ABSTRACT
This chapter examines women’s human rights and specifically the impact that gender has had on our understanding of human rights.1 For many people, however, such a chapter will appear either banal or unnecessary. It may appear unnecessary because the category of human rights already encompasses women, making any discussion of specific women’s human rights redundant. It may appear banal because aside from some extreme groups (the Taliban in Afghanistan for example) there are few who would deny that women are human and hence entitled to full human rights. This view, however, neglects a number of important facts. First, despite its almost universal normative force, women’s human rights have been extraordinarily difficult to uphold. This reveals the heavy impact gender has on human rights enforcement. Second, the movement for women’s human rights in the last 35 years has called for a radical reinterpretation of the traditional notion of human rights. This view of human rights was found to be inadequate to account for the impact of gender on human rights. As such, far from being banal or unnecessary, the relationship between gender and human rights continues to be a topic of ongoing significance for both human rights theory and practice.
