Women’s Rights as Human Rights

This chapter assesses the human rights framework as a paradigm for global gender justice. First, it examines the gains made by the “women’s rights as human rights” movement; this movement brought issues of sexual and gender violence under the purview of human rights. Next, the chapter argues for the importance of economic and social rights, and supports the indivisibility of legal, political, social, and economic rights. However, some postcolonial feminists challenge the rights framework’s claim to universality, and care ethicists criticize its strong individualism. The chapter proposes that a feminist social justice approach provides a more comprehensive framework for negotiating the complex relationships among gender, class, religious, and racial and ethnic identities and oppression than a human rights framework.