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This paper explores current contestations of women's rights and the implications thereof for international legislation. While contestation over women's rights is a far from new phenomenon, over the past two decades opposition to gender equality has become better organized at the transnational level, mobilizing a dispersed set of state and non-state actors, and is becoming more successful in halting the progress of women's rights. I argue that the position of oppositional actors vis-à-vis women rights activism appears to be strengthened by two recent political developments: democratic backsliding and the closure of civic space. Some preliminary findings show how these interrelated developments lead to an erosion of women's rights at the national level. Governments use low key tactics to dismantle institutional and implementation arrangements and sideline women's organisations. Next, I explore the implications of these developments for gender equality norms at the national and international level. The active strategy of counter norming adopted by conservative and religious state and non-state actors, designed to circumvent and also undermine Western norms, is increasingly successful. In addition to this, the threatened position of domestic actors monitoring compliance of international treaties, makes the chances of backsliding on international commitments much higher.

On Wednesday, September 1st, 2021, Texas government officials passed a law banning abortions after six weeks of pregnancy. Since then, a plethora of heated controversy regarding abortion rights has erupted throughout the United States. This controversy is being driven by two groups: pro-choice and pro-life. Pro-lifers argue that a fetus is a child the moment it is conceived, and a large part of their reasoning stands on the basis of religion. Therefore, many believe that abortion is considered murder. However, pro-choicers do not agree that it is morally correct to force one's belief onto someone else. With the Christian demographic of Texas so large, the recently enacted Texas Heartbeat Act presents as a major win for the pro-life movement. Unfortunately, those who voted for this law failed to acknowledge future implications concerning women's rights because they choose to value and enforce their own ideals. While the Texas Heartbeat Act may seem beneficial to some, it actually holds the power to impose long-lasting detrimental effects on women's lives in Texas.

If the West truly wishes to spread the ideas of democracy to the Middle East, it must trust the people of the Middle East to make their own decisions. The history of the United States shows that a true representative democracy will face challenges and struggles and will oftentimes be divided on the issues. Yet ultimately these issues were decided by the American people; the people of Iraq and Afghanistan deserve that right, too. To force women's suffrage or any other Western ideals does not promote democracy, and it may fail to achieve anything other than increased distrust of the West. Andrew Henchen is currently a JMU freshman. He plans to major in Media Arts and Design.

Why has the expansion of women's economic and political rights coincided with economic development? This paper investigates this question, focusing on a key economic right for women: property rights. The basic hypothesis is that the process of development (i.e., capital accumulation and declining fertility) exacerbated the tension in men's conflicting interests as husbands versus fathers, ultimately resolving them in favor of the latter. As husbands, men stood to gain from their privileged position in a patriarchal world whereas, as fathers, they were hurt by a system that afforded few rights to their daughters. The model predicts that declining fertility would hasten reform of women's property rights whereas legal systems that were initially more favorable to women would delay them. The theoretical relationship between capital and the relative attractiveness of reform is non-monotonic but growth inevitably leads to reform. I explore the empirical validity of the theoretical predictions by using cross-state variation in the US in the timing of married women obtaining property and earning rights between 1850 and 1920.

Women"s right of inheritance is an indispensable right which assures their socioeconomic and political empowerment. Although the Shari"ah law and the constitution of Pakistan safeguard this right, its denial is pervasive in Punjab. This paper explores the possible choices for women and subsequent challenges they confront in independently exercising these choices. The chosen methodology is qualitative in nature. The ontological stance of interpretive school and epistemological stance of social constructionist school of thought have been followed. Through theoretical sampling technique, thirty women were recruited as sample from Mianwali, Rahim Yar Khan and Lahore. Data was collected through an in-depth interview guide and the results have been derived through thematic analysis. The findings of the study portray the contemporary trend among women in Punjab to surrender their right of inheritance in favor of the male agnatic heirs. Among the socio-cultural determinants influencing the choices of women, patriarchal set-up, misinterpretation of divine commands, lack of awareness, stringent legal procedures and lower educational levels are the most significant. The study recommends effective awareness about inheritance rights both through accessible legal procedures and with the promotion of female education so that females be able to make informed choices

