying),

92 Offen, 2000. p. 46. 93 Toril Moi also ascribes this view to Gayle Rubin and the aforementioned essay “The traffic in women “ from 1975. Moi states: “When Rubin wishes to ’get rid of gender’, she wishes for a society without any sexual stereotypes. Gender in her view is a negative term referring to arbitrary and oppressive social norms imposed upon sex and sexuality.” Moi. 1999. p. 28. 94 PFA, paragraph 33. p. 28.

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women in an undistorted manner and that is why they have to be equally represented,

as in being spoken for or speak for, i.e. Vertretung, in the media institutions to act for

the interests of women. The idea of a balance between the two sexes surfaces in this

context too, however, the emphasis is laid on representation in a non-stereotypical

manner.

In the analysis of the PFA I have identified a view of sexual difference as

complementary, that is, women’s perspectives are viewed as a resource for the

common good to balance the masculine bias. Ideas of common womanhood can also

be found, an a-priori or a pre-political solidarity between women, and further, that

women can speak for the interests of other women because women make up a natural

category. In the following chapter I will attend to the concept of equality.

Ideas of equality – paradoxes of feminism

This far I have applied a conflict perspective to the history of international women’s

movements. I have argued that the women’s movements were divided in terms of

ideological differences that affected views about definitions of equality between the

sexes, which has in turn had an impact on UN gender-equality discourse. As I have

shown, this goes back to the League of Nations and the early internationalist women’s

movements. Historian Joan Scott, who has studied French feminism from the

Revolution of 1789 and onwards, relates this conflict to a paradox inherent in the

feminist project. She poses the question why it has “been so difficult for so long for

women to realize the Revolution’s (and every subsequent republic’s) promise of

universal liberty and equality, of political rights for all?”95 She maintains that to

answer that question it is not enough to look at the women’s movements heroic

struggle, undeserved betrayals or strategic mistakes. Instead, she says, the answer

requires “reading the repetitions and conflicts of feminism as symptoms of

contradictions in the political discourses that produced feminism and that it appealed

to and challenged at the same time”.96

The discourses Scott is referring to are those of individualism, individual 95 Scott, Joan, 1996: Only Paradoxes to Offer. Harvard University Press: Cambridge & London. p. 2-3. 96 Ibid., p. 3

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rights, and social obligation, which were used to organize the institutions of

democratic citizenship. The initial trauma is the fact that women were excluded from

the very dawning of the ideas of equality and liberty for all, the ideas of universal,

natural rights that lay as a ground for liberal democracy. Scott argues that this matter

goes beyond the conflict between a universal principle and an exclusionary practice to

“the more intractable problem of sexual difference”.97

When exclusion was legitimated by reference to the different biologies of women and

men, “sexual difference” was established not only as a natural fact, but also as an

ontological basis for social and political differentiation. In the age of democratic

revolutions, “women” came into being as political outsiders through the discourse of

sexual difference. Feminism was a protest against women’s political exclusion; its goal

was to eliminate “sexual difference” in politics, but it had to make its claims on behalf

of “women”. To the extent that it acted for “women”, feminism produced the “sexual

difference” it sought to eliminate.98

This passage describes the conflict that Scott refers to as the feminist paradox. The

paradox of the need to both accept and refuse sexual difference came to be the

constitutive condition of feminism. This can be related to the fact that “historically

Western feminism is constituted by the discursive practices of democratic politics that

have equated individuality with masculinity.”99 Western liberal democracy is founded

on ideas about the uniqueness of the autonomous individual on one hand and on the

other hand a common ground on which to base the political community. This

common ground came to be rooted in the ideas of universal natural rights.

Individuality is grounded in difference, what marks an individual, is his

difference from every other individual, that is, from others. However, in the

construction of the political arena, based on equality, the difference between

individuals had to be made irrelevant for the sake of the community. Men were

regarded equal in terms of their sameness. But the problem of difference remained,

and as Scott argues, “the infinite variety of the self/other difference was reduced to a

matter of sexual difference; maleness was equated with individuality and, femaleness

97 Ibid., p. 3.98 Ibid., p. 3.99Ibid., p. 5.

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with otherness, in a fixed, hierarchical, and immobile opposition.”100

In august 1789, during the French Revolution, The Assemblée nationale

constituante adopted the Déclaration des droits de l'Homme et du citoyen. Two years

later, Olympe de Gouges, frustrated with the exclusion of women, published her

version Déclaration des droits de la femme et de la citoyenne. Olympe de Gouges’

declaration paralleled those of the Declaration of the Rights of Man, however, she

replaced ’Man’ with ’Woman and Man’. She also emphasized women’s rights to free

public speech as a key to their freedom. As Scott mentions that the document is

compensatory—adding women where they have been left out—but also a critical

challenge to the universality of the term ’Man’.101 The paradox of this act is that if

’woman’ is not specified, she is excluded from the universal idea of ’man’ but in

specifying her, the sexual difference is emphasized. In addition, ’Woman’s’ inclusion

requires that her difference from ’Man’ is acknowledged in order to be rendered

irrelevant in the context of political rights.102 This is a paradox that has persisted in

the history of women’s rights, according to Scott. 103

The UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights is sex-neutral in its all

inclusive and universalizing language. The sex-neutral equality strategy in the

drafting of the Declaration of Human Rights was radical at the time as women in

many UN Member States still lacked basic civil and political rights. The strategy can

be used to block any legislation that supports inequality directly and explicitly.

