The CEDAW Effect: International Law's Impact on Women's Rights

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The CEDAW Effect: International Law'sImpact on Women's RightsNeil A. Englehart a & Melissa K. Miller aa Bowling Green State University , Bowling Green , Ohio , USAPublished online: 06 Mar 2014.

To cite this article: Neil A. Englehart & Melissa K. Miller (2014) The CEDAW Effect: International Law'sImpact on Women's Rights, Journal of Human Rights, 13:1, 22-47

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Journal of Human Rights, 13:22–47, 2014Copyright © 2014 Taylor & Francis Group, LLCISSN: 1475-4835 print / 1475-4843 onlineDOI: 10.1080/14754835.2013.824274

The CEDAW Effect: International Law’s Impacton Women’s Rights

NEIL A. ENGLEHART AND MELISSA K. MILLER

Evidence of demonstrable, positive effects for the United Nations’ international humanrights treaties has generally eluded researchers. However, the Convention for the Elim-ination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) has a statisticallysignificant and positive effect on women’s rights, even when other key factors are con-trolled. This result is counterintuitive, given that CEDAW’s enforcement mechanismswere initially weaker than other human rights treaties. Furthermore, women’s rightsare implicated in deeply ingrained cultural systems that are difficult to change. Thisarticle confirms CEDAW’s positive effects, finding that they are robust but not uniform.They are most pronounced for women’s political rights, somewhat less pronounced forwomen’s social rights, and absent for women’s economic rights. Several possible coun-terexplanations for CEDAW’s effects are tested but garner little support. We conclude byoffering alternative hypotheses for CEDAW’s effects that focus on the internal dynamicsratification may trigger within individual countries.

The United Nations’ (UN) human rights treaty regime has grown rapidly, with at leastone scholar claiming it represents the first set of values in human history to achieveuniversal acknowledgement (Bobbio 1996). However, cross-national studies suggest thatthis expanding body of international law is not necessarily effective at improving humanrights conditions on the ground (e.g., Camp Keith 1999; Hathaway 2002; Neumeyer 2005;Hafner-Burton and Tsutsui 2007; Englehart 2009; Hill 2010).1 Hafner-Burton and Ron notea disconnect between the qualitative literature on the treaty regime, which optimisticallychronicles its expansion and the increasing legal obligation of states to respect human rights,and the more pessimistic quantitative literature, which finds that human rights conditionsremain essentially unchanged (Hafner Burton and Ron 2009).2

The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women(CEDAW) appears to be different. CEDAW has been shown to have small but statisticallysignificant, positive effects on human rights (Hill 2010). CEDAW’s relative effectiveness

Neil A. Englehart works on human rights, state formation, and state failure. He has coedited avolume entitled Constructing Human Rights in the Age of Globalization, and his work has appeared injournals such as Asian Survey, Dissent, European Journal of International Relations, Human RightsQuarterly, Modern Asian Studies, and Polity. He is currently working on a book on human rights andstate failure. He is an Associate Professor and Chair of the Political Science Department at BowlingGreen State University.

Melissa K. Miller is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Bowling Green State Univer-sity. Her research focuses on gender and politics, political participation, and political behavior. Herwork appears in Public Opinion Quarterly, Political Research Quarterly, and PS: Political Science& Politics, among others.

Address correspondence to Neil A. Englehart, Department of Political Science, Bowling GreenState University, Bowling Green, OH 43403, USA. E-mail: [email protected]

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The CEDAW Effect 23

cannot be attributed to better international enforcement, since its enforcement mechanismwas comparatively weak at the outset. One observer described the CEDAW Committeein this period as the “poor cousin of the human rights treaty bodies” (Byrnes 1989: 57).The situation has improved since with CEDAW’s enforcement mechanisms now essentiallymirroring those found in other human rights treaties. However, the fact remains that CEDAWinitially had fewer “teeth” than its UN human rights treaty counterparts, and even todayits enforcement mechanisms are no stronger than those found in other UN human rightstreaties.

Human rights treaties in general are notably ambitious, but CEDAW stands out amongthem. Most human rights treaties enjoin governments to respect rights, but CEDAW goesfurther: It mandates change in the public sphere, the private sphere, and the minds ofindividuals. Merely ensuring that domestic law treats men and women equally is not enough:States parties must work toward both formal and substantive gender equality and eliminateindividually held, gender-based stereotypes that are harmful to women (Waldorf 2007).CEDAW mandates fundamental change at the legal, institutional, and individual levels.It thus represents a least-likely case for human rights, since it requires massive social,institutional, and individual changes without providing greater incentives, resources, orsanctions to achieve them.

Hill notes that human rights treaties share similarly weak enforcement mechanismsbut differ in terms of their effects. He goes on to suggest the need for “treaty-specifictheory building” (Hill 2010: 1172). Here we advance such a process by exploring thepuzzle of CEDAW’s effectiveness, examining its impact over time and in the context ofa growing global human rights movement. We begin by contrasting CEDAW’s ambitiousgoals with its weak enforcement mechanisms. We then demonstrate that CEDAW hasreal, independent effects on women’s rights, although these effects are not always sizeableand are not manifest across the board. Specifically, CEDAW has its largest effects onwomen’s political rights, smaller effects on women’s social rights, and virtually no effectson women’s economic rights. We detail these trends over time, contrasting the record ofCEDAW states parties to nonparties. Finally, we test the robustness of the results againstpossible counterexplanations that minimize CEDAW as a factor in improving human rightsconditions, as well as offer a set of alternative hypotheses for future testing about howCEDAW’s effects are realized.

Research on CEDAW has not been central to human rights scholarship, perhaps re-flecting the fact that the treaty is often regarded as secondary to what are seen as the “core”human rights treaties on civil and political rights. In light of its robust positive effects, weargue that CEDAW warrants deeper consideration among scholars.

Noble Ambitions, Weak Enforcement

Waldorf describes the approach CEDAW takes to gender equality as multidimensional(2007). First, CEDAW embodies a formal vision of equality—one in which no lawsdirectly discriminate against women. Legally, this means that domestic laws in statesthat ratify CEDAW must be gender neutral. Second, CEDAW embodies a substantivevision of equality—one in which the actual effects of such laws are considered. In short,states parties must “make sure that all of the necessary arrangements are put in placethat will allow women to actually experience equality in their lives” (Waldorf 2007: 7).Third, CEDAW holds states parties responsible for their own actions vis-a-vis genderdiscrimination but also makes them accountable for discrimination perpetrated by privateorganizations and individuals within their boundaries. Finally, CEDAW demands an end to

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24 Neil A. Englehart and Melissa K. Miller

gender discrimination in the private as well as the public sphere—including the home andfamily—that is often perpetuated by custom, practice, and religion (Waldorf 2007: 7–8).

This multidimensional approach sets the bar high. Full compliance entails the rootingout of gender discrimination within the public sphere, the private sphere, the domesticsphere, and the individual sphere. Yet, CEDAW’s enforcement mechanism is no strongerthan that of the UN’s other human rights treaties. In fact, it was initially weaker. Beginningin 1981, when CEDAW entered into force, the CEDAW Committee met annually in NewYork, but for just two weeks. Rather than falling under the Office of the High Commissionerfor Human Rights (UNHCHR) like the UN’s other human rights treaty bodies, the CEDAWCommittee reported to the Division for the Advancement of Women (DAW). Things beganto improve in the mid-1990s with better administrative support for the Committee and ameeting frequency “comparable to the other treaty bodies” (Zwingel 2005: 405). Never-theless, not until 2008 did the Committee move to Geneva with support from UNHCHR(Waldorf 2007).

