Ellie Alter
Just Associates (JASS)
Mexico City, Mexico
I find myself returning over and over again to the question of whether or not specifying human rights on the basis of gender is advantageous. By coincidence, my first assignment at JASS Mesoamérica has brought me back to this central debate within feminism: does the specification of women’s human rights reify heteronormative identities, thereby “fencing” women in? Or is such specification necessary in order to counter the traditional androcentricity of human rights?
June 25 marks the 25th anniversary of the Vienna Declaration, a document that challenged the traditional paradigm of the universal subject of human rights to incorporate women, expanding this notion to include the vast diversity of subjects that make up humanity. Asserting that “women’s rights are human rights,” feminists at the conference gave voice to the daily experiences of women and advocated a transformation of human rights to include a gender analysis.
These achievements were made possible by the mobilization of women activists around the world, including JASS Mesoamérica’s Regional Advisor, Alda Facio, who took part in organizing a 1991 petition that gathered millions of signatures, calling for the declaration to “comprehensively address women’s human rights at every level of its proceedings.” As a result of their advocacy, the Vienna Declaration incorporated and re-energized feminist agendas within the human rights field, leading to the enactment of concrete measures such as the creation of the Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women, and ultimately, the adoption of the Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women in 1994.
For many feminists, including some of my colleagues, the declaration symbolizes a turning point: human rights institutions and their doctrines began, in consequential ways, to specify rights according to the unique experiences of women. Some in the organization feel strongly enough about the impact of the declaration that they have championed the tagline, “25 años de ser humanas,” for the campaign, suggesting that women have only been expressly recognized as human beings in international law since the Vienna Conference.
This came as interesting news to me, that for some feminists, Vienna signifies the point in which women’s humanity was first, or more properly, asserted in the field, as opposed to the passing of CEDAW in 1979. For reasons I am still exploring, many seem to feel that Vienna set the stage for progress that CEDAW had yet to accomplish, rendering women’s experiences and humanity visible on an important stage.
Even upon learning this, I felt somewhat conflicted when I was assigned this project. On the one hand, I understood the impact of this declaration and the reasons to celebrate it, but on the other hand, I worried about the unintended side effects of specifying women’s rights and defining women’s experiences. In what ways did the declaration reinforce the boundaries of gender identity that feminists sought to dismantle? And what about those who do not identify with the gender binary? Were they left excluded or with a larger platform? These are all questions I hope to unpack in the coming weeks.
To be sure, no one is suggesting that the work of infusing the human rights field with gender analyses was completed in Vienna. Furthering that mission is what JASS is engaged in. It is perhaps because this organization is on the front lines of this cause, that it is fascinating to see which of these moments in history they celebrate.
Furthermore, I have found their process of deliberating on such questions refreshing and encouraging. Above all, JASS’s team has shown a commitment to dialogue: that all involved should have the room to raise their intellectual or personal qualms. I suppose that on some level, I naively expected that such accomplished feminists would dabble in dogma, but in fact, their success in building solidarity—which spans across three continents—seems in part due to their emphasis on dialogue rather than conclusions.
Not only does this render an inclusive plurality of perspectives, but it also poses a different approach to my initial question about specifying women’s rights: that perhaps there are no universal advantages or disadvantages in any one approach to human rights. As we so often came to understand last semester, each approach must be understood in its context, and no approach is safe from questioning. Put another way, as stated in a JASS publication, “A lesson can be drawn […] from the questioning attitude that promotes feminism in the first place: when feminists question something, we are not denying it […] we [feminists] do not all have the same information or knowledge about feminism, but we have all learned to question everything.*
*Translated from Spanish