ABSTRACT
In and between the lines of Women's Rights, Human Rights is a declaration of intent: women's human rights activists, scattered across the globe, have gathered in dialogue to change fundamentally not only the content but also the form of international human rights work. The dynamism of the women's human rights movement serves to counter what Arati Rao refers to as "reductionism, essentialism, and rhetorical rigidity". What is striking about the growing women's human rights movement is its resistance to polarization and, therefore, its dynamism. As was evident in much of the government rhetoric at the UN World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna in June of 1993, the uncritical affirmation of difference per se can have disastrous results. The fundamental challenge for the movement for women's human rights is that it not become a reformist project: its recipe should not read, "Add women and stir", but "Add women and alter".