The CEDAW Committee is the lynchpin for enforcement. It relies on self-monitoringby states parties who must submit detailed reports to the Committee on measures taken toimplement CEDAW within one year of ratification and every four years afterward. Eachreport serves as the basis for subsequent constructive dialogue between individual countrydelegations and the CEDAW Committee, during which specific areas of noncompliance areidentified.

Individual states parties’ compliance with these reporting requirements varies widelyand virtually no state adheres to them precisely. Indeed, nearly all states parties fall behindin their reporting. Luxembourg, for instance, submitted its first report in 1996 after ratifyingCEDAW seven years earlier but then submitted its second and third reports in short orderin 1997 and 1998, apparently to get back on track. Periodic Reports 4 and 5 were submittedaccording to schedule in four-year intervals.

Reporting compliance has apparently been so difficult to achieve that the CEDAWCommittee, on an “exceptional basis” and as a “temporary measure,” permits individualstates parties to combine all of their outstanding reports into a single, combined submission(CEDAW 2009, Article 5). Saint Lucia is an example of this form of compliance. It ratifiedCEDAW in 1982 but failed to submit a report until 2005, when it submitted Periodic Reports1 through 6 combined.

Treaty compliance is facilitated by continuous constructive dialogue with the treatybody. Compliance is naturally impeded when countries are late to report. Heyns and Viljoenassessed reporting delays in 20 countries as they pertained to six human rights treaties,including CEDAW. They report: “None of the 20 countries. . . has fulfilled the obligation oftimely submission of all their reports . . . . [They] were on average two years late” (Heynsand Viljoen 2002: 20). Using their data, our own analysis of CEDAW-specific reportingyields a slightly higher delay of 2.5 years on average across 19 countries.3 CEDAW’sslightly worse reporting record raises again the question of how the treaty manages toregister positive, significant changes.

When they are submitted, reports go to the 23-member CEDAW Committee, whichcomprises individual representatives elected by states parties who serve as independentexperts on gender equality.4 They serve four-year terms and include lawyers, diplomats,government bureaucrats, scholars, judges, medical doctors, and educators (Merry 2003:954). After a report is submitted to the Committee, a date is set for representatives of thestates party to appear before the Committee. Two separate three-hour sessions are then heldfor delegates of the states party to appear before the CEDAW Committee and engage inconstructive dialogue. Following these sessions, the CEDAW Committee adopts concluding

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The CEDAW Effect 25

observations based on issues raised during them. These are provided to the states party, andas of 2008, states parties are expected to provide a written account of steps taken to addressthem within two years.

As with the UN’s other human rights treaties, failure to comply with the reportingprocess, much less comply with the treaty, carries no direct penalties. Remarking on six ofthe UN’s human rights treaties, including CEDAW, Heyns and Viljoen note that

Disengaged countries—those that do not submit reports, discuss concludingobservations, or allow an environment in which individual complaints can belodged—can largely escape criticism from the treaty system, which is, after all,based on consent. (2001: 488)

In light of its ambitious goals and weak enforcement mechanism, it is especiallysurprising that CEDAW ratification has been shown to positively and significantly improvehuman rights conditions for women within ratifying states. CEDAW’s effects and the factorsthat promote them are ripe for analysis.

CEDAW’s Effects: A Quantitative Analysis

We employ time-series cross-sectional data to establish that CEDAW does, in fact, havea significant, positive effect on human rights conditions for women, even when otherimportant factors are controlled. Separate multivariate models for women’s political, social,and economic rights are presented; each control for CEDAW ratification as well as otherkey factors known to influence states’ human rights records. These models serve as the basisfor comparing results across different kinds of rights and exploring possible explanationsfor the differential effects documented.

Dependent Variables

Because we wish to measure CEDAW’s effects on women’s rights over time, our dependentvariables must be specific to the condition of women. We employ indicators of women’s so-cial, economic, and political rights kept by the Cingranelli-Richards (CIRI) Human RightsData Project.5 These data provide consistent coverage of a large number of countries overan extended period of time. Each variable measures government practice, reflecting whatgovernments actually do with respect to rights, and not simply their legal commitments.They range from 0 to 3, where 0 indicates failure to recognize women’s rights under thelaw and 3 indicates that rights are guaranteed under the law and strictly enforced.6

The CIRI variables are limited by their small range, and each combines a variety offactors into a single indicator, as show in the Appendix. They are also not intended tospecifically measure CEDAW’s effects and lack coverage of some CEDAW components,such as those pertaining to domestic violence and gender stereotyping. The CIRI variablesare, however, the best time-series cross-section data available for our purposes. To providea more fine-grained analysis of CEDAW’s effects over time, we also present analysesbelow using “real-world” dependent variables as companions to those employing the CIRIindicators.

Independent Variables

Our key independent variable is a measure of CEDAW ratification. It is a simple dummyvariable, where 1 indicates “ratified” and 0 indicates “not ratified.” Alternate specifications

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of CEDAW commitment are discussed below, but none prove superior to the ratificationdummy.

We control for a number of domestic conditions demonstrated elsewhere to affecthuman rights; we anticipate similar effects for these control variables in our models ofwomen’s rights. The first such variable is state capacity, by which we mean the abilityof bureaucratic structures to translate government policy effectively into practice. Statecapacity is an important predictor of human rights protection, since high-capacity, “strong”states are better able to enforce laws pertaining to human rights. Low-capacity “weak”states, on the other hand, tend to have worse human rights records. They often lack controlover their own agents and breed locally powerful nonstate actors, such as criminal gangsand/or militia leaders, who are apt to disrupt enforcement of any rights considered contraryto their interests (Englehart 2009). State capacity is measured as tax collected as a proportionof GDP.7

Civil and international war have been found to be significant predictors of humanrights abuses in earlier studies (e.g., Poe and Tate 1994; Poe, Tate, and Camp Keith 1999;Englehart 2009). This may reflect abuses by combatants against civilians or the generalbreakdown of the social control of violence that often takes place in wartime (see forinstance Tilly 2003; Kalvas 2006). Rather than use a dummy variable for the presenceof war, we employ battle death data for civil and international war (measured separately)developed by the Peace Research Institute Oslo, since the intensity of conflict is presumablyrelevant to the magnitude of its effect (Lacina and Gleditsch 2005).

Democracy has also been found to be a significant positive predictor of human rightsconditions in numerous studies (e.g., Poe and Tate 1994; Poe, Tate, and Keith 1999;Davenport and Armstrong 2004; Landman 2005; Bueno de Mesquita et al. 2005; Englehart2009). However, there is debate about the effect of democracy on physical security rights,with some studies adopting a linear interpretation (Poe and Tate 1994; Poe, Tate, andCamp Keith 1999), while others argue that there is significant nonlinearity (Fein 1995;Bueno de Mesquita et al. 2005; Englehart 2009).8 The CIRI women’s rights indicators weemploy all have a much more linear relationship with democracy than any of the standardmeasures of physical security rights, obviating much of the debate about how best tointerpret the impact of democracy: In the case of women’s rights, more appears to be simplybetter. These data are drawn from the Polity IV dataset (Marshall, Jaggers, and Gurr 2011).

