Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (1979): Article 14(2)(a)-(d)
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/07/30
Article 14 2. States Parties shall take all appropriate measures to eliminate discrimination against women in rural areas in order to ensure, on a basis of equality of men and women, that they participate in and benefit from rural development and, in particular, shall ensure to such women the right:
(a) To participate in the elaboration and implementation of development planning at all levels;
(b) To have access to adequate health care facilities, including information, counselling and services in family planning;
(c) To benefit directly from social security programmes;
(d) To obtain all types of training and education, formal and non-formal, including that relating to functional literacy, as well as, inter alia, the benefit of all community and extension services, in order to increase their technical proficiency;
Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (1979)
The protests for women’s rights around the world point to the need for the more gender equality, not less. Women protest in spite of the beatings, the sexual misconduct, the rapes, the unequal pay, and so on, around the world. Some of their discriminations come with the purported divine mandate. The real questions arise in the context of two questions, “Why are women protesting?” Answer: discrimination. Then, “Where are the men?”
Answer: inactive. Many men are present but emotionally inactive. They do not see this impacting their lives inasmuch as it is affecting the lives of their sisters, wives, and mothers, and women strangers around them. It is imperative for women to be able to find their way with the support of at least a few men to become equals with them.
Boys need the lessons. Girls need the support. Men and women need to work on common problems while acknowledgment is given to the historic injustices, and present ones, meted out to women and girls. In the areas of the urban elites and the urban city centers, the metropolises, the resources are available for recourse against some forms of discrimination.
For others, there is a general sense in which the supports do not exist, exist minimally, or if they exist pervasively amount to ornaments in the fight for women’s equality with men in the world. These are the lives of the rural women of the world because these women depend on the local community, and so become bound to the local community.
Article 14(2) speaks, again, to the rights of the rural women of the world and the need to give them equal consideration with the men, so that they can achieve some modicum of equality in a variety of domains. The idea is the equal participation, access, and benefit from the rural developments.
Article 14(2)(a) stipulates the need for, and right for, women to participate in the not only the dialoguing but also the implementation processes or operations necessary for the development planning of the rural community at all levels important to the development of the rural community. This is important because, for example, the infrastructure of the nation may imply the need for women to be included in it.
The ability for the rural women of a country to have equal access to the levers of powers means that they can create an infrastructure more peculiarly attending to not only the men’s concerns but also the women’s issues as well; this can often be seen in the concerns around reproductive health rights and implementations of said rights for the women of the nation.
Article 14(2)(b) speaks to the right to access. A reasonable accessibility to the healthcare facilities including the requisite information in them related to the healthcare provision, counseling services, and family planning. The last one is particularly important as many, many women lack the appropriate provisions for being able to know how to plan for a family within the context of a modern world.
Now, the people most subject to the domestic violence of a physical form in need of any counseling services will be women, where the abuse is meted out by the men against the women. It not only damages the body, but also the internal landscape of how one sees one’s own self-worth and self-esteem and as deserving the right to bodily integrity through not have their bodies beaten, bruised, and bashed around by the men in their lives.
It is not pervasive but it happens in too many contexts and in too many nations and households. The purpose of the CEDAW or the Convention is to provide the basis for the reduction and eventual elimination of discrimination against women. That is, the right to counseling is important for the protection of the long-term psychological well-being of the women in the world who have undergone the short-term battering by a significant other or partners.
Articles 14(2)(c) speaks to the need for social security programmes. As has been cover in a variety of other context around the world we find the need to provide for the needs of women because, in many but not all cases, the women will be subject to being the sole caregiver and family caretaker, which means the social programs that provide some security for the women also protect the children and the family.
It becomes especially true in the conditions set about for the women who make the vast majority or comprise most of the single parent households in the world. This creates some problems not only for the single parents but also for the children because these have long-term impacts on their mental and physical well-being, as these kids get less stability, fewer nutritious meals, and worse educational opportunities due to the educational differential. They get thrown aside as human excreta. It becomes a throwaway of superfluous people who do not matter to the bottom line.
However, the fundamental idea that you care about another human being becomes important in this context because it means that you can provide some modicum of services to the less among us, which should a moral absolute and imperative in Christian majority countries as the imperative by Christ is to help the least among us regardless of their religious adherence, sex, or age.
It amounts to an ancient reaffirmation of the modern moral documents including the Universal Declaration on Human Rights. It means caring for one another at the minimalist level in order to set some government-based social services for the women to be able to live moderately decent lives. It amounts to a fundamental human right in the Convention stipulated here.
Article 14(2)(d) states that the forms of training and education available to the men of the world should also be available to the women o the world. It becomes an issue of the utmost important in the age of the machines, of the computers. It becomes an era of the need for learning on the spot, of higher education and training.
Without these capacities inculcated in a young age, or without the access given to the women that are far more often given to the men, the women of the globe will be left to wither on the vine, as it were, as they are unable to garner the higher paying jobs and careers. Hanna Rosin makes an important note. Women have been the underdogs, which makes the development of a hustling attitude more of a woman thing than a man or boy thing.
Becuase they feel the need and the importance of getting ahead in their chosen area of expertise and work. The functional literacy is important no matter where one is in the modern world and this is stipulated, in an enlightened foresight, in the CEDAW. The ability to garner the technical skills to a proficient and even a mastery level is nothing more than part and parcel of this equality.
That particular sub-section simply states that the women should have equal access, regardless of status, to the educational domains, expertise, and skills available, typically and more traditionally, to their male counterparts. We are only seeing a recent – historially speaking – overturning of a millennias-old order of only men getting educated and women essentially living lives of servitude and subordination to the whims of the man, the family, the community, and the society. We are only seeing a recent flourishing of women.
Perhaps, the men, without as many barriers and different – and less severe – ones can, can take a tip and learn from the women succeeding in droves in education, now.
–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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