SUBJECT: HUMAN RIGHTS AND CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM IN INDIA

TOPIC: UNITED NATION AND WOMEN

ANGELS IN THE WORLD

Submitted By,

Anjali N

Dept. of Law

CUK
“Man must be pleased; but him to please is woman’s pleasure”

- Patmore, the Angel in the House.

The popular Victorian image of the ideal wife/woman came to be “The Angel in the house’. She
was expected to be devoted and submissive to her husband. The Angel was passive and
powerless, meek, charming, graceful, sympathetic, self-sacrificing, pious and above all-Pure.
Why women are always meant to be sacrificing her whole life for others? Why she should be
always powerless, sympathetic?

The image of the 21st century woman is confident, prosperous, glowing with health and beauty,
but still we continue to feel the age old lash of violence, repression, isolation, enforced
ignorance and discrimination. All treaties relate to Human rights acknowledging women, yet
women are one of the most vulnerable creatures under the world. The cycle of discrimination/
violation starts even before she born. It begins in the womb of a mother ends only on her
bedrock. All her life she faces prejudice, violence and neglect. Women constitute half of
humanity, yet we have limited access to health, education, employment and other
denominates of quality of life. Her representation in political arena is restricted and limited.
And various harmful activities like child marriage, dowry death, and honor killing etc violate the
basic human rights of women.

 Violence against women and girls is a global issue with 1 in 3 women across the world
experience violence- London school of Hygiene and Tropical medicine, 2013.
 Over 700 million women alive today were married when they were under 18 and of
these some 250 million were married before they were 15- UNICEF, 2014
 Around 1 in 10(120 million) girls worldwide have experienced sexual violence at some
point in their lives- UNICEF, 2014

This is where we have to analyze the functions, activities done by the UNO in order to
protect women and promote gender equality all over the world.

History of International Conferences on Women

When UN was born to the struggle for gender equality was in the nascent stage. Even the
UN charter mentioned ‘equal rights of men and women and ‘faith in fundamental human
rights; only 25 member states out of 51 original member states gave women equal voting
rights and allowed women to hold public offices. To bring up the cause of gender justice
more vigorously before the international community, UN over the period covered some
major conferences on women which are as follows.

The first World Conference on women, Mexico City, 1975:

The conference is to coincide with international women’s year. In the wake of the Mexico
City conference, the UN General Assembly declared 1976-1985 as the UN decade for
women and established a voluntary fund for decade.

The increasing momentum around women issues helped to ensure that the women’s
perspective was recognized in some of the other world conferences held in the 1970’s and
in the UN’s various specialized agencies. The UN also undertook a systematic collection of
data on situation and circumstances of women all over the world, thus by amassing a
wealth of new information relevant to women.

Second World Conference on Women, Copenhagen, 1980:

It was intended as a follow up meeting to review and appraise the targets set in Mexico
City. It focuses on health, education and employment. A program of action called for
stronger national measures to ensure women’s ownership and control of property, as well
as improvements in protecting women’s rights to inheritance, child custody and nationality.
The developed countries were more in to emphasizing equality between men and women.
On the other hand developing countries were stressing on social and economical
development as have been necessary to improve the status of women.

Third World Conference on Women, Nairobi, 1985:

The members of the conference adopted the blue print made in previous conference. This
conference also saw the transformation of voluntary fund for the UN decade for women
into the UN Development Fund for Women

Fourth World Conference, Beijing, 1995:

The conference was intended to implement Nairobi strategy. It marked as a significant

turning point for the global agenda for gender equality. The Beijing declaration and the
platform for action adopted unanimously by 189 countries, is an agenda for women’s
empowerment and considered the global policy document on gender equality. It sets
strategic objectives and actions for the advancement of women and the achievement of
gender equality in 12 critical areas of concern like increasing burden of poverty on women,
inequalities/inadequacies and unequal access to education, training, healthcare and related
services and violence against women etc.

A follow up of Beijing was made in 2000, 2005 and 2010. More than that all international
treaties, conventions, Preamble to the UN Charter, UNESCO, Conference on Equal pay for
Equal work…,etc have common provision with regard to gender based discrimination.

Convention on the Elimination of All forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW)

It is popularly known as International Bill of rights for Women. The convention was
preceded by declaration on the elimination of discrimination against women, which was
adopted in 1967. The convention comes in as a potent weapon to ensure respect for the
principle of gender equality at the global level. The convention was adopted by UN General
Assembly in 1979 and came in to force in 1981 in accordance with Art.27(1) of CEDAW after
getting ratification from 20 states as of October 2014, there are 188 countries party to this
convention.

India is the signatory to all the major Human Rights instruments pertaining to women
including CEDAW

Critical Appraisal of Human Rights Framework with respect to Women

 Why the whole concept of women’s rights when we have a full regime of Human rights?
 Why do women require a special mention, aren’t women also humans?
 When they are humans, why do they need complementary regime of women’s rights?
 Are the women rights different from Human rights?

The study of women’s rights is not just a study of catena of rights given to women but also a
way to look in to the circumstances and events surrounding them which made them to lag
behind by denying equal opportunities and equal access of resources to them. Several
feminist describe how the human rights frame work fail to look in to the needs and
aspirations of women, but it is not a recent phenomenon for it is as old as the inception of
modern documents pertaining to Human rights wished birth under UN.

The first resistance in this regard was seen at the time of drafting of Universal Declaration
on Human Rights when the commission on the status of women confronted commission on
human rights over the referral of the word ‘men’ to denote humanity and usage of phrase
‘all men are brothers’ in its first article. Hillary and Christine in their article ‘ The gender of
jus cogens’ writes “ although human rights law is often regarded as a radical development in
international law because of its challenge to that disciplines, traditional public/private
dichotomy between states and individuals, it has retained the deeper gendered public/
private distinction. In major treaties rights are defined according to what men fear will
happen to them.

We generally say all human rights are women rights and all women rights are human rights.
Any changes should come from the bottom only and all their life they have no choice but to
fight for their half the earth and half the sky. The fight is seems to be an endless drive to
ensure equality and fairness in the world at large. The fight is not between men and women
but it’s between the patriarchal attitude and women’s existence.
In ‘Profession for women’ Virginia Woolf carries the image of the Angel in the house from
the beginning to the end. The angel is the phantom that represses her and attempts to force
out imagination and creativity. Woolf describes the angel as being pure, selfless and
sympathetic but is ultimately forced to kill her in order to preserve her writing career. I have
a dream when all women/Angels in the house will be able to kill themselves and come out
of the cage to fly high.