ABSTRACT
The South African experience demonstrates that the creation of extensive legal rights for women and others, though of supreme importance, is not decisive for guaranteeing political and social success for women or eliminating economic deprivations for them. Case studies and examples from almost every country, particularly those countries in the global South, consistently demonstrate that gender-based poverty and economic inequality constrain women's human rights and development, as well as those of the communities within which they live. The overall focus has been on achieving and sustaining a regime of women's rights and gender equality. Constitutional negotiation occurs against the backdrop of ongoing contestations about the meaning, purpose, and ideology of the newly established democracy and its constitution. The resulting constitution naturally reflects a compromise that mediates competing discourses of liberation. The idea of conditional interdependence is broad enough to embraces correlative, or reciprocal, relationship. Violence against women is one of many obstacles to economic development.