In Iran, discrimination based on gender in enjoyment of the right to health is prohibited. Making health services physically and financially accessible to the entire population and removing social and cultural barriers of women's access to health services are main considerations of the health law sand policies of Iran. The health of Iranian women has improved considerably in recent years. But there are disparities in health status and access of women to health services around the country. Some groups of women, including the poor, the elderly, the disabled, the illegal immigrant, and those without an appropriate male guardian, and rural women have limited access to health services in Iran. To realize women's right to health, this country should immediately remove the disparities and use all the necessary means including legislative, administrative, budgetary, promotional,and judicial measures. National plans on women's empowerment and support should be interpreted in provincial pro-grams and action plans. Moreover, a monitoring system and certain benchmarks for tracing the progress of the plans should be established. Realizing other economic, social,and cultural rights including the rights to food, shelter, education, work, social security, and participation in society will improve the Iranian women's enjoyment of their right.

Today, there is almost no field into which Egyptian women have not ventured, yet their status in society remains unequal to that of men. While many factors account for the prevailing gender gap, male-dominated institutions have continued to relegate women's concerns to a low priority, impeding their progress. This monograph contends that recent public discourse in Egypt is dominated by the conservative polemics of the Islamists and that the state, in its attempt to contain the Islamists, has subordinated women's issues to its own concerns for security and legitimacy. Renewed appeals urging women to retreat to the private sphere and the appearance of the Islamic attire reflect the blurring of boundaries between the secular and the religious. The present condition of Egyptian women is summarized in this monograph as a prelude to illustrating how women's issues continue to be relegated to a subordinate position for political expediency. The concluding chapter presents resistance strategies that a number of civil society organizations are adopting to create alternative discourses that give women their rightful positions in the private and public spheres.

Violence against the women affected the millions of women through out the world. Women are considered second to men. The social system which is still 'Patriarchal' wherein the system of society or government controlled by men. Majority of the decision makers are the men. The whole functioning of the society is managed by the men in all aspect. Hence, men keep the women as second to him. Men with muscle power, dominate and control women. Women are continue to be pasteurized as weaker sex. This lead to all sorts of ATROCIRIES on women by men. The remedy is to harmonize the public, law implementing agencies and the Judiciary.

Violence against women affected the millions of women throughout the world. Women are considered second to men. The social system is still 'Patriarchal' wherein the system of society or government controlled by men. Majority of the decision-makers are the men. The whole functioning of society is managed by the men in all aspect. Hence, men keep women as second to him. Men with muscle power, dominate and control women. Women continue to be pasteurized as the weaker sex. This lead to all sorts of ATROCITIES on women by men. The remedy is to harmonize the public, law implementing agencies and the Judiciary.

"Why workers' rights are not women's rights" is an argument whose purpose is to make clear why workers' rights rest on a masculine embodiment of the labor subject and it is this masculine embodiment which is at the center of employment contracts and employment relations systems. By excavating the gender subjects implicit to and explicit in regulations of labor, the paper reveals the opposition of paired terms, masculinity and femininity privileging production over reproduction and naturalizing gender-based power relations. The paper identifies various laboring activities associated with differential rights and responsibilities. An examination of the treatment of part-time employment and waged caring labor, framed in labor, welfare, immigration, and citizenship policies and practices, locates exclusions from labor standards and exemptions from entitlements due to eligibility requirements and thresholds that assume the masculine embodiment of the worker-citizen. Gendering the analysis illustrates how contemporary labor laws and conventions grant rights on the basis of, and to, a rather abstract conception of the prototypical worker-citizen. Its origins lie in what classical political economy labeled a capitalist logic, as well as the historical practices in which free class agents entered into contracts for continuous, full-time work free of care responsibilities outside of the wage/labor nexus. Thus, it is this particular abstract construction of the proto-typical worker which instantiates the separation of "rights to" from "responsibilities for", and it is this separation that allows the masculine embodiment of the labor subject. Modes of regulation privileging rights over responsibilities will valorize the masculine worker-citizen whose rights derive from their participation in wage labor and simultaneously devalue the feminine worker who is directly connected to caring labor.

