Women’s International Bill of Rights? Analyzing CEDAW’s Impact on Women’s Economic Opportunity and Participation

Abstract

Given how central CEDAW is--and will remain for the foreseeable future--in shaping norms of gender equality, this thesis is driven to broadly consider: to what extent CEDAW is effective in achieving its core purpose of “eliminating discrimination on the basis of sex and gender” in the domain of women’s economic rights? While there is extensive debate and study devoted to examining CEDAW’s impact on women’s social and political rights, there are few scholarly articles that consider how the Convention has informed women’s economic rights. This is hugely problematic: half the world’s population is currently denied basic equality and fundamental rights, with dire consequences for local, national and global development. CEDAW--as a core mechanism to one of the most powerful international organizations--is in theory imbued with the power to solve this problem. Thus, the main question this thesis attempts to answer is: to what extent does commitment to CEDAW predict greater women’s economic empowerment? In order to answer this question, this thesis expands upon the work of Seo-Young Cho in her paper “International Women’s Convention, Democracy and Gender Equality.” I derive my own enriched version of Cho’s “commitment to CEDAW” scale (with “commitment” defined by a state’s ratification status and the magnitudes of their reservations), factoring in the effects of the Optional Protocol. I compare this with the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap 2020 Report’s “economic opportunity and participation index” (a measure of how much of the gender gap has been closed in regards to women’s economic rights and participation within the state) which I employ as a proxy for women’s economic rights. After cross-examining the adjusted commitment scores and economic opportunity and participation index of 132 countries, I am able to establish that countries’ commitment is in part informed by their regional location, and that there is a weak but positive correlation between commitment to CEDAW and the women’s economic opportunity and participation index. I am not, however, able to prove a causal relationship between these variables. To better understand this relationship and determine what--if not CEDAW--informs greater women’s economic rights, I look at two case studies with comparable commitment scores but vastly different economic indexes. In the first case study (comparing two countries with low commitment scores), I determine that Kuwaiti women’s greater economic rights is due to their role in nation building during the Iraqi invasion. In the second case study (comparing two countries with high commitment scores), I argue lower women’s economic rights in Croatia is due to the conflict of the Croatian war for independence (and more specifically the gender based violence and exploitative nationalist propaganda that accompanied it). Lastly, I present three policy recommendations that can help sharpen CEDAW’s enforcement mechanisms and ensure greater state compliance with the goal of pursuing gender equality.