Human Rights, Women and Development

This subject has the following teaching availabilities in 2010:

This subject will trace the history and examine the impact of the strategies adopted by advocates for women's equality in the fields of international human rights and development law and policy.

Principal topics will include:

• The links between human rights and development strategies in improving women's economic and social status
• The tensions between these strategies and the consolidation of the market-led development model during the 1990s
• Impediments to the realisation of women's equality and how these might be overcome, including conceptual inadequacies, institutional marginalisation, gender bias in the law, the limits of legal liberalism, threat of cultural imperialism and lack of political will
• The work of postcolonial feminists, uncovering some of the hidden histories of women's resistance to colonial laws and policies
• The limitations and potential of law in promoting women's equality and social justice.

A student who has successfully completed this subject should understand:

• The key international human rights instruments and development policies and programs that have sought to promote women's equality since 1945
• The interrelationship between women's enjoyment of human rights and their equal participation in, and benefiting from, economic development
• The theoretical debates about how best to conceptualise sex/gender [in]equality, the different legal conceptions of sex/gender equality, and the problems associated with measuring and assessing substantive equality
• The contributions by postcolonial legal scholars to understanding the diversity of women's experiences of inequality and the role played by customary and colonial laws as well as international economic institutions
• The significant contributions of women's movements and nongovernmental organisations to advancing women's equality
• The strategies used to promote women's advancement in the human rights and development fields and be able to propose alternative approaches
• The role of men in achieving gender equality
• How to utilise the many international institutions and mechanisms that have a role to play in advancing women's equality.

Take-home examination (100%) (14-17 January 2011)
or
10,000 word research paper (100%) (24 February 2011) on a topic approved by the subject coordinator

This subject is not available as a breadth subject.