Participants formed five groups to discuss the following articles and issues with the General Comment (GC) on Women in mind. The groups were as follows:
Equality
Social Security
Adequate Standards of Living
Health
Macro-economics and Economic and Social Rights
The groups were asked to consider the following two questions:
How would you express this right/issue in a way that includes women’s experiences/ perspectives?
What issues/linkages/problems have come up in the course of thinking about this right?
The group worked with articles 2 and 3 of the Covenant, which State:
Article 2
Each State Party to the present Covenant undertakes to take steps, individually and through international assistance and co-operation, especially economic and technical, to the maximum of its available resources, with a view to achieving progressively the full realization of the rights recognized in the present Covenant by all appropriate means, including particularly the adoption of legislative measures.
The States Parties to the present Covenant undertake to guarantee that the rights enunciated in the present Covenant will be exercised without discrimination of any kind as to race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.
Developing countries, with due regard to human rights and their national economy, may determine to what extent they would guarantee the economic rights recognized in the present Covenant to non-nationals.
Article 3
The States Parties to the present Covenant undertake to ensure the equal right of men and women to the enjoyment of all economic, social and cultural rights set forth in the present Covenant.
The GC should be focused on substantive equality. The GC needs to reflect a substantive equality approach throughout, providing examples of a substantive equality approach to different rights, and to the obligations of States parties.
The group agreed that a substantive equality approach will tend to erase the distinction between non-discrimination, equality and affirmative action, since a substantive equality approach is not focused on forms of treatment, but on results. It mandates whatever measures are necessary to produce equality in actual conditions.
The GC could adopt the definition of discrimination that is in CEDAW. However, the CEDAW definition of discrimination could be updated and improved upon: for example, instead of saying “any ground,” it should read “one or more ground” including listed grounds such as sex, race, etc., in order to deal with the particular and intersecting forms of discrimination experienced by black women, or women with disabilities.
The group discussed the meaning of “progressive realisation” and agreed that this concept could not be interpreted to mean that men can enjoy their social and economic rights sooner or more fully than women. The concept of progressive realization cannot be used to entrench or perpetuate discrimination against women.
Article 9
The States Parties to the present Covenant recognize the right of everyone to social security, including social insurance.
Article 10
The States Parties to the present Covenant recognize that:
1. The widest possible protection and assistance should be accorded to the family, which is the natural and fundamental group unit of society, particularly for its establishment and while it is responsible for the care and education of dependent children. Marriage must be entered into with the free consent of the intending spouses.
2. Special protection should be accorded to mothers during a reasonable period before and after childbirth. During such period working mothers should be accorded paid leave or leave with adequate social security benefits.
3. Special measures of protection and assistance should be taken on behalf of all children and young persons without any discrimination for reasons of parentage or other conditions. Children and young persons should be protected from economic and social exploitation. Their employment in work harmful to their morals or health or dangerous to life or likely to hamper their normal development should be punishable by law. States should also set age limits below which the paid employment of child labor should be prohibited and punishable by law.
The group decided that articles 9 and 10 should be read together. The group also noted that the definition of social security varies from country to country depending on the level of development. Further, the implementation of social security also differs from a technical perspective because of the range of methods and schemes, which have been employed.
In the General Comment, there needs to be an umbrella paragraph outlining the multi-faceted experiences of a woman’s life, that is, how a woman can move between roles and sectors. The GC should address the potential for real discrimination that groups of women in income-generating activities are facing, including discrimination in traditional social security schemes. Also the GC needs to make reference to the “typical” woman worker - even though this is a complicated notion since it also includes informal women workers and self-employed women. Finally, the GC should include a statement that in all circumstances, women without any income need to be provided with a decent income. “Basic income” was considered not an appropriate phrase for political and linguistic reasons (“basic” may not mean the same in all languages).
In terms of State duties, there has to be recognition that there are many different ways to secure the right to a decent income. But there is a duty to ensure that cash benefits circulate in the national context - not in kind, or as ad hoc measures. The State has a duty to ensure this is done, and is done efficiently, and women must equally benefit from what is available. Women’s income security should not depend on men, and women should not be required to mimic male patterns of work in order to receive the same income security as men.
Article 11
1. The States Parties to the present Covenant recognize the right of everyone to an adequate standard of living for himself and his family, including adequate food, clothing and housing, and to the continuous improvement of living conditions. The States Parties will take appropriate steps to ensure the realization of this right, recognizing to this effect the essential importance of international co-operation based on free consent.