However, feminists have reacted against the male bias of the rights of the

International Bill of Rights, as well the use of male-centered language.104 As an

example of this bias the Declaration uses male pronouns in articles 10, 12, 13, 17, 18,

21 and 25 as well as beginning with the aspiration of brotherhood.105 In addition,

100 Ibid., p. 8.101 Ibid., p. 42. 102 Ibid.103 Scott has written about how this same conflict or tension has influenced contemporary debates about women’s political representation in France. Her analysis of the parité movement in France in the 1990’s reveals that they argued for 50/50 divide of electoral seats for men and women in the name of a french republican universalism. True universalism was, according to the advocates of the parité movement, one which confirmed the duality of humankind, that it was made up of two sexes. Women were not defined as an interest group with an essential identity, they were found in all groups. Scott, 2004: “French Universalism in the Nineties”. In Differences, a journal of Feminist Cultural Studies. 15:2. 104 Kuovo, 2004. p. 96-97. 105 See Kouvo, p. 95. Also The United Nations, note 10 above.

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feminists have criticized it for its inability to promote ’substantial equality’ between

the sexes. Moreover, it does not question the legal right’s framework in any way but

only include women as rights holders.106 Kuovo maintains that:

The problem with this type of woman-centered human rights instruments is that their

dominant conception of equality is based on … comparative standard that entitles

women to rights, opportunities, and benefits that similarly situated men enjoy.

Understood in this way, gender equality forecloses the possibility of contesting the

baseline of men’s experience which constitutes the status quo, and glosses over the

inequalities among men that it reproduces among women. Therefore, the concept of

equality ultimately legitimates and endorses existing arrangements of power by

advocating for women’s participation in them.107

The concept of equality has traveled across a variety of borders and it has been given

different meaning in various situations. However, all this traveling leaves traces: “The

concept of gender equality is always broadened, narrowed down or even submitted to

other goals”. And further: “In each case, the changes in meaning are strongly

connected to the political positions that are taken and the ideological stands (feminist

or other) that are defended”.108 Gender equality has been pinned down to specific

labels and narrowed down to mean non-discrimination in a legal sense, equal

opportunities of men and women in the labor market or reduced to women’s

numerical representation in politics.109 Often these reductive understandings of the

concept of equality involve ideas about the primary causes of inequality and the roots

of discrimination. Now it is time to turn to the primary texts of this thesis in order to

scrutinize their use of the concept equality.

Equality in the CEDAW - rights and opportunities The CEDAW is divided in three general themes of which the legal status of women

receives the broadest attention. The other two are women’s civil rights issues, and the

106 Kouvo, 2004. p. 97. 107 Ibid., p. 106.108 Lombardo, Meier and Verloo, 2009: “Strecthing and bending gender equality” in The Discursive Politics of Gender Equality. Routledge/ECPR Studies in European Political Science: New York. p. 2. 109Ibid., p. 4.

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aim of enlarging the understanding of human rights. These areas are all considered

interrelated and closely tied to the ’equality between women and men’, which serves

as both a basis for the articles of the convention and their goal. In the CEDAW

convention, equality is mainly defined as anti-discrimination. Anti-discriminations is

further defined as:

(…) any distinction, exclusion or restriction made on the basis of sex which has the

effect or purpose of impairing or nullifying the recognition, enjoyment or exercise by

women, irrespective of their marital status, on a basis of equality of men and women,

of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, civil or

any or other field.110

The first article sets the tone for how to interpret equality. It is in line with the

equalitarian feminist ideas of the concept of equality, according to which no

distinction shall be made between the sexes regarding human rights and they should

be treated equally. The human rights that women should enjoy on equal grounds with

men are those set forth in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which build on

ideas about natural rights: “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and

rights” (emphasis added). The second article emphasizes legal rights and equal

treatment regarding regulations, customs and practices. All laws, regulations and

customs that are restrictive for women gaining the same access to society should be

eliminated or modified. States Parties are also obliged to take all “appropriate

measures, including legislation, to ensure the full development and advancement of

women” in all fields, especially in the political, social, economic and the cultural. It

thus stresses both elimination of discriminative laws and practices and an active

policy for the advancement of women.

Much emphasis is, however, put on the legal side, legal equality and equal

treatment. In addition to that the development and advancement of women is regarded

as a means to, or purpose for, “guaranteeing them the exercise and enjoyment of

human rights and fundamental freedoms on a basis of equality with men”.111 This can

be interpreted as follows: Men have human rights on a basis on their natural,

inalienable and essential rights because that is how the idea of ’man’ is constituted.

Women on the other hand should also be able to enjoy these rights of men, however, 110 CEDAW, article 1. 111 CEDAW, article 3.

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on a basis ’of equality with men’, where men are the standard and the point of

reference from which the rights are defined.

