According to Susan Deller Ross, many human rights advocates still do not see women's rights as human rights. Yet women in many countries suffer from laws, practices, customs, and cultural and religious norms that consign them to a deeply inferior status. Advocates might conceive of human rights as involving torture, extrajudicial killings, or cruel and degrading treatment—all clearly in violation of international human rights—and think those issues irrelevant to women. Yet is female genital mutilation, practiced on millions of young girls and even infants, not a gross violation of human rights? When a family decides to murder a daughter in the name of "honor," is that not an extrajudicial killing? When a husband rapes or savagely beats his wife, knowing the legal authorities will take no action on her behalf, is that not cruel and degrading treatment? Women's Human Rights is the first human rights casebook to focus specifically on women's human rights. Rich with interdisciplinary material, the book advances the study of the deprivation and violence women suffer due to discriminatory laws, religions, and customs that deny them their most fundamental freedoms. It also provides present and future lawyers the legal tools for change, demonstrating how human rights treaties can be used to obtain new laws and court decisions that protect women against discrimination with respect to employment, land ownership, inheritance, subordination in marriage, domestic violence, female genital mutilation, polygamy, child marriage, and the denial of reproductive rights. Ross examines international and regional human rights treaties in depth, including treaty language and the jurisprudence and general interpretive guidelines developed by human rights bodies. By studying how international human rights law has been and can be implemented at the domestic level through local courts and legislatures, readers will understand how to call upon these newly articulated human rights to help bring about legislation, court decisions, and executive action that protect women from human rights violations.

A lively, accessible collection of essays exploring the history of the struggle for women's rights in the United States from the colonial period to the present. The fight for women's rights was one of the first topics explored by women's historians when the field emerged in the 1970s. Current and authoritative, Women's Rights: People and Perspectives shows just how complex and multifaceted our understanding of that fight has become. Women's Rights spans the breadth of American history, from Native American women prior to colonization to women during the Revolution, Antebellum period, the Civil War, and the Gilded Age. Coverage of the 20th century moves from the Progressive Era to the Great Depression and World War II; from the emergence of modern feminism to the present. Throughout, it offers fascinating details of ordinary and extraordinary lives while charting the evolving roles of women in American society.

This volume addresses the issue of Hindu peasant women's ability to effectuate the statutory rights to succession and assert ownership of their share in family land. The work combines a critical evaluation of law with economic analyses into allocation of resources within the family as a means of addressing gender relations and explaining resulting gender inequalities.

Collects 14 articles on women's suffrage. DuBois (history, U. of California in Los Angeles) traces the trajectory of the suffrage story against the backdrop of changing attitudes to politics, citizenship, and gender, and the resultant tensions over such issues as slavery and abolitionism, sexuality and religion, and class conflict. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Women's rights are the rights and entitlements claimed for women and girls worldwide, and formed the basis for the women's rights movement in the nineteenth century and feminist movement during the 20th century. In some countries, these rights are institutionalized or supported by law, local custom, and behavior, whereas in others they are ignored and suppressed. They differ from broader notions of human rights through claims of an inherent historical and traditional bias against the exercise of rights by women and girls, in favor of men and boys. Women's Rights and Social Change focuses attention on the way in which women from a number of traditions have been able to bring about change and the manner in which rights have either facilitated or inhibited women's participation in the process of change. In the face of injustice, people band together to work for change, and through their influence, what was once unthinkable becomes common. This book traces the history of the women's rights movement, including the key players, watershed moments, and legislative battles that have driven social change. This book should be of interest to all those interested in gender development and women empowerment and researches and students.

Religion plays a pivotal role in the way women are treated around the world, socially and legally. This book discusses three Islamic human rights approaches: secular, non-compatible, reconciliatory (compatible), and proposes a contextual interpretive approach. It is argued that the current gender discriminatory statutory Islamic laws in Islamic jurisdictions, based on the decontextualised interpretation of the Koran, can be reformed through Ijtihad: independent individual reasoning. It is claimed that the original intention of the Koran was to protect the rights of women and raise their status in society, not to relegate them to subordination. This Koranic intention and spirit may be recaptured through the proposed contextual interpretation which in fact means using an Islamic (or insider) strategy to achieve gender equality in Muslim states and greater compatibility with international human rights law. It discusses the negative impact of the so-called statutory Islamic laws of Pakistan on the enjoyment of women’s human rights and robustly challenges their Koranic foundation. While supporting the international human rights regime, this book highlights the challenges to its universality: feminism and cultural relativism. To achieve universal application, genuine voices from different cultures and groups must be accommodated. It is argued that the women’s human rights regime does not cover all issues of concern to women and has a weak implementation mechanism. The book argues for effective implementation procedures to turn women’s human rights into reality.

This book provides an updated comparative overview of women’s movements in Latin America and the Caribbean, filling some of the gaps left by the existing literature. It brings together case studies of nine countries – Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Mexico, Nicaragua, and Peru – and includes a comparative analysis of the overall evolution of women’s rights movements across the region during the past decades. This analysis shows Latin America as the home to the largest, strongest, and most densely regionally and globally interconnected women’s rights movements in the Global South. Each chapter in this volume seeks to understand where the struggles for women’s rights come from, how they stand today and where they are headed to. To do so, they all use qualitative methodologies, and most resort to first-hand accounts of the processes described and reflections by the actors on their own experiences, collected through surveys, in-depth interviews and/or ethnographic observations. The comparative analysis of the different national case studies reveals the main struggles in which women’s rights movements are currently involved in Latin America and the Caribbean: the quest for political representation within the State and its political institutions; the fight against gender violence and the struggle for sexual and reproductive rights – especially abortion rights. Women’s Rights in Movement: Dynamics of Feminist Change in Latin America and the Caribbean will be a valuable resource for researchers, activists and policy makers interested in the struggles for women’s rights not only in Latin America and the Caribbean, but in different parts of the world. It will be of special interest to sociologists, political scientists, anthropologists and other social scientists working in interdisciplinary fields such as gender and social movements studies.

This collection examines the human rights to social security and social protection from a women's rights perspective. The contributors stress the need to address women's poverty and exclusion within a human rights framework that takes account of gender. The chapters unpack the rights to social security and protection and their relationship to human rights principles such as gender equality, participation and dignity. Alongside conceptual insights across the field of women's social security rights, the collection analyses recent developments in international law and in a range of national settings. It considers the ILO's Social Protection Floors Recommendation and the work of UN treaty bodies. It explores the different approaches to expansion of social protection in developing countries (China, Chile and Bolivia). It also discusses conditionality in cash transfer programmes, a central debate in social policy and development, through a gender lens. Contributors consider the position of poor women, particularly single mothers, in developed countries (Australia, Canada, the United States, Ireland and Spain) facing the damaging consequences of welfare cuts. The collection engages with shifts in global discourse on the role of social policy and the way in which ideas of crisis and austerity have been used to undermine rights with harsh impacts on women.

Women's Global Health and Human Rights serves as an overview of the challenges faced by women in different regions of the world. Ideal as a tool for both professionals and students, this book discusses the similarities and differences in health and human rights challenges that are faced by women globally. Best practices and success stories are also included in this timely and important text. Major Topics include: „X Globalization „X Gender Based Terrorism and Violence „X Cultural Practices „X Health Problems „X Progress and Challenges

This historical biography examines Sarah Raymond Fitzwilliam's abolitionist roots growing up on a stop of the Underground Railroad, her training at a 'normal school,' her tenure as a teacher, principal and the nation's first city school superintendent (Bloomington, Illinois 1874-1892).