Crossing boundaries: women and economic, social and cultural rights

Abstract

In 2002, the field of human rights had already started to shift towards Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ESCR). New frameworks and concepts around ESCR were emerging. It was becoming increasingly clear that civil and political rights (CPR), by themselves, were insufficient to protect all human rights. Although everyone agreed that economic and social justice have always been women’s issues (women had organized around them for years), yet feminism and gender analysis were not central to these ‘dominant’ new developments. The emergence of a new paradigm brought ‘big players’ and forced women, the old protagonists, to the sidelines of this work.