This chapter explains the development of international and European law from a gender perspective and describes how the process from a gender-neutral to a gender-sensitive approach was developed.Since 1945 and the adoption of the UN Charter, the idea of achieving greater gender equality was merged into many international documents, including the first catalog of women’s rights—Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women. Many principal and subsidiary bodies were established, contributing to the elimination of gender discrimination and to awareness-raising on some critical issues which were an impediment to achieving gender equality. Twenty years ago, UN Security Council Resolution 1325 was adopted, due to a global effort to establish a platform as a foundation to national and international policies to ensure greater protection of women and girls, during and after, armed conflicts. International Humanitarian Law, enshrined in the Geneva Conventions, also has rules that specifically seek to protect women during armed conflicts. Also, International Criminal Law has been developed to recognize extreme forms of sexual violence as international crimes.On the European level, under the auspices of the Council of Europe, several international conventions were adopted to achieve gender equality. One of the main instruments, the European Convention on Human Rights, provides broad protection from discrimination based on gender, established in a comprehensive jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights. The EU has a set of primary and secondary sources on anti-discrimination, which provides comprehensive protection from gender discrimination and serves as an inspiring model to States candidates and other European countries.
The chapter discusses how the lack of gender knowledge and approach in judicial decision-making can influence the decision and the result of the case. Particular emphasis is given to the role of gender stereotypes and how gender stereotypes bias the working of the bench and the outcome courts achieve. Feminist judgments projects that have been developed worldwide demonstrate that judging is gendered, and women make a difference in the decision-making process. The rising number of women judges makes the bench more representative, although they face many constraints preventing them from asking the woman question. The analysis of the essential features of rewriting judgments in a gender perspective highlights that feminist judgments could contribute to the enhancement and spreading of gender competent legal knowledge.
This chapter will provide an overview on several aspects of the gender perspective in Human Rights Law. The chapter will therefore look at the civil and political rights from a gender perspective, as well as social, economic and cultural rights of women, non-binary and LGBTIQA+ persons. The aim is to increase the students’ awareness for the gender perspective in international human rights protection, by providing an overview of currently discussed issues in this area. Such issues include the prohibition of gender-based violence, contemporary forms of slavery and trafficking in persons, the freedom of religion, the right to private life, access to justice for women, women’s (political) empowerment, the prohibition of economic and social discrimination, and women’s right to education.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.