Los derechos humanos de las mujeres y el movimiento feminista transnacional. La CEDAW, sus procedimientos e impactos glocales

Gender equality and women’s empowerment constitute the world’s greatest challenge for human rights, in the UN Secretary-General’s own words . Less than a century has passed since the nation-state’s open resistance to consider women’s rights as a matter of international politics to the new transnational feminist weave that has made women’s human rights a global issue. International organizations such as the United Nations, nation-states and international women’s organizations have been key actors in the history of women’s human rights and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) has been a privileged instrument in the worldwide expansion of women’s rights since the end of World War II. This thesis has dealt with women’s human rights and the transnational feminist movement which are inextricably linked to each other. The focus of the analysis was the United Nations Women’s Convention (CEDAW), its rules, procedures, actors involved and impacts at national and international level. The aim of the research has been to produce new knowledge on the status and progress of the worldwide expansion of women’s human rights, its strengths, limitations and current challenges in different parts of the Globe. We have investigated how the CEDAW operates in its global trend towards the recognition of women’s human rights to the extent that can be considered a New Social World-Object (NOMS for its acronym in Spanish). Another research question we have addressed refers to the role of the global women’s movement in the promotion of formal and substantive gender equality through the Women’s Convention. Specific objectives of this research included: - Analyze the procedure around CEDAW, its processes, mechanisms and structure. We have studied CEDAW from its origin to the current global expansion and looked for evidence of its impact on the global expansion of women’s human rights. - Understand the evolution of the global women’s movement around the demands for women’s human rights since the end of World War II to the new transnational feminist weave. - Establish theoretical links between global studies and the expansion of women’s human rights through the sociological concept of New Social World-Objects (NOMS). - Explain the different theoretical perspectives on women’s human rights from different research fields in order to identify current debates and challenges. - Find a proper methodological approach to the study of a social object with a global dimension in order to achieve a representative and significant analysis. - Tailor the policy analysis and its research techniques to the study of a sort of gender equality global policy around CEDAW. - Select and analyze one case study in order to produce a deeper knowledge on the participation of a nation-state in the CEDAW periodic review. - Identify similarities, differences and challenges on the accomplishment of women’s human rights in different global regions in light of the CEDAW Concluding Observations and the NGOs’ shadow reports. - Collect promising practices on gender equality policies according to the CEDAW Committee recommendations that may be transferable as valuable information for feminist organizations and public administrations. The hypothesis we have supported in this research, as a result of a mix-methods and transdisciplinary approach, is that women’s human rights constitute a New Social World-Object (NOMS). Throughout this work we have argued that women’s human rights have become global and this has been promoted by international organizations such as the UN – through CEDAW among other instruments – and the global women’s movement since the end of World War II. This research has built on the broad English literature on women and/in the UN and has gone beyond the state of the art incorporating three main novelties: a) the analysis of the phenomenon as a global object of study; b) the collection of recommendations by the CEDAW experts that can be valuable policy advice; and c) a critical perspective to different aspects of the CEDAW monitoring process. The sub-hypothesis was that although our Convention does not differ so much from other bodies of the UN human rights system in its procedure and functioning, the CEDAW represents a particular Treaty and Committee regarding its activist origins, the use by feminist organizations and the strategies displayed by the experts to promote the expansion of women’s human rights. The CEDAW constitutes somehow a Convention of the global women’s movement in the sense that feminists have used international institutions for their purposes and objectives. However, far from being an indulgent analysis, through this research we have brought to light some of the most important weaknesses of - and debates on - the CEDAW process: the limitations of the awareness-of-nation-states approach to give adequate response to urgent violations of women’s human rights, the tensions between participation and bureaucracy at UN-related activities, and the capacity of a Cold War product as CEDAW to integrate emergent feminist demands such as ecofeminist issues on human rights. This work has been structured in an introduction and eight chapters including theoretical framework, method, historical review, neo-institutional analysis and results of the research. Moreover, the thesis includes one section on the analysis of official documents and references, and eight annexes that provide qualitative data collected and systematized that may be of interest for other researchers in the field. This thesis has been influenced by different academic sources and activist traditions, such as the critical research conducted by historians on women and/in the UN, the critiques to the Eurocentric thinking by postcolonial studies and ecofeminist perspectives, and the direct participation in the process of producing a joint shadow report for the 2015 CEDAW periodic review to Spain. A particular mention to the close collaboration with the research group of the Women’s Human Rights Education Institute (WHRI) at the University of Toronto is required. During 2016 and 2017 the WHRI led an international research project aimed to identify good practices in legislation and judicial decisions regarding women’s human rights: Good Practices: Global Study for the UN Working Group on Discrimination against Women. This pilot project was part of the mandate of the UN Working Group on the issue of discrimination against women in law and in practice with the objective of submitting a report on “good practices” before the UN Commission on Human Rights including recommendations to nation-states. My participation in this project consisted of the coordination of the international and interdisciplinary research team on CEDAW recommendations on gender equality policies, what has significantly contributed to the data collection on the CEDAW impact and the CEDAW Committee’s views. This is why we have included a section on “good practices in women’s human rights” in chapter VII Result and recommended practices. At the same time, the results of the documental analysis and key chapters of this thesis have been conducted in English with the aim of being exploited in further research on CEDAW, women’s human rights and the UN. This feedback and knowledge-exchange process has contributed to a better understanding of the CEDAW process, key actors, mechanisms and needs for improvement in the UN human rights system. The aim of this research, as stated above, has been to add valuable knowledge and empirical analysis to the field that can enhance the feminist academic debates, but also to become a useful instrument in the design and implementation of gender equality policies which make women’s human rights a substantive and effective reality. The content of the thesis can be of interest for transnational feminist networks involved in the CEDAW periodic review, public authorities in charge of producing official reports from Spain and all the feminist politicians and experts who have been - and will be - part of international bodies with the power to support the global trend towards the expansion of women’s human rights.

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