Women’s Rights as Human Rights and Cultural Imperialism

The Women’s Rights as Human Rights movement is a particularly noteworthy poster child of the influential international human rights system. It is predicated on the liberal individualist conception of human rights and gender equality. With the landmark 1979 UN adoption of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, the Women’s Rights as Human Rights movement has been empowered to pressure ratifying non-Western states to transform their nonliberal cultures by incorporating its liberal individualist principles in their domestic legal systems. Despite the risk that this may impose liberal individualism of the West on the nonliberal Global South, most human rights activists from the Global South have enthusiastically embraced the Women’s Rights as Human Rights movement. Western feminists have taken this as evidence that the Women’s Rights as Human Rights movement exemplifies transnational feminist solidarity. Against this widespread view, this article highlights the danger that the Women’s Rights as Human Rights movement may replicate the imperialist stance of the colonial era and erode culturally diverse modes of gender justice in the Global South.