Laws can become an important ally of women. For that to happen, all nations must eliminate existing legal discrimination. According to a set timetable, so that laws embrace the principle of gender equality. But even when legal discrimination is removed, it can take generations for practice to catch up with the revised law.
Inequality under the law
The starkest reflection of the low status accorded women in societies everywhere is the discrimination against them in law. Unless such legal barriers are removed, no progress can be made towards equal rights.
The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) is an important step towards eliminating legal and other forms of discrimination against women. Although 139 countries have signed it, 41 UN member states have not signed it, 6 have signed without ratification and 43 have ratified with reservations, undermining the hopes raised by its adoption in 1979 by the General Assembly of the United Nations.
Women still face legal discrimination every day in many countries-rich and poor, industrial and developing, democratic and authoritarian. Ironically, what unites countries across many cultural, religious, ideological, political and economic divides is their common cause against the equality of women-in the right to travel, marry, divorce, acquire nationality, manage property, seek employment and inherit property.
A few examples illustrate how differently laws treat men and women, only a small sample of the widespread legal discrimination in many countries.
Right to nationality. In much of West Asia and North Africa, women married to foreigners cannot transfer citizenship to their husbands, though men in similar situations can.
Right to manage property. Married women are under the permanent guardianship of their husbands and have no right to manage property in Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia and Swaziland.
Right to income-earning opportunities. Husbands can restrict a wife's employment outside the home in Bolivia, Guatemala and Syria.
Right to travel. In some Arab countries, a husband's consent is necessary for a wife to obtain a passport, but not vice versa. Women cannot leave the country without their husband's permission in Iran.
Legislation that differentiates between men and women is grounded in interpretations of cultural traditions. The women and men of every society have to decide how to reinterpret their culture and adapt it to their needs and aspirations. But with women's participation in political and legislative decision-making constrained everywhere, no society can claim that women are participating adequately in formulating the legal framework under which they live.
From The Human Development Report 1995. Copyright 1995 by United Nations Development Program (UNDP). Reprinted by permission of Oxford University Press, Inc.