Regarding the measures to eliminate discrimination against women in the

political and public life, the principles of equal opportunities and the rights to

participate are emphasized. Women should not be legally excluded from partaking in

decision-making and in the formulation of government policies, that is; they should be

eligible for election and have the right to vote. The equal treatment principle is thus a

leading norm in the CEDAW along with equal access to various areas of society and

institutions like health care and education and equal opportunities for advancement in

society. It does not emphasize structural changes up to a high grade, but it does speak

for women’s equal access to society on equal grounds with men, while ’society’ in

general is regarded as relatively neutral or just. However, the CEDAW also expresses

an implicit view of women’s difference as a resource for the common good. The

preamble of the convention states that:

Recalling that discrimination against women violates the principles of equality of rights

and respect for human dignity, is an obstacle to the participation of women, on equal

terms with men, in the political, social, economic and cultural life of their countries,

hampers the growth of the prosperity of society and the family and makes more

difficult the full development of the potentialities of women in the service of their

countries and of humanity.112

As my analysis has made clear, the understandings of the concept of equality in the

CEDAW are multifaceted, sometimes contradictive and often work as both a

prerequisite for the common good or a result of a better society. It is thus both a goal

and a means to other aims. How then is the concept of equality conceptualized and

filled with meaning in the context of the PFA?

Equality in the PFA - the concept of ’gender’ The PFA stresses the importance on women’s empowerment and participation in

decision-making as a means to or a sign of equality. Paragraph 13 of the Beijing

Declaration states that:

112 CEDAW, preamble: paragraph 6.

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Women’s empowerment and their full participation on the basis of equality in all

spheres of society, including participation in the decision-making process and access to

power, are fundamental for the achievement of equality, development and peace.113

The use of the concept of equality goes in circles in this statement; equality is the

necessary condition for achieving equality. It is possible to interpret this as two

different uses of the concept; equality as equal opportunities and equal treatment is a

prerequisite for ’substantial equality’, which would be measured as not only

opportunities but also actual participation. The easiest way however, to measure

participation in decision-making is by counting heads and that leads to discussions

regarding representation. The use of gender quotas is sometimes connected to the

emphasis in the PFA on gender-parity in representation in legislative assemblies as a

prerequisite for, and a sign of, democratization.114

The PFA emphasizes a harmonious partnership between men and women in

numerous paragraphs. The first paragraph of the platform, in a chapter called

“Mission Statement”, mentions that “a transformed partnership based on equality

between men and women is a condition for people-centered sustainable

development”.115 The idea of a ’harmonious partnership’ gives connotations to a

happy marriage metaphor as the key to a better society. It also implies that men and

women are different but they should be equal and work together for a better world. It

presumes a sexual difference that has to be taken into account of when organizing

society so that it can realize its full potential.

Because of the various uses and interpretations of the concept of gender and

its relation to sexual difference the goal of ’gender equality’ becomes obscure and

hard to grasp practically. Gender is sometimes used as a substitute for biological sex

and sometimes to refer to socially constructed gender roles. As for the first notion,

when the term is used as a substitute for sex, paragraph 104 gives a clear example.

“Many drug therapy protocols and other medical treatments and interventions

administered to women are based on research on men without any investigation and

adjustment for gender differences”.116 (emphasis added). While paragraph 83 (a) for

113 The Beijing Declaration, paragraph 13. p. 8. 114 Dahlerup, Drude and Friedenvall, Lenita. 2008: Kvotering. Pocketbiblioteket SNS Förlag: Stockholm. p. 8. 115 The Beijing Declaration,paragraph 1, p. 17. 116 PFA, paragraph 104. p. 61-62.

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example, seems to imply a social construction of gender, where governments and

educational authorities are encouraged to “elaborate recommendations and develop

curricula, textbooks and teaching aids free of gender-based stereotypes for all levels

of education.”117.

Is the aim to balance what is regarded as ’femininity’ and ’masculinity’

meaning values or ’ways of conduct’, or is the aim to balance the power relations

between men and women; people differentiated depending on if they have ’female’ or

’male’ written in their passport? One example from the PFA, contrasts the tension in,

on the one hand, talking about women as a group in an unproblematic and normative

manner, and on the other hand, setting as a goal to eliminate gender stereotypes that

are considered constraining for individuals. Paragraph 27 mentions, for example, the

social construction of gender: ”In many countries, the differences between women’s

and men’s achievements and activities are still not recognized as the consequences of

socially constructed gender roles rather than immutable biological differences”. It is

possible to articulate a conflict that arises here: Individuals should not be constrained

or judged by their sex, and gender stereotypes are negative. However, men and

women are positioned differently regarding needs, social roles and interests and

therefore political decisions must be ’gender balanced’.

My analysis of both the PFA and the CEDAW reveals that there is an obvious

conflict between different conceptions of sexual difference or gender difference in

both documents although the tension is exemplified in a somewhat different

terminology. In the next section I will turn to a discussion where I compare the

documents and discuss their political and philosophical implications.

