ABSTRACT
This chapter evaluates the gender-neutral language of the Women's Convention in light of recent feminist critiques of the focus on "rights" in the women's movement. It describes the reasons that rights language, or gender-neutral treaty provisions, may not address problems that women, in telling their own stories, identify as salient. The chapter proposes particular criteria to evaluate treaty provisions and applies them to the Women's Convention, examining the strategies the Convention language reflects as it attempts to advance the status of women. Many ratifying nations use the claim of cultural difference to justify reservations to the Women's Convention. But the gender-neutral language of the convention facilitates a more subtle form of injustice. Practices that range from child marriages to trafficking in women to child pornography are often justified through appeals to rights, rights that men have designed to protect their freedoms to private commerce, free speech, and cultural integrity.