Economic development has also been found to be a strong positive predictor of humanrights conditions (e.g., Mitchell and McCormick 1988; Poe and Tate 1994; McCormick andMitchell 1997; Poe, Tate, and Camp Keith 1999; Simmons 2009; Englehart 2009), althoughits effects are not clearly understood. Economic development may reduce competition overresources or raise the opportunity costs of conflict. In addition, it may be that more de-veloped economies generate the resources to support more nongovernmental organizationsor domestic political constituencies that advocate for greater protection of human rights.Economic development is measured using the natural log of GDP per capita at purchasingprice parity, in constant 2000 US dollars.9

Population size is also controlled, since our dependent variables are events based. Allelse equal, a country with a large population has more interactions between individuals andthus more “opportunities” for abuse to occur (Cingranelli and Richards 2010). Populationsize is controlled using the natural log of each country’s population.10

A lagged dependent variable is included to control for serial autocorrelation. This issimply the value of the dependent variable in the previous year. In effect, the model isexplaining changes in the value of the dependent variable rather than its absolute value.A lagged dependent variable may have a particularly important substantive interpretation

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The CEDAW Effect 27

in this case, since CEDAW seeks to change not just government behavior but deep-seatedcultural attitudes and social practices. The lagged dependent variable may be regarded as ameasure of cultural and social inertia.11

Our data cover the period during which CIRI data on women’s rights is available: 1981to 2006. All 149 countries for which complete data are available are included in the dataset.The unit of observation is the country-year. The data are not drawn from a random sample,and errors are likely to exhibit heteroscedasticity. Within individual countries, errors arenot independent over time, and they are also likely to be correlated across countries. Wetherefore employ Huber-White “robust” standard errors. Standard errors are adjusted forintragroup correlation within panels to further account for serial autocorrelation (Beck andKatz 1995). Year dummies were used in each model but are not reported due to spacelimitations.

Because our dependent variables are ordinal, we employ ordered logistic regression.Logit coefficients are not readily interpretable, so we also report the impact of significantvariables on the probability of a country falling into a specific category of the dependentvariable.12 To be precise, we examine the change in probability when all other variablesare held constant at their mean and the variable of interest moves from 0 to 1 (in thecase of CEDAW ratification) or from its mean to its maximum (in the case of all otherindependent variables). The base probability of falling into the “best” category of all threedependent variables (i.e., Category 3) is very small. Therefore, we report each significantvariable’s effect on the probability of triggering movement from Category 1 to Category 2,which is the relevant concern for most countries. A positive change in probability indicatesimprovement in women’s rights attributable to that variable.

Documenting CEDAW’s Effects

Table 1 shows three ordered logistic regression models predicting women’s political, social,and economic rights, respectively. The models confirm earlier work documenting positiveeffects for CEDAW (Hill 2010). While CEDAW ratification is not a significant predictorof women’s economic rights, it is a positive, significant predictor of women’s political andsocial rights. Ratifying CEDAW significantly boosts the probability of a country registeringimprovement on the CIRI indicators for women’s political and social rights, even whenother key factors are controlled. Moreover, in terms of predicting both women’s politicaland social rights, the effects of CEDAW ratification are significant regardless of whetherrights are measured in the same year as ratification, one year later, or five years later.

The lagged dependent variable is a consistently significant, positive predictor in all threemodels, suggesting the presence of cultural and social inertia. Yet, CEDAW ratification,democracy, state capacity, and economic development have positive, significant effects inthe models, suggesting that this inertia can be overcome. Meanwhile, of the two measuresof war, only civil war deaths emerge as significant, and only in the models of women’seconomic rights, where they have a negative effect.13

Table 2 displays the relative impact of each of the significant variables in each model.Beginning with women’s political rights, the base probability of falling into CIRI Category2 is high regardless of whether effects are measured contemporaneously or with a one- orfive-year lag. Because of these high base probabilities, ranging from 87 to 92 percent, theimpact of CEDAW ratification and the other significant predictors—save for the laggeddependent variable—is modest in each model. In terms of contemporaneous effects, ratifi-cation increases the probability of falling into Category 2 by one percent. Democracy hasa similar impact, with a shift from the mean to the maximum Polity 2 score increasing the

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Tabl

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3.77

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2.39

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28

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Tabl

e2

Impa

cts

onPr

obab

ility

ofIm

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ton

CIR

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29

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probability of achieving Level 2 by one percent. Somewhat larger effects in the contempo-raneous model come from state capacity and economic development, which each increasethe probability of a shift to Level 2 by four percent. In terms of effects measured one or fiveyears later, CEDAW ratification shows slightly more influence, while the influence of bothstate capacity and economic development is attenuated.14 It appears that CEDAW’s effectstake some years to become fully manifest.

In terms of women’s social rights, CEDAW ratification is again significant and demon-strates effects of a similar magnitude. Ratification has a modest impact, raising the probabil-ity of falling into Category 2 by one percent when effects are measured contemporaneouslyor with a one-year lag, and three percent when measured using a five-year lag. The laggeddependent variable has sizable effects, but they are rivaled by state capacity and economicdevelopment. State capacity raises the probability of falling into Category 2 by 19 percentin the contemporaneous model; for economic development, the probability is 27 percent.Effects for both of these variables increase when a five-year lag is employed. Effects fordemocracy in each model are lower, boosting the probability of a shift to Category 2 by sixpercent when measured contemporaneously or with a one-year lag, and nine percent whenmeasured with a five-year lag.

The results for women’s economic rights, shown in Table 2 Column 3, differ. Mostimportantly, CEDAW ratification is not a statistically significant predictor of women’seconomic rights, so probability impacts are not calculated. Again the lagged dependentvariable, state capacity, and economic development seem to be driving the results, althoughdemocracy and civil war battle deaths are also significant, with the latter having a negativeeffect on women’s economic rights. The impacts of the lagged dependent variable andeconomic development are especially strong.

Across all three types of women’s rights, the effects of the lagged dependent variableare sizable, as is common in models of this type. In most countries things remain the samefrom year to year, much more than they change. The effects for the lagged dependentvariable in Table 2 are so large that in the political rights models some of them are actuallynegative, despite positive coefficients in Table 1. This is because Table 2 indicates thechange in the probability of falling into Category 2 when the variable is changed to its“best” value; when the CIRI political rights variable in the previous year is elevated toCategory 3, the high impact of the lagged dependent variable makes it less likely that thecountry will fall into Category 2 in the subsequent year. The high impact of the laggeddependent variable suggests the high level of inertia countries must overcome to fulfillCEDAW’s mandate for gender-based change.

Overall, these results are similar to those found in other studies of human rights. Statecapacity’s performance in these models of women’s rights mirrors that found in modelsof personal security rights, including the right to be free from extrajudicial execution andpolitical imprisonment (Englehart 2009). High state capacity appears to be necessary forthe effective enforcement of human rights laws, including those pertaining to women’srights.

