History

In today's global economy, gender inequality is growing. This is evidenced by the increasing poverty of women, and the re-emergence of sweatshops and other forms of economic exploitation, including trafficking in women. On the basis of gender, women of all ages are denied access to basic healthcare, housing, education, and work. Even when employed in high-paying jobs, as in the case of industrialized countries, women's wages are only 60-75% of men's wages.

WEEP was designed to address the following emerging concerns:

• Traditionally, the right to equality has been interpreted 1) as a civil and political right which does not encompass the economic and social rights dimensions of women’s inequality and 2) as a right whose paradigm is gender neutrality.

Co-founder Bios

Roger Normand was a co-founder and, until July 2004, Executive Director of CESR. In recent years he has led human rights fact-finding missions to Iraq, Israel and Palestine, and Afghanistan. Prior to CESR, he organized the Harvard Study Team missions to Iraq in 1991, the first independent investigations of the impact of war and sanctions on Iraq’s civilian population. He has also worked with Human Rights Watch and Catholic Relief Services on refugee issues in Southeast Asia. A graduate of Harvard Law School and Harvard Divinity School, Roger has written extensively on human rights and refugee issues.

The following are some brief highlights of CESR’s past work:

• In Afghanistan, CESR conducted the first post-war survey of Afghan public opinion regarding international and local human rights priorities. Our report on rights-based development was adopted by the Afghan loya jirga and helped inform international relief and reconstruction programs.