ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an overview of some of the major developments that gender analysis and activism has stimulated in international human rights law in the last four decades. International human rights bodies have made significant progress, so far as formal sexual and gender equality is concerned. Many different critiques have been launched against the international human rights system from gender perspectives, especially in relation to violations of the rights of women. Human rights bodies have also found discriminatory assumptions and stereotypes about women’s participation in the paid labour force once they marry or have children. The issues of sexual orientation and gender identity are distinct, though related, and also overlap with the categories of sexual rights and reproductive rights. Assertions of women’s human rights have frequently been met with rejection or qualified acceptance by reference to their purported inconsistency with customs, traditional practices, cultural norms or religious beliefs and practices.
