Gendering the Pandemic: Women's Health Disparities From a Human Rights Perspective

As COVID-19 keeps impacting the world, its impact is felt differently by people of different sexes and genders. International guidelines and research on gender inequalities and women's rights during the pandemic have been published. However, data from Taiwan is lacking. This study aims to fill the gap to increase our knowledge regarding this issue and provide policy recommendations. This study is part of a more extensive project in response to the fourth state report concerning the implementation of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women in Taiwan in 2022. We have drawn on the guidelines and documents published by the United Nations human rights bodies, conducted interviews with advocacy and professional practitioners, and hosted a study group comprising students and teachers from the National Taiwan University College of Public Health to supplement the interview data. The data were analyzed thematically. The results include five themes: (1) particular health risks to carers (primarily women); (2) COVID-related measures' impact on women's health and health behaviors; (3) highly gendered psychological maladjustment; (4) increase in gender-based violence and domestic violence; and (5) mental health inequities and intersectionality. The study has global implications for societies of similar sociopolitical contexts and developmental statuses. To truly live up to the standard of CEDAW and other international human rights principles, we ask that central and local government be more aware of these lived experiences and adjust their policies accordingly, accounting for gender sensitivity.

Engendering Governance After Armed Conflict: Observations From Kosovo

This article addresses gender-responsive governance reforms in post-conflict Kosovo from two perspectives: (1) the perspective of human rights as fundamental for state-building, and (2) the resolutions of the UN Security Council regarding Women, Peace, and Security (WPS), notably the initial UNSCR 1325. Special focus is laid on women's agency in governance matters-at the level of the state and at the level of civil society. A gender approach to three dimensions of governance-political-administrative governance, security governance, and socioeconomic governance-shows successes and problems in this post-conflict society. Special attention is given to the strategies of the women's movement in reaching gender-responsive governance. Some initiatives for new masculinities address the necessity of norm change in gender governance. The analysis of the literature and documents, supplemented by interviews, reveals the transformative potential of gender governance that solidly roots in women's rights and combines a multi-actor approach at grassroots, and at national and international levels with strong alliances and very concrete actions.

A review of the role of Malawi's law reform agency in criminalization and decriminalization of female same-sex sexual conduct

The Law Commission is an institution created by Malawi's 1995 Constitution with the mandate to review and recommend laws to be in conformity with the Constitution and international law. In 2000, the Commission recommended, for the first time in the history of Malawi, the criminalization of female same-sex sexual conduct. This was enacted into law in 2011. This article examines the role of the Commission in influencing the development of sex- and gender-related laws to address gender inequality and discrimination. It describes the historical context of legal developments since colonial times, leading to the adoption of a democratic constitution and commitment to incorporating human rights norms and standards in national laws. It argues that, in contradiction to its mandate, the Commission played an influential role in the development of a law that further marginalizes women and entrenches sex discrimination. It concludes that the Commission should therefore take responsibility for its actions and review the offending law sua sponte.

Can the health effects of widely-held societal norms be evaluated? An analysis of the United Nations convention on the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women (UN-CEDAW)

Background

Female life expectancy and mortality rates have been improving over the course of many decades. Many global changes offer potential explanations. In this paper, we examined whether the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) has, in part, been responsible for the observed improvements in these key population metrics of women’s health.

Methods

Data were obtained from the United Nations Treaty Series Database, the World Bank World Development Indicators database and, the Polity IV database. Because CEDAW is nearly universally ratified, it was not feasible to compare ratifying countries to non-ratifying countries. We therefore applied interrupted times series analyses, which creates a comparator (counterfactual) scenario by using the trend in the health outcome before the policy exposure to mathematically determine what the trend in the health outcome would have been after the policy exposure, had the policy exposure not occurred. Analyses were stratified by country-level income and democratization.

Results

Among low-income countries, CEDAW improved outcomes in democratic, but not non-democratic countries. In middle-income countries, CEDAW largely had no effect and, among high-income countries, had largely positive effects.

Conclusions

While population indicators of women’s health have improved since CEDAW ratification, the impact of CEDAW ratification itself on these improvements varies across countries with differing levels of income and democratization.

Electronic supplementary material

The online version of this article (10.1186/s12889-019-6607-6) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Global frameworks, local strategies: Women's rights, health, and the tobacco control movement in Argentina

The article examines how civil society organisations in Argentina used the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) to frame the country's failure to enact strong national tobacco control legislation as a violation of women's rights in the late 2000s. We analyze this case study through the politics of scale, namely the social processes that produce, reproduce, and contest the boundaries of policies and socio-economic relations. This approach understands how multiple scales overlap and connect to obstruct or enhance the right to health in Latin America. In Argentina, the global organisation of tobacco companies, the reach of international financial institutions and the national dynamics of economic austerity and export-orientation promoted the local production and use of tobacco (leaf and cigarettes) and reproduced health inequalities in the country throughout the 1990s and the early 2000s. Yet, the visible legacy of local and national human rights struggles in the adoption of international human rights treaties into Argentina's national constitution allowed the tobacco control movement to link the scale of women's bodies to the right to health through the use of CEDAW to change national legislation, tackling the social determinants of the tobacco epidemic.

Strengthening the human rights framework to protect breastfeeding: a focus on CEDAW

BACKGROUND

There have been recent calls for increased recognition of breastfeeding as a human right. The United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, 1979 (CEDAW) is the core human rights treaty on women. CEDAW's approach to breastfeeding is considered from an historical perspective. A comparison is drawn with breastfeeding protection previously outlined in the International Labour Organization's Maternity Protection Convention, 1919 (ILO C3), and its 1952 revision (ILO C103), and subsequently, in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, 1989 (CRC).

DISCUSSION

Despite breastfeeding's sex-specific significance to an international human rights treaty on women and CEDAW's emphasis on facilitating women's employment, CEDAW is, in reality, a relatively weak instrument for breastfeeding protection. In both its text and subsequent interpretations explicit recognition of breastfeeding is minimal or nonexistent. Explanations for this are proposed and contextualised in relation to various political, social and economic forces, especially those influencing notions of gender equality. During the mid to late 1970s -when CEDAW was formulated - breastfeeding posed a strategic challenge for key feminist goals, particularly those of equal employment opportunity, gender neutral childrearing policy and reproductive rights. Protective legislation aimed at working women had been rejected as outdated and oppressive. Moreover, the right of women to breastfeed was generally assumed, with choice over infant feeding practices often perceived as the right NOT to breastfeed. There was also little awareness or analysis of the various structural obstacles to breastfeeding's practice, such as lack of workplace support, that undermine 'choice'. Subsequent interpretations of CEDAW show that despite significant advances in scientific and epidemiological knowledge about breastfeeding's importance for short-term and long-term maternal health, breastfeeding continues to be inadequately addressed in international human rights law on women. A comparison is made with CRC and its subsequent elaborations. Increasing recognition of the need to protect, promote and support breastfeeding within the framework of CRC but not that of CEDAW suggests that breastfeeding is regarded primarily as a children's rights issue but only minimally as a women's rights issue.

SUMMARY

The human rights framework requires strengthening in every direction to protect, promote and support breastfeeding. Discussion is needed regarding whether a separate strengthening of the international human rights framework on women is required with regard to breastfeeding.