Introduction

The introduction provides a background to earlier accounts of the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights from 1946 to 1948, which are negligent of the participation of non-Western women delegates to the United Nations. From this dominant historical narrative, the introduction explores the ways in which human rights as a concept is criticized in postmodern research for being a Western, male concept that requires re-articulation in more particular, culturally sensitive ways. The introduction describes the gap that the counter narrative of the book fills in studies on human rights and women in history: that the notion of human rights is historically connected to the political and economic emancipation of women throughout the world after the Second World War.