Engendering Human Rights brings together distinguished scholars and feminist activists in a collection of essays on human rights in Africa. Contributors explore the formulating, monitoring, reporting, and implementation of human rights in Africa and the African Diaspora. The individual chapters examine how human rights frameworks and practices differ in various political, economic, social, cultural, racial and gendered contexts througout Africa.

Engendering Human Rights explores the obstacles African women must overcome to obtain and protect their human rights. The essays in this important volume represent a varied group of distinguished scholars, activists, and practitioners, and incorporate gendered perspectives on the formulating, monitoring, reporting, and implementation of human rights in Africa and the African Diaspora in an age of globalization. Contributors tackle issues ranging from reproductive health and rights, immigration, religion, and spousal abuse to cultural imperatives, legal and constitutional reforms, and the arts. Engendering Human Rights is an excellent resource for scholars in human rights, public health, literature, gender/women's studies, cultural studies, and African studies.

Why have states in general been slower to incorporate the international diffusion of women’s human rights norms domestically than other human rights norms and why has the diffusion of these norms varied so greatly between states? Why are some states more responsive and exert more effort than others to comply with these norms? Engendering the State explains these key issues and argues that the gender biased identity of many states represents the most significant barrier to diffusion. It also explores how particular norms have diffused into certain states at specific points in time, as a consequence of international and domestic pressure. The author: addresses the limitations of existing explanations of international norms case studies of Germany, Spain, Japan and India, which provide a new perspective on comparative analysis of Europe and Asia alternative arguments on cross-national variation and the influence of international norms of sexual discrimination the theoretical and practical implications of the argument. This book is essential to those with an interest in the topical subject of women’s human rights, gender studies and international studies.

Engendering Transnational Transgressions reclaims the transgressive side of feminist history, challenging hegemonic norms and the power of patriarchies. Through the lenses of intersectionality, gender analysis, and transnational feminist theory, it addresses the political in public and intimate spaces. The book begins by highlighting the transgressive nature of feminist historiography. It then divides into two parts—Part I, Intimate Transgressions: Marriage and Sexuality, examines marriage and divorce as viewed through a transnational lens, and Part II, Global Transgressions: Networking for Justice and Peace, considers political and social violence as well as struggles for relief, redemption, and change by transnational networks of women. Chapters are archivally grounded and take a critical approach that underscores the local in the global and the significance of intersectional factors within the intimate. They bring into conversation literatures too often separated: history of feminisms and anti-war, anti-imperial/anti-fascist, and related movements, on the one hand, and studies of gender crossings, marriage reconstitution, and affect and subjectivities, on the other. In so doing, the book encourages the reader to rethink standard interpretations of rights, equality, and recognition. This is the ideal volume for students and scholars of Women’s and Gender History and Women’s and Gender Studies, as well as International, Transnational, and Global History, History of Social Movements, and related specialized topics.

Publisher description

As an instrument which addresses the circumstances which affect women's lives and enjoyment of rights in a diverse world, the CEDAW is slowly but surely making its mark on the development of international and national law. Using national case studies from South Asia, Southern Africa, Australia, Canada and Northern Europe, Women's Human Rights examines the potential and actual added value of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women in comparison and interaction with other equality and anti-discrimination mechanisms. The studies demonstrate how state and non-state actors have invoked, adopted or resisted the CEDAW and related instruments in different legal, political, economic and socio-cultural contexts, and how the various international, regional and national regimes have drawn inspiration and learned from each other.

This volume counters one-sided dominant discursive representations of gender in human rights and transitional justice, and women’s place in the transformations of neoliberal human rights, and contributes a more balanced examination of how transitional justice and human rights institutions, and political institutions impact the lives and experiences of women. Using a multidisciplinary approach, the contributors to this volume theorize and historicize the place of women’s rights (and gender), situating it within contemporary country-specific political, legal, socio-cultural and global contexts. Chapters examine the progress and challenges facing women (and women’s groups) in transitioning countries: from Peru to Argentina, from Kenya to Sierra Leone, and from Bosnia to Sri Lanka, in a variety of contexts, attending especially to the relationships between local and global forces