Women's legal rights are one of the most significant determinants of their status. In Bangladesh, a series of laws ensuring women's rights have proven largely ineffective in promoting their positions. The prime reasons for this are: dirtier politics, the ineffective implementation of women rights laws, the traditional and cultural negative views about women's rights, the absence of an accountable and transparent government, the expensive and time consuming judicial process, the lack of an efficient judiciary, and other socio-economic reasons. The core theme of this essay concentrates on the ineffective enforcement of laws with the objective to promote protection of women's rights by recommending remedies to flaws in prevailing laws in Bangladesh. Recommendations are made by reference to comparative and international practices. The primary arguments developed throughout this essay are: (i) the protection of women's rights is imperative to improve their status (ii) the legislative, administrative and judicial efforts dealing with women's rights; and (iii) improvements in those effortsto better protect women's rights. This study examines laws regarding women's employment and political participation and the laws on dowry. It also explores the ways laws have been structured and enforced in Bangladesh, and how law can be an effective means of women's pursuit of rights.

Egyptian media's treatment of introducing the khula law which gave Egyptian women unprecedented divorce rights was overwhelmingly negative. However, the treatment of other more recent legal changes that granted women more rights has on the contrary been overwhelmingly positive. This paper analyzes this change and considers whether it can be explained using the theory that media's criticism of government policy is in reality a consequence of and reflects divisions within the political elite regarding the issue at stake. It also analyzes the discourse utilized by feminists to call for women's rights and argues that Egyptian feminists are drastically shifting the discourse that they utilize to call for women's rights.

What does it mean to do justice and especially to do justice to women? This article examines the difficulties of interpreting justice and women's rights on the international plane. The problems arise from the fundamental tension between the theoretical epistemological field and the practical "real life" scene, since the mediation between them does not reduce to a neat theoretical clarification of a general meaning of justice that then can be practically applied to our perceived reality to yield a certain set of political strategies. The argument presented here shows that the two planes interdepend and that a meaning of justice always necessarily is contextually bound and yet in its limitedness is always open for contestation and that it needs to remain contested in order not to slip into fundamentalism and ideological fanaticism. The context for this argument is the international political struggle for women's rights in the specific case of the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). With this document as a starting point, it is possible to enter into a discussion of the questions of relativism vs. universalism, of a concept of democratic discourse, and of hermeneutical guidelines for the interpretation of the meaning of justice for women. This article therefore starts with this concrete historical and practical context and then asks whether it is possible and legitimate to claim a universal notion of justice or whether there can only be locally restricted interpretations that have to remain incommensurable with each other. The question that follows from this inquiry is how the notion of democratic discourse has to be shifted and opened up to allow for productive, fair, and inclusive deliberation about women's rights policies. This, however, cannot pursued without accounting for and contesting the hermeneutical guidelines that underlie the discourse and that cannot only be procedural but must be material as well, for example, as the capabilities approach by Nussbaum (2000) provides.

Myanmar Customary Law is the personal law of Myanmar people professing the Buddhist religion. Myanmar Customary Law is mainly concerned with such family matters as marriage, divorce, adoption, succession and inheritance, matrimonial rights, and with religious usage and institution. The sources of Myanmar Customary Law are four in number. They are: Dhammathats, Customs, Judicial precedents and Legislation. According to Myanmar historical records, there had often emerged women who had been documented for their achievement is in drivers spheres such as in education, health, commerce and also in social and administrative sectors. The equality of women is recognized not in the home only, but in public life as well. In successive accepted legal rules of Myanmar Dhammathats relating to a Myanmar Buddhist couple, husband and wife are "Tenant-in-Common" not "Joint-Tenant". The partition of property can be made on divorce or on succession at the death of one spouse and there are certain prescribed rules on the method of partition under Myanmar Customary Law. The aim of this paper is to know the rights of women under Myanmar Customary Law relating to marriage, divorce, adoption, succession and inheritance and matrimonial rights.

Women's rights and economic development are highly correlated. Today, the discrepancy between the legal rights of women and men is much larger in developing compared to developed countries. Historically, even in countries that are now rich women had few rights before economic development took off. Is development the cause of expanding women's rights, or conversely, do women's rights facilitate development? We argue that there is truth to both hypotheses. The literature on the economic consequences of women's rights documents that more rights for women lead to more spending on health and children, which should benefit development. The political-economy literature on the evolution of women's rights finds that technological change increased the costs of patriarchy for men, and thus contributed to expanding women's rights. Combining these perspectives, we discuss the theory of Doepke and Tertilt (2009), where an increase in the return to human capital induces men to vote for women's rights, which in turn promotes growth in human capital and income per capita.