Engendering Human Rights: Women and Poverty - a Human

Rights Approach

Sandra Fredman Oxford University

Engendering human rights

• ‘For too long, it was assumed that development was a process that lifts all boats... and that it was gender neutral in its impact.’

• ‘Human development if not engendered, is endangered.’...Step beyond

• Human rights will continue to exclude women unless expressly engendered

Engendering Human Rights• "In its majestic equality, the law forbids rich

and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets, and steal loaves of bread.”(Anatole France)

• Take account of power relations in which rights are exercised and interlocking sources of disadvantage.

• Expand feasible options available to women• Recognise and value care, responsibility, solidarity• Not just women: gendered relationships. Women’s

equal participation in workforce = men’s equal participation in home.

Gendered poverty• Primary responsibility for child-care and unpaid work • Imbalance of Power within family: lack of agency• Violence• Health-care: Maternal mortality; reproductive

complications• Education• Precarious work in formal sector; predominance in

informal sector and agricultural work

Role of law in constructing gendered poverty

• Absence of property rights: women precipitated into poverty on widowhood or divorce

• Absence of protection against violence: interferes with health, education, paid work, entrepreneurship

• Lack of mobility interferes with poverty alleviation

Interlocking factorsEarly

marriage and

teenage pregnancy Lack of

education

Violence

Lack of property

rights, customary

law, access to capital

Lack of agency;

secondary poverty

Health; maternal mortality

Engendering the Right to Education

Teenage pregnancy and early marriage

Violence en route and at school

Sanitation at schoolSyllabus

Opportunities for paid

work

Engendering the right to

work

Hours of work

Equal rights for

precarious and

informal workers

Job segregatio

n and women’s

work

Equal pay for work of equal value

Education and

training

Parental rights and child-care

Violence and sexual

harassment at work

Formal Equality before the law

• Equal property rights: customary law and statutory law

• Rule of Law: protection against violence• Minimum age of marriage• Freedom of movement• Equal right to vote

From formal to substantive equality

Formal equality

• Same treatment: antecedent disadvantage not relevant

• Male norm• Relative: equally poor?• Abstracted from social

context

Substantive equality

• Different treatment may be necessary to redress disadvantage (quotas)

• Structural obstacles• Improve conditions for all• Power/cultural norms

Substantive equality• Break the cycle of disadvantage associated

with status groups (allows quotas etc)• Promote dignity and worth, redressing

stereotyping, stigma, humiliation and violence• Transformational: Aim to achieve structural

change• Participative: Facilitate full participation in

decision-making

Interaction between dimensions

• ‘Redressing disadvantage’ can cause stigma: welfare recipients

• Focus on stigma alone can leave disadvantage untouched

• Redressing disadvantage may not be sustainable without structural change

• Women’s voice must genuinely redress disadvantage: elite v poor women?

Poor Women: agents of change or bearing burden of development?

• Conditional Cash Transfer: • Redressing disadvantage: cash

transfer, but less agency; time;• Addressing stereotyping: women

primarily as mothers; fathers ignored • Structural change: Poor quality

services• Participation: Often missing• Alternatives: Universal good quality

services; unconditional cash transfers

Microfinancing

Substantive Equality and microfinancing

• Redressing disadvantage: Small unprofitable businesses; empowerment unproved

• Addressing stereotyping: Women as efficient users of resources but cultural obstacles unchanged, violence

• Transformation: Structures unchanged: diverts State responsibility for rights to market

• Participation: From group solidarity to individual consumers.

Challenges ahead

• Engendered human rights: rights in context of complex social structures

• Substantive equality for women and men• Positive duties on State and all with power: • Universal high quality services