Beware of big sister: Charmaine Yoest exposes a troubling treaty with a teflon title. Get ready for more shenanigans at the UN

Women's Quarterly, Autumn, 2002 by Charmaine Yoest

By comparison, the population of the United States is 281 million. At our own Constitutional Convention, the question of proportional representation was debated extensively and considered so important that our bicameral Congress resulted. In contrast, the micro-political system of The Committee, as delineated in Article 19 of the convention, is uncomplicated and free of accountability. Except for the details on elections and periods of meetings, The Committee is self-governing and can "adopt its own rules of procedure." And although Ecumenical Women 2000, in its "Myths and Realities" report on CEDAW, claims that The Committee "does not issue specific recommendations to individual member countries," some very specific recommendations to individual member countries are readily accessible on the United Nations website, going back through eighteen sessions. For example, on June 14 of this year, The Committee began a session with representatives from Tunisia by chastising them for their country's reservations to the treaty, which related to laws on nationality, choice of residence, and women's equality in marriage, and urged them to address their "patriarchal stereotypes." Tunisian law has a Personal Status Code that identifies the husband as the head of the household, obligating him to provide for his wife and children. The experts then asked if Tunisia would use quotas to increase women's participation in political life. They were, however, pleased with Tunisia's Commission for Monitoring the Image of Women in the Media.

In the same session, representatives of Belgium were chastised for their country's reservations to the treaty, which related to the matrimonial property of rural women, even though their gender policies, which include quotas and affirmative action, were applauded as "exemplary." However, even with quotas, the experts noted that some segments of the Belgian workforce were still dominated by men--legal mechanisms to promote women simply were not enough; they had to show numerical results. "The Convention," one expert urged, "should be a living instrument.

Ironically, a potential representative of the United States might feel right at home on The Committee. Many members are women who hold degrees from prestigious U.S. colleges and universities. Servitor Goonesekere, the representative from Sri Lanka, received postgraduate training in the United States, at Harvard Law School. Another member has an M.Ed. from New York University; another a Ph.D. from Bryn Mawr. Despite having benefitted personally from American opportunities, The Committee continues to make sweeping generalizations like the following: "No political system has conferred on women both the right to and the benefit of full and equal participation.

Perhaps "full and equal participation" is defined by The Committee's own model. With a 96 percent female composition--a new Swedish judge became the first man to serve--they are strikingly unhampered by gender diversity. The Committee's aspirations for the political sphere are not quite so ambitious, but they are adamant: full and equal means that "neither sex should constitute less than 40 percent of the members of a public body."