Democracy, a strong predictor of human rights in general, appears to be empowering forwomen as well. It presumably gives women greater voice, including the ability to pressurerepresentatives to pass antidiscrimination laws and to demand they be enforced. Sincewomen now have the right to vote in almost every country in the world, these dynamicsare potentially widespread.15 Yet, political rights are not always respected in practice. Thepositive effects for democracy in the models indicate that respect for women’s politicalrights is strongest in the places where democracy is most effectively institutionalized,where elections occur regularly and are largely free and fair, and where political parties

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The CEDAW Effect 31

are free to organize and can compete fairly for elective office. In less well-institutionalizeddemocracies, it is more likely that informal constraints and prejudice will prevent womenfrom enjoying the rights they have been promised in law.

Economic development is also generally associated with improved respect for humanrights and appears to empower women as well. As economies develop, women typicallyenter the workforce in greater numbers. This tends to give them greater access to publicspaces and educational opportunities. It is therefore not surprising that economic develop-ment would lead to greater respect for women’s rights, because it tends to improve women’sability to organize and agitate for improvements in law and practice.

CEDAW remains independently significant for women’s political and social rightseven when these “usual suspects” in the human rights literature are controlled. Our resultsare consistent with those of Hill (2010), who likewise finds that CEDAW has significant,positive effects on women’s political rights, mixed effects on social rights, and no effect oneconomic rights. In contrast, both the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights(ICCPR) and the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or DegradingTreatment or Punishment (CAT) have nonsignificant, and in some cases negative, effectson human rights (Camp Keith 1999; Englehart 2009; Hill 2010).

As a test that CEDAW ratification itself, rather than some related factor, promoteswomen’s rights, we reran the models reported in Table 1 with controls for each state’sreservations to CEDAW (if any) and whether or not they had ratified the treaty’s OptionalProtocol. Neither reservations nor ratification of the Optional Protocol produced substan-tively different results.16 In addition, we ran the models using a variable tracking howregularly countries submit reports to the CEDAW Committee in an attempt to measurethe seriousness with which they take their reporting responsibilities. This variable alsoproduced very similar results to the ratification dummy.17

Unpacking CEDAW’s Effects

The multivariate models confirm that ratifying CEDAW has a significant, positive effect onwomen’s political and social rights, but questions remain. Could it be that high-performingcountries ratify the treaty first and subsequently drive the results? Might CEDAW’s effectsbe realized entirely by countries making quick, easy changes rather than sustained commit-ments to improving women’s rights—in other words, picking the “low-hanging fruit” withno intention of working toward full compliance? Finally, could improvements in respectfor women’s political and social rights simply be part of a global trend and not directlylinked to CEDAW? We consider each question in turn, introducing alternative indicators aswe go to demonstrate that the results are robust to different specifications of the dependentvariable.

High-Performing Countries Ratify CEDAW and Drive the Results

One possible explanation for CEDAW’s effectiveness is that countries that ratify CEDAWalready have good records on women’s rights.18 Such an explanation would be consistentwith the paradox that human rights treaties appear to be most effective where they areleast needed, and most needed where they are least effective.19 If so, the improvementsin women’s political and social rights we observe may be manifesting in places that arepredisposed to promote them, already have good CIRI scores, and subsequently improvein a manner that would have happened without CEDAW.

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0

0.5

1

1.5

2

2.5

CIRI

scor

e

Year

1981 2000 2005199519901985

Non-par�es

CEDAW par�es

FIGURE 1. Women’s political rights 1981–2006; average CIRI scores among CEDAW parties andnonparties.Note. Annual differences in means significant at p < .05 or better, except for 1984 (p < .10).

The robust results for the lagged versions of the political and social rights modelssuggest that improvements follow, rather than precede, CEDAW ratification (see Table 1). Ifimprovement preceded ratification, we would expect a nonsignificant finding for ratificationin the lagged models. Instead, improvement seems to be occurring after ratification. Furtherevidence is found by examining trends in mean values for women’s political and socialrights, using the CIRI indicators and alternative proxies for each.

Figure 1 displays average CIRI scores for women’s political rights over time forCEDAW parties and nonparties. Differences between the two are significant for all yearsat the .05 level or better, except for 1984, when the difference approached significance(p < .10). The trend line for CEDAW parties moves steadily, if gradually, upwards, begin-ning at 1.77 in 1981, and ending at 1.98 in 2006. Mean values for the nonparties generallytrend downwards until 2004, when the mean increases noticeably. This jump stems fromthe fact that in 2003 there were only 12 nonparties, and in 2004 two of the worst of these,Swaziland and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), ratified CEDAW. Their movement intothe category of ratifiers actually improved the mean score of the nonparty group. Theanomalous presence of the United States among the nonparty states tends to pull up themean for the group, because it scores well on women’s political rights. Improvement amongnonparty states post-2003 is thus an artifact of a small number of cases and ratification bytwo low-performing states.

Swaziland and UAE exemplify an important trend captured in Figure 1: From 1981through 2006, a total of 150 countries ratified CEDAW, so that lower performing countriesin the nonparties category migrated over time into the states-parties category. Despite thismigration, the mean political rights score for CEDAW parties continued to rise, suggestingthat even low-performing countries were making improvements in women’s political rightsafter joining the treaty.

This conclusion is borne out by an alternative measure of women’s political rights: theproportion of national legislators who are women. Presumably greater representation of

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The CEDAW Effect 33

0

5

10

15

20

25

1990 2010200520001995

Non-par�es

CEDAW par�es

% F

emal

e

Year

FIGURE 2. Women in national legislatures 1990–2010; women as a percent of lower house amongCEDAW parties and nonparties.Note. Differences in means not significant in 1992–1995, 2004, and 2009. All other annual differencessignificant at p < .05 or better, except for 1999–2000, 2002, and 2010 (p < .10). Data for 1991 notavailable; interpolated figures employed.Source: Inter-parliamentary Union (2011).

women in the lower house of the national legislative body demonstrates improving condi-tions for women’s rights. Figure 2 shows the mean proportion of women in each country’snational legislature (lower chamber only) by year among CEDAW parties and nonparties.20

The CEDAW parties show a distinct upward trend, in contrast to the nonparties—despitethe fact that many lower performing countries migrate into the CEDAW parties categoryover time.

The trend for women’s social rights is somewhat less robust (see Figure 3). The trendline for CEDAW parties is basically flat: It begins in 1981 at 1.29 and ends in 2004 at 1.30.The trend for nonparties is decidedly downward, until rising abruptly in 2003–2004, againbecause a number of low-performing states join the treaty.21 However, the trend line remainsbasically stable despite the fact that low-performing states are gradually being added overtime. This suggests that CEDAW has a modest but real positive effect on women’s socialrights in countries that are low-performing prior to ratification.

Because the CIRI social rights components are quite diverse, it is difficult to identifya single alternative proxy for them (see Appendix). Nevertheless, the right to an educationis one component of the CIRI measure of women’s social rights and data on educationare available for a relatively large number of countries over time. We employ female as apercentage of male enrollment in primary and secondary school as a proxy for women’ssocial rights and map it over time among CEDAW parties and nonparties.22

Figure 4 shows that the nonparties start with a lower mean ratio of female-to-maleenrollment than the CEDAW parties, but in the 1990s, as large numbers of low-performingstates join CEDAW, the trend line for nonparties actually begins to improve more steeplythan that for CEDAW parties. By the 2000s, the number of nonparties is so low that eachhas a substantial impact on the mean trend line, and the United States drags the mean up

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0

0.5

1

1.5

2

2.5

1981 2000 2004199519901985

Non-par�es

CEDAW par�es

CIRI

soci

al ri

ghts

scor

e

Year

FIGURE 3. Women’s social rights 1981–2004; average CIRI scores among CEDAW parties andnonparties.Note. Annual differences in means significant at p < .05 or better, except for periods 1981–1986 and2003–2004.

