1. Introduction 3 Understanding women’s economic and social rights 10
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Women in Economic and Social Life Background Paper for the Working Group on the issue of discrimination against women in law and in practice Mayra Gómez1
1. Introduction 3 2. Understanding women’s economic and social rights 10 2.1 The legal basis for women’s economic and social rights 10 2.2 Advancing gender sensitive interpretations of economic and social rights 16 2.3 Understanding the obligations of States at the intersection of the rights to non-discrimination and equality and economic and social rights 19 2.4 Temporary special measures 39
3.1 Multiple and intersecting discrimination and inequalities 42 3.2 Education 44 3.3 Women’s work: Formal and informal, paid and unpaid 52 3.4 Maternity and child care 65 3.5 Housing 71 3.6 Food and nutrition 76 3.7 Land and property 81 3.8 Water and sanitation 87 3.9 Social security and social protection 92 96 3.10 Austerity and women’s rights 97 105 4. Accountability for women’s economic and social rights 106 4.1 The role of the International Human Rights System 106 4.2 Gender budgeting as a tool for monitoring and accountability 111 4.3 International and regional economic/financial actors and agencies 113 4.4 Thoughts on the post-2015 development framework 114
5.1 Recommendations for States 121 5.2 Recommendations for United Nations Human Rights Bodies 126 5.3 Recommendations to International and Regional Economic/Financial Actors and Agencies 126 Annex 1: Specific Guidance and Recommendations Relevant to Women’s Economic and Social Rights under CEDAW 128 Annex 2: Specific Guidance and Comments Relevant to Women’s Economic and Social Rights under ICESCR 136 1. Introduction“Women’s economic, social and cultural rights must be a primary strategy in addressing and remedying women’s inequality.” - Primer on Women’s Economic, Social and Cultural Rights2 This paper addresses discrimination against women in economic and social life, with a focus on economic and financial crisis. While much has been written about the recent global economic and financial crises, and while some attention has been given to how these crises have impacted women, less attention has been given to understanding these impacts through an international human rights lens – and in particular through the lens of women’s economic and social rights. This paper aims in part to help fill that gap. However, women’s economic and social rights are fundamental at all times, not only during times of crisis. Economic and social rights – including the rights to the highest attainable standard of health,3 to adequate housing, to work and to just and favorable conditions of work, to water and sanitation, to education, to social security, and to food and nutrition – are all vital to women’s equality and to their ability to live a life of dignity. Yet, in all parts of the world and in all areas of economic and social rights, women are disproportionately disadvantaged and face unique challenges because of their gender. Even today, in many respects women lag far behind men when it comes to the actual enjoyment of economic and social rights, and in this way it can be said that women are marginalized within the domain of economic and social rights. In addition, it can also be said that economic and social rights are themselves marginalized within the broader domain of human rights, and this is a related problem which must also be brought to light and remedied. Despite repeated commitments from the international community that all human rights – be they civil, cultural, economic, political, or social – are “universal, indivisible and interdependent and interrelated”4 and that they must be all be treated “on the same footing,”5 it is nonetheless true that economic and social rights as a subset of human rights have been relegated to the sidelines when it comes to international and national policy discourse and debates. This is particularly true in the area of economic policy, where the goal of ‘growth’ is often privileged over the enjoyment of human rights, and where the needs of the poorest and of the most marginalized do not factor into routine decision making. Yet, civil society continues to push for the centrality and primacy of economic and social rights, as can be seen in recent debates related to the post-2015 development agenda.6 The burden borne of those choices has not been shouldered equally by all. For women to achieve the gender equality that is their right, the prevailing attitude towards economic and social rights must change. Economic and social rights must garner the same prominence and status as other human rights, and they (along with all human rights) must be given primacy over any other policy area, as stated in Article 1 of the Vienna Declaration of 1993: “Human rights and fundamental freedoms are the birthright of all human beings; their protection and promotion is the first responsibility of Governments.”7 States are first and foremost responsible to ensure that all human rights are respected, protected, promoted, and fulfilled. The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), adopted in 1979 by the UN General Assembly, enshrines civil and political rights for women alongside their economic, social and cultural rights. CEDAW provides an important legal basis and framework for women’s economic and social rights and the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women has played an especially critical role in advancing a holistic view of women’s rights which encompasses all dimensions. The quality of women’s economic and social life over the course of their life cycle mirrors to a large degree the extent to which they are able to enjoy their human rights – including their economic and social rights – and the extent to which these rights are upheld in practice. To be sure, women’s economic and social life is deeply connected to their public and political life, and in reality these aspects cannot be easily compartmentalized. While many States now include legal guarantees of non-discrimination and equality in their Constitutions, fewer States enshrine economic and social rights at this highest level of national law (although to some extent this is also changing). However, equality provisions within national law must be interpreted to extend to, and protect women’s economic and social rights. In addition, because the right to equality is not subject to progressive realization, it is an immediate obligation of States to ensure that women are able to enjoy their right to equality within economic and social spheres. Here a substantive and indivisible approach must be used in order to ensure that women enjoy their right to equality in the de facto sense (i.e. ‘equality of results’ and not only de jure equality). Immediacy of obligations can be contrasted with the notion of progressivity, the latter of which has been described by the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights as “a necessary flexibility device,” which, while it applies to the general realization of an economic or social right, cannot be said to apply to women’s right to equality.8 With this understanding in mind, there are two challenges which lay ahead. The first is to raise the profile of economic and social rights, and within that, to shine a bright light on women’s experiences and realities. Addressing these two challenges underpin the structure and content of this paper. Women’s Economic and Social Rights in Crisis While women’s economic and social rights are fundamental at all times, the recent economic