Discussion Contested concepts and ideological differences

As has been stated above, the CEDAW focuses on equality of opportunities, i.e. equal

treatment and anti-discrimination and the PFA conceptualizes substantial equality in

117 PFA, paragraph 83. p. 52.

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an increased manner as equal results. Hilkka Pietilä exemplifies this shift in her recent

historical survey of women’s movements and the UN. She writes:

In this exchange with the UN, women’s approaches and perspectives have become

increasingly comprehensive and holistic. Equality between women and men, which has

been very much an aim on its own merits, has become a baseline requirement for equal

participation of women in decision making. Women’s empowerment and gender

mainstreaming form a new formula, which goes much beyond ordinary equality as a

goal. However, mainstreaming must not result in “malestreaming”, that is women’s

integration into men’s world. In order to change the patriarchal culture women must

speak in their own voice, and act on the basis of their own experiences and values.118

(emphasis added)

Pietilä describes what she considers a move away from women’s integration in a male

biased world to a more substantial idea of equality in the forms of a change in the

political and social order. Ordinary equality means here that women should have the

same legal rights as men. This has in turn become a means to another end, which can

be termed “substantial equality” which takes into account women’s own experiences

and values. This quote from Pietilä, who has been involved in working within the

international institutions of gender equality, has been crucial for my analysis. Her

articulation reveals that equality is a contested concept and by referring to women’s

own voice she is hinting at an understanding of the concept of representation that

assumes difference, identity, political subjectivity and interests.

Although the PFA is supposed to build on the ideas and aspirations from

CEDAW and gives no explicit signs of an ideological shift, it entails a major change

of strategy in the work towards equality, from a ’woman-centered’ approach to

’gender-mainstreaming’. The emphasis on women’s political representation has

increased from the CEDAW to the PFA and there is a clear demand for more direct

actions in comparison to the equal opportunity and equal treatment perspective of the

former.

The PFA has a clear conception of women as a structurally disadvantaged

group and that the organizations of society are biased. In this respect Kouvo has

118 Pietilä, 2007. p. 81. Pietilä worked as the Secretary-General of the Finnish UN Association from 1963-1990, and thereafter as an independent researcher and writer. She has participated in various capacities in all of the UN World Conferences on Women.

47

identified a growing trend within the UN since the 1980’s to identify broad categories

of vulnerable or structurally disadvantaged groups. These are groups such as children,

indigenous people or women and further sub-groups within those groups, which

include those at even more risk of being disadvantaged.119 This strategy has given

attention to structural inequalities facing different groups, but as Kuovo writes: “the

focus on a specific group, however, can also lead to a focus on that group as a

problem, rather than the underlying reasons for discrimination or the

marginalization”.120 In the context of equality politics this insight has in turn led to a

move away from inclusion-based woman-centered strategies to gender-strategies.

Since the Beijing World Conference the gender mainstreaming approach has

become the preferred strategy for equality between the sexes in the UN system.

Feminist development practitioners initially developed the principle in the 1970s but

it was not until the 1995 Conference in Beijing that it was launched within the UN.121

The concept of gender was introduced at that time and came to replace the notion of

sex. According to Kuovo, this shift in terms of concepts was one of the main

controversies during the conference and its preceding preparation.122 In this context,

Kuovo refers to a “gender turn” in UN equality politics.123 On the relation between

feminist theory and scholarship on the one hand, and political realities on the other

hand, the choice of language and the difficulties of translation have brought

complications in the UN gender equality system and the international legal frame

discourse. There have been difficulties in interpretation of the concept of gender in

the international arena because it has different connotations in different languages. It

does not have the same meaning of sexual difference in every language or culture.124

The sex/gender distinction in the English language was developed in the 1950s

and 1960s by psychiatrists who were working with inter-sexed and transsexual

patients suffering of a sense of being trapped in a wrong body, with a feeling that the

sex of their body did not correspond to the sex of their mind.125 The model soon

119 Kouvo, 2004. p. 101. 120 Ibid., p. 102. 121 Walby, Sylvia. 2005: “Introduction: Comparative Gender Mainstreaming in a Global Era” in International Feminist Journal of Politics, 7:4 December 2005. pp. 453-2470. 122 Kuovo, 2004. p. 152. 123 Ibid., p.171. 124 Ibid., p. 167. 125 Moi, Toril, 1999: What Is a Woman? And Other Essays. Oxford University Press: Oxford & New York. p. 21.

48

became a part of feminist theorizing that challenged the natural or biological

determinism of women’s subordination, and it was part of the discussion about

defining the “causes of women’s oppression”.126 Gayle Rubin was among the first

feminist theorists to use the sex/gender perspective to describe the subordination of

women. In 1975 she gave as a preliminary definition that “a ’sex/gender system’ is

the set of arrangement by which a society transforms biological sexuality into

products of human activity, and in which these transformed sexual needs are

satisfied“.127 Rubin thus used the distinction to emphasize the social constructivist

view on gender-identity or sex-roles and the connection to systems of power and

domination. The sex/gender model became a paradigm within feminist theorizing but

then came to be criticized for reproducing the nature culture dichotomy and for

veiling the fact that “sex” is always already “gendered”.128 However, this aspect of the

concept of gender tends to get lost or changes meaning when integrated into an

institutionalized gender equality agenda exemplified in documents such as the PFA.