50

60

70

80

90

100

1981 2000199519901985 2005 2009

Non-par�es

Fem

ale

as %

mal

e en

rollm

ent

Year

FIGURE 4. Female enrollment as a percent of male enrollment in primary and secondary school,1981–2009.Note. Annual differences in means significant at p < .05 or better, except 1981, 1988, and 1996–1998(p < .10); 1999–2009 not significant.Source: World Bank (2011).

considerably in the last few years.23 Figure 4 thus does not support the contention thatCEDAW’s effects are due to high-performing states ratifying the treaty, although it likewisedoes not offer much support for CEDAW’s positive effects, at least with respect to the rightto education.

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The CEDAW Effect 35

Overall, the analyses displayed in Figures 1 through 4 offer relatively little support forthe view that CEDAW’s effects are merely the result of high-performing countries adoptingchanges consistent with the treaty, while low-performing countries do little if anything tocome into compliance.

CEDAW Parties Simply Pick the Low-Hanging Fruit

Another possibility is that states ratify CEDAW but make only minimal effort to come intocompliance. They may make easy changes in policy without intending to do the difficultpolitical work of coming into full compliance. A country that codifies women’s rights tovote, to run for political office, to join political parties, and the like could move from 0 to1 on the CIRI political rights scale, for instance. But unless these rights are subsequentlyenforced, no further movement would be observed in the CIRI indicator. Similarly, a countrymight make changes to which there is little political opposition—for instance, removinglegal prohibitions on women working in certain industries—but then fail to make morepolitically costly changes like guaranteeing equal pay for equal work in those industries. Insuch cases, “plateau effects” would be observed, with states parties appearing to improvequickly as they make easy changes, but leveling off as they fail to enforce women’s rightsand make serious, consistent attempts to address other laws, customs, and practices thatdiscriminate against women.

We explore this possibility in Figure 5, which shows mean CIRI scores for women’spolitical and social rights for CEDAW parties by years since ratification. The “low-hangingfruit” hypothesis does not fully explain CEDAW’s effects. CEDAW parties do show, onaverage, a sharp increase in their CIRI scores for political and social rights in the first yearafter joining the treaty. Presumably this is due to countries rapidly making relatively easychanges.24 Improvement levels off in subsequent years. However, it does not cease: Both

0

0.5

1

1.5

2

2.5

1 3 5 7 9 11 13 15 17 19 21 23 25

Political rights

Social rightsCIRI

scor

e

Year

FIGURE 5. Women’s social and political rights; average CIRI scores by number of years sinceratification.Source: Cingranelli and Richards (2008).

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0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

1 3 5 7 9 11 13 15 17 19 21 23 25 27 29

Female enrollment as percent ofmale enrollment in primary

and secondary school

Women as percent of lower house

Perc

ent

Years

FIGURE 6. Alternative indicators of political and social rights by number of years since ratification.Source: World Bank (2011) and Inter-parliamentary Union (2011).

social and political rights continue to improve, albeit at reduced rates. CEDAW thus appearsto have continued effects after initial improvements are made. Political rights improve at asteeper rate than social rights, confirming the somewhat stronger treaty effects on women’spolitical rights seen in Tables 1 and 2.

This is affirmed in Figure 6, which displays alternative indicators for social and politicalrights: women as a percent of each country’s lower house in the national legislature andfemale enrollment as a percent of male enrollment in primary and secondary school. Eachis graphed against the number of years since CEDAW ratification. Both indicators rise overtime.

Women as a percent of the lower house rise only slightly in the first year. Since mostcountries do not hold annual legislative elections, we would expect it to take some time forCEDAW’s effects to manifest themselves. However, there is a steady (if gradual) upwardtrend. The proportion of female-to-male students in primary and secondary school jumpsin the first year and rises steadily thereafter, perhaps reflecting the removal of legal orinstitutional barriers and/or the enforcement of laws guaranteeing girls an equal right toeducation.

Taken together, the results displayed in Figures 5 and 6 do not suggest much supportfor the low-hanging fruit hypothesis. While CEDAW parties show sharp improvements intheir first year, steady, positive change continues after that.

Changing Global Standards and the “World Polity”

Finally, we consider whether the improvements observed in women’s political and socialrights occurred not because of CEDAW ratification per se but because of a general globalcultural trend toward improved conditions for women’s rights. The “world polity” literature,for instance, argues that states tend to assimilate standards drawn from the internationalcommunity, which shape their domestic institutions and behaviors (see Thomas et al. 1987;Boli and Thomas 1999). Women’s rights are no exception to this rule, with transnational

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The CEDAW Effect 37

Table 3Predicting Women’s Rights With Cumulative Ratifications as a Predictor: Contemporaneous

Results

Women’s Political Rights Women’s Social Rights

Coefficient Probability Coefficient Probability

CEDAW ratifications(cumulative #)

0.00† (0.00) .01 −0.00∗(0.00) −.02

CEDAW (ratified ornot)

0.62∗∗∗(0.16) .01 0.41∗∗(0.15) .01

Lagged dep. variable 4.97∗∗∗(0.22) 3.78∗∗∗(0.15)Democracy (Polity 2) 0.03∗∗(0.01) .01 0.05∗∗∗(0.01) .06State capacity

(tax/GDP)3.38∗∗∗(0.92) .04 2.04∗(0.81) .15

Econ. dev. (lnGDP/cap)

0.08 (0.07) ns 0.25∗∗∗(0.07) .12

Civil war deaths −0.00(0.00) ns −0.00 (0.00) nsInternational war

deaths0.00 (0.00) ns 0.00 (0.00) ns

Population (ln) 0.07 (0.04) ns −0.03 (0.04) nsPseudo R2 .65 .56Log

pseudo-likelihood−828.60 −1293.95

N (observations/countries)

2,718 2,486

Note. Entries are coefficients and (in parentheses) standard errors from ordered logit models withrobust standard errors adjusted for intragroup correlation.

†p > .10; ∗p > .05; ∗∗p >.01; ∗∗∗p < .001.

women’s organizations and intergovernmental organizations influencing domestic standards(Berkovitch 1999). By this argument, CEDAW could be manifesting a broad global trendrather than driving it.

If CEDAW is an expression of improving international standards on women’s rightsrather than their cause, we would expect that the number of states ratifying CEDAW wouldbe at least as good a predictor of women’s rights as whether or not individual states haveratified. The global cultural trend, rather than the actions of particular states, would bedriving change.

This explanation is put to the test in Table 3. It displays the contemporaneous modelsof women’s political and social rights when a variable is included indicating the cumulativenumber of CEDAW ratifications in each year. It should capture the global trend towardassimilation more efficiently than the year dummies used (but not shown) in Table 1.25 TheTable 3 results are more complex than expected based on assertions about the primacy ofglobal assimilation of standards made in the world polity literature.

With respect to political rights, the cumulative number of ratifications is positiveand approaches statistical significance (p < .10). While weak, the finding is directionallyconsistent with what we would expect based on the world polity argument: International

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standards influence domestic behavior. However, CEDAW ratification remains positive andsignificant as well, indicating that the treaty continues to have a separate, independent effectin ratifying countries, apart from the global trend. The impact of the cumulative ratificationsvariable on the probability of falling into Category 2 is .01, identical to the impact of theCEDAW ratification dummy.