and financial crisis does help to illuminate the gaps that exist in the protection of these rights, as well as to clarify the consequences for women across the world when States fail to meet their human rights obligations. Therefore, the economic and financial crisis offers a kind of window to understanding women’s economic and social rights, and the real-world responses of States have illustrated how economic and social policy measures can be protective or hostile towards women’s rights. This paper addresses some of these consequences, and the various ways in which State policy has impacted women. To set the stage for this discussion we must say a few words at the outset about the global economic crisis of 2007-2009. That crisis has had a range of devastating consequences around the world, and it is perhaps hard to overstate the nature and scope of the ramifications. Some economists have put it this way: By now, the tectonic damage left by the global financial crisis of 2007-09 has been well documented. World per capita output, which typically expands by about 2.2 percent annually, contracted by 1.8 percent in 2009, the largest contraction the global economy experienced since World War II. During the crisis, markets around the world experienced colossal disruptions in asset and credit markets, massive erosions of wealth, and unprecedented numbers of bankruptcies. Five years after the crisis began, its lingering effects are still all too visible in advanced countries and emerging markets alike: the global recession left in its wake a worldwide increase of 30 million in the number of people unemployed. These are painful reminders of why there is a need to improve our understanding of financial crises.9 For developing nations and the economies of the Global South, economic crisis has been on the one hand all too common, and on the other hand, all too often overlooked by the international community. In one International Monetary Fund (IMF) study, researchers covering the period from 1970-2007 showed that “of the 124 banking crises and 208 currency crises, 62% took place in Africa and Latin America and the Caribbean combined, while only 6% took place in advanced economies (OECD countries, except Mexico and South Korea).”10 However, because of financial contagion effects as well as the global economic recession, financial markets in developing countries have been severely impacted within the most recent global crisis, as well.11 In light of the dramatic global consequences, in the wake of the crisis a critical space has been opened – particularly for human rights advocates, progressive and feminist economists, environmental activists, and civil society movements around the world – to question the fundamental assumptions which have long underpinned the global economy. This is a vital opportunity for the world. While it may seem abstract and removed, the truth is that every person – regardless of where they live or what their lives are like – is very intimately impacted by global economic decisions. International agencies such as the International Labour Organization (ILO) have observed that “[a] key lesson from the global financial and economic crisis is that policies for economic growth which have prevailed over the past three decades need a rethink.”12 Many have argued that the global economic neo-liberal model is fundamentally flawed in various ways: financially flawed as it operates with high levels of debt, socially flawed because it concentrates extreme amounts of wealth in the hands of a few elite, and environmentally flawed because it commodifies nature and sacrifices ecological sustainability, all the while revering ‘growth’ as its overarching driver and rationale.13 It is a subject of intense debate as to whether certain macro-economic policies14 not only further economic and social inequality,15 but also produce economic crisis as a matter of course.16 Nonetheless, as the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs has pointed out: “Even before the current financial and economic crisis, questions had been raised about the core assumption that fiscal discipline and restrictive monetary policies, combined with the liberalization of markets, would deliver on economic growth and poverty reduction. That assumption has not been borne out by the evidence.”17 From a women’s rights perspective, what is clear is that economic crises have a disproportionate impact on women. Researchers have highlighted that in general men are better positioned to weather economic crisis. In general, men have more economic security as they have higher paying jobs along with more assets and wealth. Their jobs are more likely to offer benefits, such as health care and pensions, and be covered by unemployment insurance.18 On the whole, though the specific effects of the crisis differ by context, the overall picture is one of deepening economic insecurity for women and an increase in women’s burden of unpaid care work.19 There has also been a broad recognition amongst feminist economists and others that the underlying macro-economic structures which gave rise to the crisis in the first place are the very same structures which also perpetuate restrictions of women’s economic opportunities compared to men’s.20 Therefore, addressing the crisis provides an opportunity to address patterns of gender inequality and discrimination which have too long existed as the economic status quo. In fact, the Global Jobs Pact, adopted by ILO member States also in 2009 underscores this message, stating that the “current crisis should be viewed as an opportunity to shape new gender equality policy responses.”21 Despite this opportunity, Government responses to the economic crisis have not always taken gender into account. In fact, it could be said that they have rarely taken gender into account. In Europe, for example, which has strong regional standards on women’s rights and gender equality, the European Economic Recovery Plan made no mention of the words “gender,” “‘women” or “equality,” an absence which some have highlighted as “symbolic of a low sensibility towards gender equality in responding to the crisis.”22 Indeed, the European Commission’s Advisory Committee on Equal Opportunities for Women and Men found that “[i]n the urgency of the crisis it appears that, to date, little attention has been given to ensuring that gender is taken into account when formulating policy responses.”23 With respect to the G20, which has emerged as an influential new global actor in the wake of the economic crisis, some economists have argued that “the G20 has not seriously considered the consequences for women and men when formulating policies and setting its agenda.”24 This is the kind of ‘gender-blind’ and ‘rights-blind’ thinking which needs to end in order for women to enjoy their economic and social rights. To tackle the problem, economic and social rights must be taken seriously as human rights, and women’s equality must occupy a central and visible space within economic decision-making and policy-making. To help further thinking on women’s economic and social rights, the next three sections address understanding women’s economic and social rights (Section 2.), women’s economic and social rights throughout the life cycle, (Section 3.) and accountability for women’s economic and social rights (Section 4.). The final section (Section 5.) lays out specific recommendation to States, United Nations Human Rights Bodies, and International and Regional Economic/Financial Actors and Agencies for the promotion, protection and advancement of women’s economic and social rights. |