ABSTRACT
As global law has expanded, it has acquired greater influence over national and local systems of law. One of the major ways the international human rights system endeavors to prevent violence against women is by international law, particularly the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). This chapter indicates that the critical feature of the CEDAW process is its cultural and educational role:its capacity to coalesce and express a particular cultural understanding of gender. In the human rights process governing violence against women, there emerges from time to time a conception of culture as homogeneous, static, "primitive", and resistant to change. The village and the UN are on the same terrain, although clearly unequal in power. Cultural production takes place in each of these locations, as preexisting pieces are reconstituted and rearranged.