Regarding the application of the gender-mainstreaming strategy in practice,

Kuovo has identified two approaches; the integrative approach and the transformative

approach. The former means adding a gender perspective to the existent framework

and the latter to transforming the agenda and structure of the framework with gender

equality as a goal. Kuovo shows that the former approach has been preferred both

because it is regarded easier, and according to her, it poses less threat. The threat can,

in her view, be exemplified by the notion that ideas about how men and women

actually are, is socially constructed.129 That interpretation is in line with my analysis

of how ideas of equality and representation function within the CEDAW as well as

the PFA, namely they rely on somewhat contradictive understandings sexual

difference; whether it is socially constructed or not and up to what grade, as well as,

how to handle cultural respective natural difference.

With the gender-turn in UN equality politics, the aim was to emphasize the

social construction of gender-roles. However, the PFA still emphasizes, gender-

balance in political assemblages and decision-making. These changes in strategies and 126 Rubin, Gayle, 1975: “The Traffic in Women, notes on the ’Political Economy ’of Sex” in Toward an Anthropology of Women ed. Rayna R. Reiter. Monthly Review Press: New York. p. 157. 127 Ibid. p. 159. 128 Butler, Judith, 1990: Gender Trouble. Routledge: New York. 129 Kouvo, 2004. p. 178.

49

the diffuse use of the concept of gender in the latter document are symptoms of a

tension regarding what is viewed as the problem of difference in the context and

discourse of women’s rights and human rights. In some contexts in the PFA gender

seems to stand for sex, or the biological fact of being female or male and in other

contexts it stands for masculine and feminine as in gendered stereotypes. However, in

feminist theory as in general language use it also stands for individual ’gender

identity’ as opposed to biological sex.130

The human rights discourse derives from a humanistic, rationalistic and

individualistic model of democracy and governance. Historian Lynn Hunt states:

Human rights require three interlocking qualities: rights must be natural (inherent in

human beings); equal (the same for everyone); and universal (applicable everywhere).

For rights to be human rights, all humans everywhere in the world must possess them

equally and only because of their status as human beings.131

However, the ideas of what it is to be a human is a normative idea rooted in

Enlightenment discourse and build on universalism that is constituted by exclusion.

The tension between human rights and women’s rights is an example of that and can

be related to a conflict that has persisted in the history of women’s movements and

women’s rights discourse on sameness versus difference. The question whether

women should claim the right to be treated like men or be treated differently because

they are different and thus have other needs. This could amount to an explicitly

articulated conflict. However, I would like to suggest a different reading of the

conflict, which has to do with how women have been constructed discursively as

political subjects in this international arena and thus how so called women’s interests

have been articulated. The discourses on gender-equality have been stuck in

metaphysical either/or, all/nothing, dichotomies where the emphasis has been on

ontology of sexual difference, and, discussions whether the difference is preferable or

not.

The tension regarding how to understand and conceptualize difference results,

130 Toril Moi has made this point regarding the various uses of the concept of gender. Discussing the application of the concept in US laws and interpretation in courts she writes that “it is not clear what gender means: Is it stereotypes or is it lived experience? The same ambiguity runs through all contemporary ’gender theories’. Feminists want to get rid of stereotypes, but nobody has ever proposed giving up lived experience.” Moi, 1999. p. 110. 131 Hunt, Lynn, 2008: Inventing Human Rights. W.W. Norton & Co: New York London p. 20.

50

among other things, in contradictive and vague argumentations for increasing

women’s representation in politics: Is increased representation a goal in itself or is it a

mean to another goal? This reveals a foundational question concerning gender (read

women’s) quotas in politics. In this respect I would like to cite the political theorist

Anne Phillips who has theorized on gender politics and representation:

Changing the gender composition of elected assemblies is a major, and necessary

challenge to the social arrangements which have systematically placed women in a

subordinate position; and whether we conceive of politics as the representation of

interest or need (or both), a closer approximation to gender parity is one minimal

condition for transforming the political agenda. But changing the gender composition

cannot guarantee that women’s needs or interests will be addressed. The only secure

guarantees would be those grounded in an essential identity of women, or those arrived

at through mechanisms of accountability to women organized as a separate group.132 (emphasis added)

Phillips considers both of these ’guarantees’ unrealistic. Essentialism has been a great

contention within feminist discourse during the past decades and Phillips is here

taking a stand against essentialism.133 But what about the second alternative; women

organized as a separate group? Can UN gender politics with its conventions,

declarations and plans of action be seen as a political move in organizing women as a

group in the struggle for issues agreed upon in a deliberative mode in a public sphere?

That question leads to the core of this thesis, that is, that the naturalized language of

UN equality discourse veils the political dimension of how the concept of equality is

filled with meaning.

Sixteen years passed between the writing and publication of the documents,

which from a historical perspective may not be a long time. However, in the years

between 1979 and 1995 some important events took place. Two rather different things

that nevertheless can be interpreted as important factors in the evolvement of an

international gender equality discourse, are the end of the cold war and the fact that

academic feminism became institutionalized in women’s or gender studies

departments in universities around the world.

132 Phillips, Anne, 1995: The Politics of presence. Clarendon Press: Oxford. p. 82. 133 On this debate see: ed. Schor, Naomi et al. 1994: The Essential difference. Indiana University Press: Bloomington and Indianapolis.

