The human right to economic equality: governments have committed to eradicating all forms of descrimination against women. Enlightened trade policies take the gender dimension into account.

• Author: Simms, Glenda P.

DEFINING DISCRIMINATION AGAINST WOMEN

In the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, Article one includes economic equality of women as a human right:

"The term 'discrimination against women' shall mean 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, cultural, civil or any other field."

By adopting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on 10 December 1948, the relatively small United Nations (UN) family of 56 states concretized their belief in the "equal rights of men and women". But despite the charter's noble commitment to upholding the inherent dignity of every human being, the UN General Assembly noticed that women continued to lag behind men in their enjoyment of economic, social, cultural, political and civil rights.

This realization led the United Nations in 1979, over 30 years later, to adopt the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).

The UN is now a much larger family of nation states and, to date, 185 of them have ratified CEDAW and 95 have ratified the Optional Protocol to the Convention. The majority of world governments have, therefore, committed themselves to respect the spirit of the women's human rights treaty, and implement policies that will guarantee that women can participate in ensuring sustainable development.

Such a momentous commitment can only be fully realized when politicians and policymakers, in both the private and the public domains, internalize the idea that women's rights are human rights.

Trade policies within a human rights framework

In order to effectively integrate women into mainstream trade policies, policymakers must fully understand the economic implications of the Convention and engage in a "constructive dialogue" with gender experts.

Over the years CEDAW has noted that women in all countries continue to lag behind men in important areas: political decision-making; power-brokering in the boardrooms that control the economic capital of societies; and access to financial resources and the means to ensure economic independence as individuals and as members of groups.

In developed countries, there are some remarkable examples of women gaining...