2. The States Parties to the present Covenant, recognizing the fundamental right of everyone to be free from hunger, shall take, individually and through international co-operation, the measures, including specific programs, which are needed:
(a) To improve methods of production, conservation and distribution of food by making full use of technical and scientific knowledge, by disseminating knowledge of the principles of nutrition and by developing or reforming agrarian systems in such a way as to achieve the most efficient development and utilization of natural resources;
(b) Taking into account the problems of both food-importing and food-exporting countries, to ensure an equitable distribution of world food supplies in relation to need.
The group noted that the components of an adequate standard of living should be understood to include clean water and fuel, and all basic necessities that women spend many hours searching for and transporting. They stressed that women are not a homogenous group and that needs and interventions for securing these rights differ for rural and urban and northern and southern women. While a regional perspective is crucial, even within the same region experiences are different and diverse. This amplifies the definition of “standard of living.” Issues of land resettlement and agrarian reform are important.
A GC on Women needs to stress that income security is an entitlement - for two reasons. First, income, in the current economic structure, determines an adequate standard of living. Secondly, the rapidly decreasing rates in welfare benefits, and the general attack on social welfare, undermine economic security for disadvantaged populations (largely women with children) even further. Thus, protection mechanisms for women are essential.
The GC must address situations such as disasters and conflicts in which social and economic rights become even more difficult for women to secure. In such situations, women are affected by allocation of food and other resources, and these allocations are often used to further disadvantage women.
There is a general problem for women when it comes to securing these rights. If a woman finds herself in debt or disaster, patriarchal practices obstruct access to these rights. The GC should state that these rights should not be obstructed in any circumstances – by economic, cultural, or legal barriers.
Article 12
The States Parties to the present Covenant recognize the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health.
The steps to be taken by the States Parties to the present Covenant to achieve the full realization of this right shall include those necessary for:
The provision for the reduction of the stillbirth-rate and of infant mortality and for the healthy development of the child;
The improvement of all aspects of environmental and industrial hygiene;
The prevention, treatment and control of epidemic, endemic, occupational and other diseases;
The creation of conditions, which would assure to all medical service and medical attention in the event of sickness.
Article 12 in the Covenant on Economic Social and Cultural Rights broadly encompasses physical and mental health. The Article is gender-neutral, and refers to women’s health only indirectly, that is, as it is related to the health of infants, and not to women’s own well-being. It also fails to examine the right to health in the context of life cycle changes. For the GC, the group focused on access to health care for women and the following question: what are the options for women in the health care system? Women are seen to interact with the health care system for reproductive reasons and largely for obstetrical reasons. In many instances, disadvantaged women do not have even that option.
The health needs of women vary based on age, race, marital status, socio-economic status and exposure to risk in the environment, to mention a few. Thus health interventions have to be designed to respond to these differences. Yet, this is not always acknowledged by health care providers, except in the case of reproductive health, where negative distinctions tend to be made based on marital status.
The group chose to examine mental health as an example, since it is often neglected when access to health is discussed. In terms of mental health, there are women’s disorders that need immediate medical intervention that may have cultural gendered implications, for example, schizophrenia being understood as witchcraft. There are others, such as depression experienced by women that need to be treated differently and understood within the context of social and economic conditions. However, women’s basic access to mental health services is scarce in most societies because their complaints are not always acknowledged or taken seriously. In most instances, women’s access to health services is limited since they do not control finances. In addition, because of current cost recovery systems that have been set up in many developing countries, women’s access to health care has been limited further.
The GC should contextualize the general conditions of women’s health and when discussing health should emphasize that varying needs require different forms of intervention. Health care systems, and the women and men working in them, need to be sensitive to women.
Macro-economic policies affect all rights. The group asked the question: what aspects of international macro-economic systems impact upon the realization of women’s social or economic rights?
The “macro-economic framework” needs to be unpacked. International financial institutions have not been adequately held accountable for the impact on women of their directives. Yet, it is not only international financial institutions, which are responsible for affecting women’s social and economic rights. The powerlessness of States to deliver social and economic rights to people, and to women in particular is unacceptable. The group raised the question: to what extent is there some margin for re-prioritization in States, and which States have no margins left due to poverty and harsh imposition of international guidelines?
The GC should refer to the private sector and the obligations of multinational corporations regarding social and economic rights. The obligation of State parties to protect the rights can be interpreted to require them to protect women from the negative impact of private sector activities on social and economic conditions. Trade and investment agreements have to be transparent in order to be monitored.
The international macro-economic framework impacts negatively on rights in these ways:
Through the rapid growth of the informal work sector, and the increase of non-standard work in the formal labor market; both phenomenon impact directly on women, by diminishing access to the protection of labour standards and to social security benefits;
Through international trade mechanisms which protect the interests of transnational corporations at the expense of workers and citizens;
Through pro-business laws which are part of international packages promoted by international financial institutions as part of structural adjustment programmes; these affect subsidies and encourage extraction industries, such as mining, to exploit resources.