51

The political theorist Chantal Mouffe has, regarding the question of the

geopolitical shift in power, analyzed how western societies have been undergoing a

“deep process of redefinition of their collective identities and experiencing the

establishment of new political frontiers”.134 The tendency has to do with the collapse

of communism and the disappearance of the democracy/totalitarianism opposition on

“the eve of the twenty-first century”.135 This has led western democracies into an

identity crisis that can be defined by a moralization of issues that used to be political

and an essentialization of identities. In addition to that, Mouffe recognizes a

consensus driven anti-political move towards rationalistic specialist governance.136

This hypothesis is in line with what Sari Kouvo has identified as one effect of the

gender-mainstreaming strategy within institutions of the UN and its human rights

instruments. That is, it has lead to a de-politization and institutionalization of the

equality discourse and the strategy has become an aim in itself.

The analysis that Mouffe has made, and which I find plausible, points to a

historical change or a discursive shift. However, another side of my argument is that

there is a persistency of conflicts in the history of women’s movements and the

human rights projects of transnational organizations. That argument revolves around

the idea that these concepts; equality and representation have been a site of contested

meanings from at least the dawning of the internationalization of women’s

movements. This further signifies that various interpretations imply different

perspectives and understandings of sexual difference. In the next chapter I will

discuss some of the implications of a consensus driven international feminism with

the focus on ideas of universalism and the creation of political frontiers.

Universalism and the creation of a feminist subject Judith Butler has questioned the use of universality as a ground for a theory or

politics. She states that; ”within the political context of contemporary post-coloniality

(…) it is perhaps especially urgent to underscore the very category of the ’universal’

134 Mouffe, Chantal, 1993: The Return of the Political. Verso: London & New York. p. 3. 135 Ibid., p.3. 136 Ibid., p. 5.

52

as a site of insistent contest and resignification”.137 She maintains that, given the

contested character of the term, assuming a procedural or substantive notion of the

universal is to impose a culturally hegemonic notion on the social field. In addition

she contests the notion of foundations in theory and politics in general that function as

the unquestioned and unquestionable, and give it legitimacy and authority. Butler

asks, in a rhetorical mode, whether these “foundations”, aren’t themselves constituted

through exclusions, which, if taken into account, will expose that the foundational

premise is always contingent and a contestable presumption.138

When related to the discourse of the universality of human rights it should be

acknowledged that they, namely the universal human rights, can not be not normative,

that is, the principle of universality rests on the exclusion of something and in our

case it is the radical difference of the other. I have shown that in the “gender-equality”

discourses within the international arena of human rights instruments, women’s

difference is always related to the norm, the idea of the human, which in turn is

always based on the male/man. Difference becomes something that is attributed to

women and they are the bearers of this difference that has to be incorporated in some

form into the universal natural order. Women’s difference from the universal human

is either interpreted as supplementary, which thus bears with it essentialist and

heteronormative ideas about sexual difference, or as a part of the problem in the forms

of “stereotypic” gender roles, or even as irrelevant and thus nullified. When it is

nullified or ignored the structural discrimination of women is silenced.

Integration of women within the universal human, through woman-centered

approaches such as the CEDAW is an attempt to widen the idea of human rights to

acknowledge cultural discrimination as well as legal discrimination. However, it is

still grounded in a foundationalist philosophy of a universal subject. This universal

subject is, in Butler’s words: “constructed through acts of differentiation that

distinguish the subject from its constitutive outside, a domain of the abjected alterity

conventionally associated with the feminine”.139 Thus the incorporation of something,

which the notion of the universal is grounded in rejecting, means that this something

has to be represented as something other and less dangerous. The idea that gender is

137 Butler, Judith, 1992: “Contingent foundations” in Feminists theorize the political. Ed. Butler and Scott. Routledge: New York & London. p. 7. 138 Ibid., p. 7. 139 Ibid., p. 12.

53

socially constructed, the idea of woman as a product of culture threatens the universal

idea of the masculine subject. That is why a naturalized language of supplementary

sexual difference, disguised in the term ’gender-balance’, functions as a way not to

deal with difference. It does not touch upon the processes of how difference is

constantly being produced and reproduced and it veils the antagonistic political

dimension of the creation of political identities and interests in relation to human

rights.

The strategy of gender mainstreaming was meant to incorporate the critical

view on the system and institutional or social structures by integrating a gender-

perspective at all levels with the goal of achieving substantial equality. However, I

have argued that it resulted in a persistent essentialist or heteronormative gender

equality discourse because the critical aspects were removed from the gender concept

before it was integrated. By concealing the ideological differences in the history of

international feminism and women’s movements the naturalized language of both the

CEDAW and the PFA something important is left out, namely the critique of social

and political structures that benefit some but are work for the disadvantage of others

and apply meaning to differences. The possibility of radical change is thus postponed.

In this context I would like to cite Judith Butler, who asks: “Through what exclusions

has the feminist subject been constructed, and how do those excluded domains return

to haunt the ’integrity’ and ’unity’ of the feminist ’we’?”140 To veil the ideological

conflicts of the international women’s movement is to answer to the interpellation as a

unified feminine subject, which is not constituted politically and historically but exists

outside discursive fields and supplements or mirrors the universal human.