The situation for women’s social rights is more complicated. The coefficient on cumu-lative ratifications is actually negative, reducing the probability of being in Category 2 by.02 and increasing the probability of falling into Category 1 by .02 as well. This suggeststhat the global trend is actually toward declining social rights. However, the CEDAW ratifi-cation dummy has a significant, positive effect. Ratifying CEDAW increases the probabilityof falling into Category 2 by .01 and reduces the probability of falling into Category 1 by.01 as well. According to this model, CEDAW may actually combat a declining globaltrend with respect to women’s social rights.

These results suggest that global trends for women’s rights need to be disaggregated.26

For political rights, there does seem to be an improving trend, which is further enhancedby joining CEDAW. For social rights, the trend is declining, but this tends to be mitigatedby ratifying CEDAW.

Discussion

The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women ap-pears to be something of an anomaly in the international human rights treaty regime. Thequantitative literature generally finds that human rights conditions remain unchanged aftertreaty ratification. Yet CEDAW appears to improve human rights conditions in countriesthat ratify it. This success must be qualified, however. CEDAW’s effects are not alwayssizeable and are not manifest across the board. They are positive and significant for politicalrights, attenuated somewhat for social rights, and absent altogether for economic rights.Effects documented for political and social rights are robust to alternative measures.

In light of CEDAW’s ambitious goals and weak enforcement mechanisms, these resultsare surprising. As such, we tested several possible counterexplanations for the patterns weobserved; each minimizes CEDAW as the catalyst for change. None seems to adequatelyexplain away the positive, significant finding that ratification of CEDAW is associated withimprovements in women’s political and social rights within states parties.

It does not appear to be the case that high-performing countries ratify CEDAW andsubsequently drive improvements in human rights conditions observed in the aggregateamong states parties. If that were the case, the CEDAW ratification variable would notremain significant in the lagged versions of the political and social rights models. Moreover,political rights improve over time among ratifying states, despite the fact that they are joinedby lower performing countries over time. Further evidence is provided when an alternativeproxy for political rights is employed. In terms of social rights, CEDAW ratification seemsto have more modest positive effects, but these effects are real. As more countries ratify,they tend to rise up to the mean for the CEDAW parties, rather than dragging the trendline down. A similar process appears to be at work when school enrollment is used as analternative indicator for social rights.

A second possibility we explored is that states that ratify CEDAW make easy changesquickly but then make little effort to engage in more difficult and thorough reform. Theysimply “pick the low-hanging fruit,” as it were. By way of example, a country couldcodify women’s rights to an education, to enter marriage on a basis of equality with men,and to own, manage, and retain property while married—thus sparking improvement in

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The CEDAW Effect 39

their CIRI score for social rights. But if these new rights are not aggressively enforced,further improvement in the CIRI score would not occur. While we observe initial, sharpimprovements in women’s political and social rights immediately after ratification, theplateau effects one would expect if the low-hanging fruit hypothesis were borne out arenot manifest. Steady, if gradual, improvements in women’s political and social rights areobserved in the years subsequent to ratification. This is true for both the CIRI indicatorsand alternative measures of political and social rights.

The “world polity” literature suggests a third possible explanation for CEDAW’sapparent effectiveness: CEDAW could simply be manifesting a global trend rather thanadvancing it. Our test of this possibility yields minimal support for it. For political rights,the results for our cumulative ratifications variable are positive but fall short of statisticalsignificance. More importantly, the positive, significant effect for ratification is not com-promised. In terms of social rights, the coefficient on cumulative CEDAW ratifications isnegative, suggesting a global trend of decline in women’s social rights. Meanwhile, thecontinued positive, significant effects for CEDAW ratification suggest that CEDAW maybe combatting this global decline.

We thus return to the possibility that the treaty itself—or more likely the dynamics itsratification sets in motion—engender improvements in women’s political and social rights.Further cross-national research is required to test specific hypotheses about such dynamics,but a number warrant consideration.

The constructive dialogue process could trigger change that, while gradual, resultsin long-term improvements in women’s rights. Mauritius, for instance, did not have aconstitutional ban on sex-based discrimination at the time of ratification in 1984. Nor wassuch a ban established when Mauritius submitted its initial report to the CEDAW Committeein 1992. Its omission did not go unnoticed. According to the CEDAW Committee’s report,Committee member Desiree Patricia Bernard argued that “omission from the Constitutionof Mauritius of any reference to discrimination on grounds of gender [is], in itself, a formof discrimination, and should be corrected as a matter of urgency.”27 Shortly thereafter,Mauritius added such language to its constitution. This came 11 years after ratification inwhat appears to be, at least in part, an example of the gradual change that constructivedialogue can engender. Further study could tease out the temporal order of engagementwith the CEDAW Committee, tangible changes on the ground, and attendant improvementsin human rights conditions.

While not formally part of the treaty, the CEDAW Committee’s General Recommenda-tion No. 6 (CEDAW 1988) states that parties should establish national machinery “at a highlevel of government” to advise government, to monitor women’s rights, and to advance newpolicies. Such machinery may institutionalize an internal lobby for change. An otherwise-unwilling state may be willing to devote some resources to an office, desk, or departmentfocused on women to simply appear cooperative. Indeed, Swaziland in 2008 expanded itsGender Coordination Unit specifically for the purpose of producing its first, long-overduesubmission to the Committee (Swaziland Deputy Prime Minister’s Office 2012). What mayinitially be devised as window dressing may inadvertently become an internal lobby forchange by providing an institutional channel for nongovernmental organizations (NGOs),academics, and interested parties to engage government on issues concerning women’srights. Further study could scrutinize the pace of progress in countries that establish orupgrade their national machinery in the manner recommended by the Committee.

Further study is also warranted on the finding here and elsewhere that political rightsare most susceptible to positive change after CEDAW ratification. This could be becausethey are relatively easy for governments to change. Political rights are generally guaranteed

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in constitutions and laws governing voting and rights to hold public office. Compared tochanging social mores and customs, extending voting rights to women may be relativelystraightforward. Examination of the proceedings of the CEDAW Committee shows that itis quick to identify deviations from the treaty’s political rights provisions. The constructivedialogue process may be especially effective in sparking action.

Kuwait appears to provide one such example. At ratification in 1994, it lodged areservation against CEDAW Article 7(a), which mandates “all appropriate measures” toprovide women the right to vote on an equal footing with men. Following Kuwait’s initialreport in 2003, the issue was raised during constructive dialogue. The Chair urged thedelegation to consider withdrawing the reservation.28 Other Committee members agreed.One stressed that the contradiction between giving women and men equal rights in thepublic sphere while simultaneously denying women the right to vote called for “urgentlegal review.”29 The delegation explained that legislation giving women the right to votehad been narrowly defeated in Parliament. They promised that the legislation would bereintroduced. By Kuwait’s second submission in 2010, passage had been secured.

