Women's Voice and Agency : The Role of Legal Institutions and Women's Movements
Global events like the Beijing Women s Conference of 1995 have resulted in the creation of strong international frameworks that set standards for women s rights around the world. Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against...
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| Format: | Working Paper |
| Language: | English en_US |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2014
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| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2014/01/20431443/women s-voice-agency-role-legal-institutions-womens-movements http://hdl.handle.net/10986/21029 |
| Summary: | Global events like the Beijing Women s
Conference of 1995 have resulted in the creation of strong
international frameworks that set standards for women s
rights around the world. Convention on the Elimination of
All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), the
Beijing Platform for Action, and other international norms
define the scope of universal rights for women and girls,
and have opened new spaces for regional and national legal
reform. Bottom-up engagement with these international laws
and institutions by local and transnational women s
movements has catalyzed widespread changes in lawmaking and
transformed standard-setting documents into tools for
reform. The following paper discusses four important pillars
of women s voice and agency (while recognizing that there
are others which are beyond the scope of this review):
freedom from the risk of violence; freedom of movement;
freedom to make decisions on family formation and the
freedom to shape policy. It will examine the ways in which
these freedoms impact women s voice and the ways in which
women are working to reform law and policy to ensure these
four freedoms are accessible to all. |
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