Concluding discussion - Language, strategies and feminist politics

The fact that the feminist movement has been divided in relation to theoretical and

ideological stands and that the idea of a universal women’s experience of

subordination has been contested has given life to a discourse about the end of

140 Ibid., p. 14.

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feminism as a political movement.141 This has led to some hostility towards feminist

theory from those who understand the deconstruction of the category of women as

depriving feminism of its possibility of political action. In some texts a tone of

irritation is directed towards this theoretical move in feminism, as if the concepts and

theories just make everyday experience more complicated than they have to be.

Participants are all natural “experts” on being women, and on women’s lives in their

own countries. Therefore the exchange of information and experience is easy, and all

are also interested in sharing the knowledge presented by researchers on women’s

conditions and lives from all over the world. It is at these fora that the separation of

theory and practice is eliminated, as both contribute to the enrichment of the total

experience.142

In the quote above Hilkka Pietilä describes the atmosphere at the NGO meetings that

have been held in relation to the UN World Conferences on women and the narrative

exemplifies the discourse of separation between real women’s lives and feminist

theory. In an article about women’s and gender history, historian Joan W. Scott

mentions what she regards as a tension regarding the institutionalization of a women’s

or feminist perspective in the academia. She argues that as academic feminism has

gained institutional credibility it seems that it has lost its close connection to the

political movement that inspired it: “In the 1970s and 1980s, we were the knowledge-

producing arm of a broad-based feminist movement devoted to radical social

change”.143 In the 1990s there were critical attacks on what was understood as a

diminished contact between scholars and grassroots and according to her, and other

feminist theorists, this is a false dichotomy between theory and practice.144 Scott

further claims that in academic feminism the trend has been in the direction of giving

a more nuanced picture of differences of women:

141 Mouffe, Chantal, 1992: “Feminism and Radical Politics” in Feminists Theorize the Political. Ed Butler and Scott. Routledge: New York & London. p. 371. 142 Pietilä, 2007. p. 50. 143 Scott, Joan, 2004: “The future of womens history” in Journal of Women's History 16.2 (2004) 10-29. 144 Scott writes that the attempts to strenghten the ties between activism and activities has somwhat foundered but this is not “because feminist scholars have retreated to ivory towers (the opposition between academic and political feminism was always a mischaracterization), but because the political movement itself has become fragmented, dispersed into specific areas of activism.” Ibid.

55

Discontinuous, coordinated, strategic operations with other groups

have replaced the sense of a continuous struggle on behalf of women represented

as a singular entity. This change is tied to the loss of a grand teleological

narrative of emancipation, one that allowed us to conceive of the

cumulative effect of our efforts: freedom and equality were the inevitable

outcomes of human struggle, we believed, and that belief gave coherence

to our actions, defined us as participants in a progressive “movement”.145

Scott takes the argument further and analyzes narratives of the women’s movement as

being in a state of mourning for the lost unity of women, and women’s solidarity. She

maintains, from a psychoanalytical point of view, that this harmonic unity between

women never existed; it is and always was an imaginary idea. This statement is in

tune with the conclusions of historians of the women’s movements on the

international arena; women’s movements and organizations were divided in terms of

ideological differences right from the start of this international cooperation. There

were different interpretations of women’s interests, equality, women’s and men’s

differences and what should define the women’s movements projects. But as I have

shown and argued, the conflict can be related to the inherent paradox of feminism as

it gets tangled in metaphysical sameness versus difference arguments. A closer look at

the history of women’s struggle tells us that things were not easier or simpler in the

past, as I have shown.

Looking back on the debates within feminist theorizing in a Western academic

context the last thirty years a change in perspective is clear. It has moved away from

assumptions about a consensus among women to acknowledgements and theorizing

about differences among women.146 Theories about intersectionality are a step in that

direction, where the category of sex or gender is seen as one among other categories

that interact and that affect peoples lives in different ways. 147 Another moment in

feminist theory is what we could call the deconstructive move. I would like to

suggest, in line with Gayatri Spivak that deconstructive readings open up new

145 Ibid., p. 13. 146 Larsson, Berit, 2009: Agonistisk feminism och Folklig mobilisering. Göteborgs Universitet: Göteborg. p. 16. 147 Lycke, Nina, 2005: “Nya perspektiv på intersektionalitet. Problem och möjligheter” in Kvinnovetenskaplig tidskrift 2-3 05.

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perspectives on the conflicts of women’s movements. It reveals the close connections

between knowledge and power in emancipatory projects and contextualizes the idea

of interest. She says:

I am still moved by the reversal-displacement morphology of deconstruction, crediting

the asymmetry of the “interest” of the historical moment. Investigating the hidden

ethico-political agenda of differentiations constitutive of knowledge and judgment

interests me even more. It is also the deconstructive move that keeps me resisting an

essentialist freezing of the concepts of gender, race and class. I look rather at the

repeated agenda of the situational production of these concepts and our complicity in

such a production. This aspect will not allow the establishment of a hegemonic ‘global

theory of feminism’.148

Spivak opposes a global hegemonic theory of feminism, where the interests of women

would be defined once and for all. The deconstructive perspective is not about tearing

down, it is about a change in perspective. As Spivak says, instead of freezing the

concepts of race, gender and class and focusing on these categories, as they were

always already there and one should pay attention to the mechanisms, the complicated

production of these categories. I would like to add that the concepts of equality and

representation should be open for political deliberations because they have already

been contested in the history of international women’s movements, but that their

meaning has been simplified and naturalized in the UN equality instruments.

