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Feminism Revision Notes:
Main Feminism in international law helps expose how a whole host of
points/facts: areas are gendered
Feminist critique of international law goes against idea that
international law is objective and neutral given that laws are
made by certain people, for certain people (built on gendered
hierarchies)
Fundamental challenge that international law is
objective/neutral as shown through Sellers piece on biases and
assumptions embedded in decision by ILC in declining gender
discrimination as a jus cogens norm which shows material that
rapporteur drew on to draw that conclusive; they said CEDAW
was important but full of reservations and hard to conclude on
basis of opinion juris that states considered themselves to be
bound by this – instead draws on range of sources and
jurisprudence that elevates gender discrimination showing that
it undeniably has state practice and opinion juris behind it
Double-edged sword of deploying feminist approaches: Whole
idea of law reform in highlighting female subordination, comes
with the risk of engaging with these normative frames to begin
with
Human rights:
Lots of differentiation between public and private in many
sectors which has significant repercussions for women whereby
moist widespread violence sustained by women around the
world occurs in the private sphere, particularly the home
- Eg central feature of international legal definition of torture
is that it takes place in the public realm, it must be ‘inflicted
by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence
of a public official or other person acting in an official
capacity’ (UN Convention against Torture, Art 1(1) – although
many women are victims of torture in this public sense ,
greatest violence against women occurs in private sphere
A feminist critique of international law and international human
rights law exposes masculine bias of supposedly neutral
international legal rules
Western enthusiasm for articulation of women’s rights ignores
local feminisms, historical realities of colonialism, and makes
untenable, essentialist assumptions about sameness of position
of women worldwide
Economic rights:
Promotion of developmental nation-state in the wake of
decolonisation has reduced women’s access to economic
resources, limited educational opportunities and increased work
, burdens
Dominant economic policies are compounding these problems by
formalising land ownership as a precondition of access to credit
without regard to women’s interests in land and promoting
women’s equality as an instrumental value necessary for
achievement of economic goals rather than as an end in itself
Chinkin seminal piece:
Challenge absence of women in international law making
procedures eg 3 women on ILC has 3/roughly 20 members
extremely influential charged with development of international
law, what areas need refinement and out of 15 judges on ICJ
there was 4 women – who is doing international law then at the
highest levels?
Highlighted different perspectives and first and third world
feminists and issues with reconciling post colonial struggles with
feminist ambitions – ie post-colonial struggle and demands of
self-determination was to defend and fight for national and local
against the coloniser but a lot of women were marginalised
within that ‘national’ and ‘local’ = ‘pressure to chose the greater
struggle’
Normative structure of international law through public/private
divide; male-dominated areas are protected through
international law, the place of law, rationality and intellectual,
private is the feminine, the home, the children and give example
of torture
Torture must be committed by a public official (UNCAT Article
1(1)) – usually this is done to men, and similar acts done to
women in private sphere do not warrant international legal
intervention
Development in this area as state can be held responsible for
states it has not committed itself but where it has failed to
regulate effectively
Women also lack real power economically, socially and
politically as this becomes side-lined in the language of human
rights and equal rights with men
Issue with CEDAW as a treaty?
It is an equality treaty and so structured to achieve womens
equal rights to men – but women do not need equal rights they
need different rights = also men become the standard against
which womens success and inclusion is measured
Focus is largely on inclusion of existing structures and
institutions but this masks deeper problems eg Beijing
conference including women in international economic law
Focus on treaty has been to put women in a box and deal with
, their problems in isolation as opposed to in direct relation to
wider problems
Feminist challenge to feminist challenge:
Reinvokes image of women as weak, in need of help
Focus on violence distracts us from systemic elements that make
women susceptible to violence in the first place – focusing on a
result rather than identifying root cause
Globalisation:
Feminisation of property
Interventions imposed by international economic law that allow
for development of economic institutions, are not sensitive to
social effects of such – deeply problematic for women
Beijing conference: Brings women to forefront of globalisation –
but this was again to promote equal participation of women in a
globalised economy eg ‘add women and stir’ (link to Ann Orford
modernisation theory of transplanting recipes)
This ‘instrumentalises’ women and attaches their value to the
completion of another project of international law
Distinction between mainstream feminist analysis who cast
arguments in terms of individual rights, equality of treatment
between women and men, political participation and so on, but
Chimni says to ‘deploy a radical critique rather than a liberal
one, does not mean giving up on separate struggle for equality
between the sexes. It only means looking for deeper roots of
women’s oppression, often also the cause of oppression of other
marginal groups in society’. (Chimni)
Feminist approach needs to be alive to deep structures of
capitalism and imperialism that international law facilitates
Ann Orford: Globalisation relies on devalued labour of women
and ‘free care’ (Marxism) that makes plausible all the work that
men do
Frederic Merget reading:
Bring up feminist analysis in what he sees as deeply-gendered
frames of reference in international humanitarian law
‘Heroic’ stereotype of combatant which is anticipated as male,
juxtaposed the vulnerable ‘non-combatant’ female in need of
military protection – thinks whole body of IHL doesn’t bear
relation into ways in which men and women experience armed
conflict
Also challenges idea that IHL acts as a restraint on male power –
that it restrains in some respects but offers a particular types of
power; restraint in war extends idea of cool-headed male
combatant who can restrain from violence, as against feminised
beneficiary whom should be greatful against this masculine male
force that fights and restraints
Bod of IHL norms embeds these ideas – situating men as
, guarantors of human order
Ideas sound ‘neutral’ international law but very gendered at
their core
Humanitarian law actually justifies war under guise of ‘helping’
women and children in war – justifies intervention to protect
these ‘vulnerable’ groups
Core readings:
Diane Otto, There is 2 directions that feminist hope took in the early
‘Feminist 1990s: on one hand, international law’s permeability was
Approaches to understood as embedded in its normative assumptions and
International Law’ institutional arrangements which all needed feminist
in Anne Orford and reconstruction, on the other the demand that violence against
Florian Hoffmann women be taken seriously as an international legal issue was
(eds) The Oxford an effort to break through institutional resistance demanding
Handbook of the reform and accountability
Theory of This illustrates one conundrum at the heart of feminist
International Law engagements with international law; how to engage critically
(OUP 2016) with the laws gendered languages and practices, while
Chapter 24. simultaneously seeking to use it to advance women’s rights
and world peace in the present
1) Diversity of feminist visions:
All different versions of feminism; liberal, cultural, radical,
Marxist, postcolonial, post-structural and queer
Elements from several of these approaches are likely to be
found in feminist projects in international law, with radical
feminism having a lot of influence lately:
- Radical feminism has focused attention on womens sexual
subordination and victimhood, granting new legitimacy t
protective gender tropes with many feminists find
uncomfortable (ie seeing women as weak and helpless)
Think of feminist ideas in international law as a network
aspects of which are drawn upon depending on politics,
history, context, strategy and goals as opposed to a parallel
set of ideas
There is debates within feminism such as whether prostitution
should be regulated as work or criminalised as violence
against women; this is lifeblood of feminisms success in
international law ie not competing ideas but a contested
network which makes visible all feminist ideas, even the less
dominant, providing an abundant reservoir of historical and
theoretical knowledge and experiential evidence
Starting point of most feminist visions is to change womens
disadvantaged position vis-a-vis men around the world;
however after that everything is different
Gender is also an analytical system that attributes value to
objects and ideas that have little or no relationship at all with