Morocco provides another interesting illustration. In the late 1990s, Morocco undertookan extensive review of its reservations to various human rights treaties with the goal ofharmonizing Moroccan law with its obligations under international law. As a result, in2006 it withdrew two reservations to CEDAW and substituted declarations of interpretationfor two others (Government of Morocco 2000, 2006).30 The changes were not directed at thepolitical rights provisions of the treaty but were part of a sweeping reform of family law thathad the practical effect of opening up social and political space to women’s participation.Sadiqi and Ennaji (2006) note the interactive effects of various factors in promoting changein Morocco, including the strengthening of domestic women’s organizations through theirparticipation in women’s rights diplomacy and international conferences. This process ofchange included the separate enactment of a 30-seat quota for women in the nationallegislature, which would have been meaningless prior to the expansion of women’s rightsto participate in the public sphere. Morocco’s CIRI score for women’s political rights rosefrom 1 to 2 during this period.

In contrast to guaranteeing women’s political rights, improving their social and eco-nomic rights requires changing deep-seated behaviors. Perhaps not surprisingly, CEDAW’seffects are tempered somewhat for social rights and absent altogether for economic rights.Improving social rights requires altering prejudicial attitudes prevalent in society, whichcould take generations. At the same time, countries that do take steps to promote marriageequality, for instance, could improve their CIRI score. To achieve the highest CIRI scorerequires a complete or near-complete guarantee of women’s social rights plus their fulland vigorous enforcement. In many countries, such progress necessarily requires cultural,in addition to legal-institutional, change. The CEDAW Committee generally focuses onwhether institutions have been set up and legislation passed to promote improvement; theyalso tend to stress that governments should work through civil society and the media toeliminate prejudice and gender-based stereotypes. Even governments willing to do so mayface considerable resistance. The Republic of Chad, for instance, lamented in its 2010report that after four years of effort it had been unable to pass a law on personal andfamily status due to opposition from conservative Muslim civil society organizations thatwanted a different, sharia-based law. Social change cannot simply be imposed. As such,the Committee seldom holds governments directly responsible for failing to spark dramaticsocial change.

Altering economic rights likewise entails changes in attitudes towards women’s socialrole, specifically with respect to employment and ownership of property. These behaviors

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The CEDAW Effect 41

appear to be even more difficult to change, perhaps because they entail not just chang-ing social mores but also patterns of behavior that benefit men economically. Changingrules governing inheritance, for instance, may have profound impacts on the distributionof economic resources and, thus, are likely to meet with fierce resistance from the bene-ficiaries of current rules. Even in advanced industrial countries where women have madeconsiderable progress in political rights and social emancipation, wage differentials per-sist. In developing countries, where women’s issues often enter political discourse as anelement of economic development strategy (Berkovitch 1999), women also continue to beeconomically disadvantaged.

Despite its unevenness in promoting various types of women’s rights, CEDAW emergesas a qualified success story. Yet, it has not been at the center of human rights research. Insocial science, as in the UN human rights system itself, the tendency has been to relegateCEDAW to the margins, a poor cousin of what are sometimes considered “core” treaties,such as the Convention Against Torture and the International Covenant on Civil and PoliticalRights. Our findings suggest that CEDAW ought to have a higher profile in human rightsscholarship because of its demonstrable positive effects. Given the general skepticism inthe quantitative social science research about the effectiveness of human rights treaties,close examination of CEDAW is clearly in order.

Notes

1. There are a few exceptions to this apparent consensus. Landman (2005) finds some significant,positive relationships based on data covering multiple treaties that includes treaty reservations.Even so, these relationships are relatively weak. Simmons (2009) and Hafner-Burton (2009) findthat human rights treaties can be effective indirectly by altering domestic dynamics and providinglocal activists with resources to mobilize to protect rights.

2. For a good example of a study that reports change on the ground within individual countries,see Heyns and Viljoen (2001, 2002). Their comprehensive work on the impact of six UN hu-man rights treaties in 20 countries finds that individual countries do take tangible steps toincorporate treaty norms in their domestic legal structures and cultures. They do not, how-ever, measure the effects of these changes on actual human rights conditions within eachcountry.

3. Included in the CEDAW-specific analysis are Australia, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Czech Re-public, Egypt, Estonia, Finland, India, Jamaica, Japan, Mexico, Philippines, Romania, Russia,Senegal, South Africa, Spain, and Zambia. Iran is included among the 20 countries studied byHeyns and Viljoen, but it has not ratified CEDAW.

4. The Committee is designed to represent participating states in terms of geography, legal structure,and “form of civilization” (see CEDAW 1979, Part V, Article 17).

5. Details about the dataset can be found at http://ciri.binghamton.edu/.6. Arbitrary cut-points may influence the results. We also ran each model with a dichotomized

dependent variable obtained by collapsing CIRI categories 0 and 1 into one category and 2 and3 into another. This yielded similar results to those reported in Table 1.

7. Hendrix (2010) provides a thorough theoretical and empirical review of 15 different measuresof state capacity and finds that survey measures of bureaucratic quality and tax capacity arebest employed for both theoretical and empirical reasons. We employ the latter and, followingHendrix, measure tax capacity as tax as a proportion of GDP. For a fuller discussion of the meritsof using this specific proxy for state capacity, see Englehart (2009).

8. For instance, Fein (1995) argues that there is “more murder in the middle” in that transitionaland semi-democratic regimes have more human rights abuses than fully democratic or fullyauthoritarian political systems. By contrast, Davenport and Armstrong (2004) and Bueno deMesquita et al. (2005) suggest a tipping point, with most of the effect of democracy coming only

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with the establishment of full multiparty competition. Englehart (2009) finds that the nonlinearityis not simply curvilinear, and it differs for different measures of rights.

9. Data obtained from the World Bank’s (2011) World Development Indicators.10. Data obtained from the World Bank’s (2011) World Development Indicators.11. Introducing a lagged dependent variable can create problems of endogeneity and bias that are

likely to worsen rather than improve the quality of the model (Achen 2000). These problemsare likely to be particularly pronounced in time-series analysis and in models with binaryand ordinal dependent variables (Brandt, Williams Fordham, and Pollins 2000; Brandt andWilliams 2001; Pang 2008). As a robustness check, we ran the models in Ordinary LeastSquares regression with the lagged dependent variable and as ordered logits omitting the laggeddependent variable. We obtained similar results using these alternative specifications. Omittingthe lagged dependent variable tends to increase the coefficients for the other variables, but thepattern of significance, including that of the CEDAW ratification variable, remains basically thesame.

12. These calculations were performed using Clarify (King, Tomz, and Wittenberg 2000).13. It is likely that international war deaths do not emerge as a strong predictor because international

wars are relatively rare. Civil wars are far more common than international wars, which mayexplain why civil war deaths emerge as statistically significant.

14. In the model of women’s political rights using five-year lagged results, state capacity andeconomic development have such a large effect that they shift almost all countries into Category3 on women’s political rights, thereby reducing the probability of being in Category 2.

15. Saudi Arabia is currently the only country in the world where women are denied suffrage.However, only local offices are elected there: as of January 2014, there was no national leg-islature and the head of state was a hereditary monarch. The government has promised thatwomen will be allowed to participate in local elections in the future. In many states, how-ever, the legal right to vote is infringed in practice due to cultural stereotypes and activediscrimination.