Now I would like to turn to my hypotheses for this thesis. I have approached

my material with questions about sexual difference; and asked whether it was seen as

a fact, that has to be considered when designing the concept of human rights, or on

the other hand a part of the problem of inequality, the root or cause of discrimination

that should thus be fought against or even eliminated, and lastly, if it has been

regarded as a resource in creating a more just world. The last one implying that

women’s difference from men, women’s insights, values and perspectives has

intrinsic qualitative value to be used for the common good. I would like to suggest

that all of these meanings mentioned above exist simultaneously, but in some aspects

in a contradictive mode in the equality instruments of the UN.

148 Spivak, Gayatri, 1996: “Feminism and critical theory” The Spivak Reader, selected works of Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. Ed Landry and Maclanean. Routledge: New York. p. 62.

57

My reading proposes that neither the CEDAW nor the PFA have a consequent

understanding of the concepts of equality and difference. And hence, the naturalized

uses of these concepts veil the political dimensions of the construction of an

international women’s movement. There are ideological differences regarding the

interpretation of these concepts but that conflict is not articulated as a political

conflict and the naturalized language of the CEDAW and the PFA veils that political

dimension. The CEDAW works within a framework of a woman centered strategy to

women’s human rights, while the PFA has adopted the strategy of mainstreaming a

’gender-perspective’ in whole of UN human rights instruments and institutions. While

the CEDAW focuses on equality as anti-discrimination and equal opportunities the

PFA emphasizes women’s empowerment and the need to gender balance various

institutions of society.

’Gender’ was introduced into the UN equality vocabulary order to add a social

constructivist view on sexual difference between men and women and their status in

the social reality. However, in the PFA (and other UN human rights instruments), is

often used as a substitute for either ’sex’ or ’women’ and it in the process loses one of

its strategic and subversive meanings. This reveals that difference is a contested issue

within the UN gender equality discourse, both regarding women’s differences from

men and differences among women. I would like to suggest a deconstructive reading

by asking what kind of metaphysical worldview makes the notion of difference

problematic? One possible answer is that the discourses revolve around a

phallocentric worldview, that is, a hierarchical notion of sameness and difference, an

either/or ideology. The norm remains unproblematized as the universal human and

man do not stand in conflict, but woman, as the ultimate other becomes a sign for

difference. The women’s rights discourses are normative with underlying ideas about

sexual difference, and that affects how gender equality policies construct their means

and ends. This notion of sexual difference is also static. Discourses revolve around

whether women and men are different or not and to what grade, and not how

differences are produced and reproduced and given symbolic meaning.

I would like to end this discussion by citing Chantal Mouffe, where she

defines her view of feminism, because I share her views for the future of an anti-

foundationalist feminist politics:

58

Feminist politics should be understood not as a form of politics designed to pursue the

interests of women as women, but rather as the pursuit of feminist goals and aims

within the context of a wider articulation of demands. Those goals and should consist

in the transformation of all the discourses, practices and social relations where the

category of ’woman’ is constructed in a way that implies subordination. Feminism, for

me, is the struggle for the equality of women. But this should not be understood as a

struggle for realizing the equality of a definable empirical group with common essence

and identity, women, but rather as a struggle against the multiple forms in which the

category of ’woman’ is constructed in subordination.149

My contribution with this thesis has been to give a political and historical view of

international feminism and gender equality politics. Feminism, and its leading

concepts: equality, representation and difference are not ahistorical; rather they are

given meaning in concrete political situations, in persistent feminist criticism of

sexism and subordination. Strategies change, language changes and there is not

always consensus among women, or among feminists for that matter, because

feminism is a critique that reacts against in particular political contexts. Keeping

feminism political and radical requires refusing to get tangled in metaphysical

discussion on what difference is or where in some natural cultural scale sexual

difference lies. International global feminism can aspire to a political solidarity and

consensus in separate matters without partaking in the normative descriptions of

women and men, with connotations to feminine and masculine. The equality

instruments of the UN touch upon important issues concerning women and women’s

rights and are a product of international feminist movements. They are practical

instruments that have proved helpful in the fight against sexism throughout the world,

even though they are contradictive and represent conflicting interpretations of sexual

difference. The paradoxes of feminism are there to stay, they will not be resolved and

they will appear in conflicting arguments and different understandings of the central

concepts of the equality discourses. However these philosophical conflicts should not

be veiled because they are a source of creation in the fight for equality and justice,

however they are defined. The project of feminism is to fight sexism or sexist

ideology that reduces lived experience to a binary sex or gender model in whatever

forms it comes and keeping the political discussion alive is an important part thereof. 149 Mouffe, 1992. p. 382.

59

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