Article 13 of the CEDAW
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/07/29
Article 13 States Parties shall take all appropriate measures to eliminate discrimination against women in other areas of economic and social life in order to ensure, on a basis of equality of men and women, the same rights, in particular:
(a) The right to family benefits;
(b) The right to bank loans, mortgages and other forms of financial credit;
(c) The right to participate in recreational activities, sports and all aspects of cultural life.
Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (1979)
The international targeted objective of gender equality comes from many directions and foci. The Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women or the CEDAW, or simply the Convention, amounts to a large-scale document devoted to the statements relevant to different domains of focus for the equality of the sexes, for gender equality.
It states the lofty but realizable in the future intentions of an elimination of the discrimination against women or the reaching of parity of women with men. Article 13 speaks to the economic and social rights to the equality of women. In particular, the areas of family benefits, bank loans, mortgages, financial credit generally, and the participation in recreational activities including sports and other parts of cultural life.
Family benefits are simply some basic provisions for the parents for the benefit of the family unit as a whole. These can include monthly payments or allowances based on having a child or children. It can be free childcare and primary education. It can also be the provisions of paid parental leave. The last one, in particular, seems interesting with the inclusion of maternal and paternal paid leave.
Because the situations for many in the light of the globalized and high-technology economy is simply one that leaves them out, where they see declining or stalled wages for decades with the outsourcing of jobs – so with the benefits, rights, good pay, and access to the middle class for them and their families.
Article 13(b) speaks to the right for bank loans. As with the situation in the United States of America and the denial of African-Americans to acquire and maintain bank loans, women, as blacks in America now, deserve the same rights to acquiring bank loans no matter the country. Women around the world do not even have the basics ofThearenas of sports n their autonomy with finances.
Not only in the ability to acquire decent wages or jobs with benefits, the ability to start the smallest business through the acquisition of a loan from a financial institution. It becomes a major barrier for them on the path to greater and more pervasive gender equality. These bank loans are not the only formulation of this right, as this extends also to mortgages and all forms of financial credit for women. The direct point is economic empowerment for women through equal access with men to the financial institutions.
Article 13(c) stipulates the fundamental right to participate in recreational activities, sports, and all other relevant aspects of cultural life. Some of you may have noticed ballyhoo and riots over women attempting to enter in different domains of equality including the chess world. It can be that minute.
As men enter into the arenas of sport throughout much of the history of world unencumbered with the thought of women having the equal opportunity or ability, or acceptance, to form their own sports leagues and teams, the fundamental right stated here provides another basis from which to consider the essential need for equality here.
It amounts to an equal provision and equal access as a right. The cultural life as the broadest statement amounts to equality throughout the entire country. If women lack the ability to participate in the society on an equal basis, this seems to violate the fundamental need for equality of the sexes and the ratifications of this documents.
The basic prevention of equality of the sexes comes from the variety of domains; however, the essential nature of rights is that the access and opportunity, and provisions, are there for women to be equal with men. It has been as far back as Aristotle that we can find statements in stark contradistinction to an equality message.
It becomes a mixed story, as he invented some categories of race to distinguish people and, therefore, lay the foundation for racism and then had statements about women that can be identified as sexist; but then, also, we can see the invention of logic. It is a mixed story. Different cultures come with different dynamics in their orientation, to one degree or another, for equality.
However, the inclusion of women in terms of access is an integral portion of the gender equality targeted objectives found in internationally agreed-upon goals such as the Sustainable Development Goals or the SDGs. The inclusion in the economic and social life of a nation-state is no different in this regard, in this need for equality for the greater well-being of women – and men for that matter.–One can find similar statements in other documents, conventions, declarations and so on, with the subsequent statements of equality or women’s rights:
- The Universal Declaration of Human Rights in the Preamble, Article 16, and Article 25(2).
- Convention Against Discrimination in Education (1960) in Article 1.
- The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1966) in Article 3 and Article 13.
- International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1966).
- Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (1979).
- Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (1984).
- The Declaration on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (1993).
- Beijing Declaration(1995).
- United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000).
- Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children (2000).
- The Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa or the “Maputo Protocol” (2003).
- Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence or the Istanbul Convention (2011) Article 38 and Article 39.
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