Tijdschrift voor Genderstudies - Volume 16, Issue 1, 2013

This article examines the impact and effectiveness of the process of state reporting under CEDAW in New Zealand. The particular focus is on the effectiveness of the Concluding Observations (COs) of the Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW Committee). It concludes that the COs of the CEDAW Committee have not driven policy or legislative changes. This is attributed to the a Read More

The complaints mechanism for the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women was adopted in 1999. Since 2002, when the CEDAWCommittee received the first Communication submitting a claim of violations of rights protected under the Convention, 28 Communications have been dealt with. In twelve Communications the CEDAWCommittee found a violation of the plaintiff’s (officially the Read More

Over the last two decades the CEDAW Committee’s recognition of gender-based violence as a form of discrimination against women has made a major impact on how other international human rights organizations, including the Council of Europe and the European Union, approach this problem. As a result, the Council of Europe adopted the ‘Istanbul Convention’ on preventing and combating violence against women and Read More

Rebecca Brown is a contemporary American lesbian author who has been working mainly in the shadows for the past thirty years to compose a challenging and highly rewarding oeuvre. This essay grew out of an interview with the author, and it sheds light on the way in which Brown’s writings manage to defamiliarise gender roles and norms, and testify to the importance of writing from a female perspective. Brown’s w Read More

In the summer of 2011 a violent debate erupted in France over the meaning of the term gender. Catholics, parents and educators protested against a manual for biology students deemed to promote a ‘theory of gender’ that might endanger social order and corrupt young adults. The author traces the emergence of gender as a site for political strife in various context. As such the term seems to have replaced the ter Read More

The biographies of two women who played a pioneering role in Dutch politics appeared in 2011: Marga Klompé (1912-1986) and Hilda Verwey-Jonker (1908-2004). That their lives coincided for pretty much the entire 20th century makes comparing their biographies an attractive and insightful venture. This article discusses areas of commonality between the two biographies, while also addressing the diversity of the iss Read More