16. States may weaken their commitments by lodging reservations against certain articles of thetreaty with which they do not intend to comply. In the case of CEDAW, these reservations maybe substantial, with some states making reservations even against Article 2, which arguablyundercuts the central purpose of the treaty. We considered the effect of the “reservations” statesparties file at the time of ratification. Landman (2005) constructed a variable measuring theseriousness of state reservations to CEDAW, as well as other human rights treaties, and generouslyshared it with us. Using this to weight the ratification variable does not, however, change theresults in any significant way. Neither the pattern of significance nor the relative impact of thetreaty changes very much from the results shown in Tables 1 and 2. The 2000 Optional Protocol(OP) to the treaty permits individual complaints against states parties that have ratified the OP,rather than waiting for the CEDAW Committee to assess compliance during the regular reportingprocess. As of June 2012 the Optional Protocol had 104 states parties and 29 complaints had beenconsidered. For details, see http://www2.ohchr.org/english/law/jurisprudence.htm (accessed 29January 2013). Using ratification of the Optional Protocol to indicate CEDAW commitment doesnot produce very different results from the ratification variable.

17. We are indebted to an anonymous reviewer for this suggestion. The reporting variable producessomewhat stronger results for women’s political rights and weaker ones for social rights, but thedirection of the coefficients and the pattern of significance remain the same.

18. Jamaica, for instance, apparently ratifies treaties only when it believes that it is already incompliance (Heyns and Viljoen 2001: 494).

19. For a good discussion, see Hill (2010).20. The lower house of parliament is used rather than the upper house, or a combination of the

two, because lower houses are more likely to be democratically elected. Women as a percentof the lower house is a relatively “sticky” indicator, because, once elected, a legislature willtypically sit for a few years before a new election. For this reason, the proportion of femaleparliamentarians is shown in Figure 2 but was not employed as a dependent variable in Tables 1

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The CEDAW Effect 43

and 2. The proportion of female parliamentarians does not perform well as a dependent variablein time-series cross-section models since values for each country tend to remain the same forseveral years. This leads to a huge coefficient on the lagged dependent variable that essentiallywipes out all other results.

21. These include Syria, San Marino, and Timor-Leste, all scoring 1 on the CIRI Women’s SocialRights variable, and Sao Tome, with a score of 2. Afghanistan also ratified in 2003, but there isno CIRI data for Afghanistan in that year.

22. Since educational systems vary widely, we use this proportion rather than the raw percentage offemale enrollment to compensate for the fact that in many countries enrollment for both boysand girls may be very low. The proportion of female-to-male enrollment specifically targetsthe concept we are interested in: whether girls are less likely to receive an education thanboys.

23. The spike in 2008 is due to the fact that data are available for only three countries in that year:Qatar, Sudan, and the United States. Qatar lists an extraordinary ratio of 119% female over maleenrollment in that year. In 2009, Qatar ratified CEDAW, causing a huge drop in the mean for thenonparties group. It is unclear how reliable the Qatar data are; if it is accurate, it registers a verylarge decline in male enrollment for unexplained reasons.

24. . The first-year effect may actually be blunted by the fact that some countries also make changesin anticipation of ratification. Liechtenstein, for instance, passed a constitutional amendment ongender equality in 1992, in anticipation of ratifying CEDAW in 1995. See Government of thePrincipality of Liechtenstein (1997).

25. The year dummies are therefore dropped in the models reported in Table 3.26. . The lagged models for political and civil rights (including the number of ratifications vari-

able) produce similar results as those that appear in Table 1 and thus are not shown here. Inboth lagged versions of the political rights model, the only difference is that GDP per capitaloses significance when the ratifications variable is added, for reasons that are unclear. Mean-while, the number of ratifications variable is not significant in either the one- or five-year laggedmodels of women’s political rights. Both lagged versions of the social rights model (includingthe number of ratifications variable) show the same patterns of significance as those shown inTable 1. The number of ratifications variable is significant and negative when a one-year lagis employed and loses significance when a five-year lag is employed. As with the contempora-neous results displayed in Table 3, there is little evidence to suggest that a worldwide culturaltrend toward improved women’s rights conditions is explaining away the effect of CEDAWratification.

27. See CEDAW (1995, para. 30).28. See CEDAW (2004, para. 3).29. See CEDAW (2004, para. 15). Passage is attributed to Ms. Hanna Beate Schopp-Schilling

(Germany), but “urgent legal review” may not be a direct quotation.30. The Government of Morocco maintains one reservation to CEDAW. It pertains to the mechanism

for arbitration of disputes brought by other states under the treaty.

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Appendix

The following descriptions of CIRI indicators of women’s rights are taken directly fromthe “Short Variable Descriptions for Indicators in The Cingranelli-Richards (CIRI) HumanRights Dataset” (Cingranelli and Richards 2008).

CIRI Indicator of Women’s Political Rights

Women’s political rights include a number of internationally recognized rights. These rightsinclude:

• The right to vote;• The right to run for political office;• The right to hold elected and appointed government positions;• The right to join political parties;• The right to petition government officials.

A score of 0 indicates that women’s political rights were not guaranteed by law during agiven year. A score of 1 indicates that women’s political rights were guaranteed in law butseverely prohibited in practice. A score of 2 indicates that women’s political rights wereguaranteed in law but were still moderately prohibited in practice. Finally, a score of 3indicates that women’s political rights were guaranteed in both law and practice.

CIRI Indicator of Women’s Social Rights

Women’s social rights include a number of internationally recognized rights. These rightsinclude:

• The right to equal inheritance;• The right to enter into marriage on a basis of equality with men;• The right to travel abroad;• The right to obtain a passport;• The right to confer citizenship to children or a husband;• The right to initiate a divorce;

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• The right to own, to acquire, to manage, and to retain property brought into marriage;• The right to participate in social, cultural, and community activities;• The right to an education;• The freedom to choose a residence/domicile;• Freedom from female genital mutilation of children and of adults without their

consent;• Freedom from forced sterilization.

A score of 0 indicates that there were no social rights for women in law and that systematicdiscrimination based on sex may have been built into law. A score of 1 indicates that womenhad some social rights under law, but these rights were not effectively enforced. A score of2 indicates that women had some social rights under law, and the government effectivelyenforced these rights in practice while still allowing a low level of discrimination againstwomen in social matters. Finally, a score of 3 indicates that all or nearly all of women’ssocial rights were guaranteed by law and the government fully and vigorously enforcedthese laws in practice.

CIRI Indicator of Women’s Economic Rights

Women’s economic rights include a number of internationally recognized rights. Theserights include:

• Equal pay for equal work;• Free choice of profession or employment without the need to obtain a husband’s or

male relative’s consent;• The right to gainful employment without the need to obtain a husband’s or male

relative’s consent;• Equality in hiring and promotion practices;• Job security (maternity leave, unemployment benefits, no arbitrary firing or layoffs,

etc.);• Nondiscrimination by employers;• The right to be free from sexual harassment in the workplace;• The right to work at night;• The right to work in occupations classified as dangerous;• The right to work in the military and the police force.

A score of 0 indicates that there were no economic rights for women in law and thatsystematic discrimination based on sex may have been built into law. A score of 1 indicatesthat women had some economic rights under law, but these rights were not effectivelyenforced. A score of 2 indicates that women had some economic rights under law, and thegovernment effectively enforced these rights in practice while still allowing a low level ofdiscrimination against women in economic matters. Finally, a score of 3 indicates that allor nearly all of women’s economic rights were guaranteed by law and the government fullyand vigorously enforces these laws in practice.

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The CEDAW Effect: International Law's Impact on Women's Rights

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