Human Rights and Gender Politics

First Published in 2004. As the new millennium leaves behind the most violent of centuries, human rights activists and international agencies are looking to a new Age of Rights. Feminists have been prominent among those struggling 'from below' to reconstruct human rights: the slogan 'women's rights are human rights' has become a central claim of the global women's movement; feminist theorists have argued for an explicit inclusion of women and gender in human rights tenets; and United Nations forums have become central sites of an energetic new global feminist 'public', providing unprecedented avenues for feminist initiatives and action. It is clear, however, that feminist re-shapings of human rights have been engaged in complex conversations with both human rights claims and with feminist and gender politics in all their many local versions. The contributors to this volume address these complex conversations through a number of case studies within the Asia-Pacific region.