UC law school lecture examines human rights of women

Professor Rebecca Cook, co-director of the International Reproductive and Sexual Health Law Programme at the University of Toronto, will present the lecture “Revisiting Human Rights of Women – Transnational Perspectives”. The event will be held at 12:10 p.m., Wednesday, Feb. 6, in Rm. 118 at the University of Cincinnati College of Law.

In the lecture Cook will revisit the human rights of women in transnational perspectives since the adoption in 1979 of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). Her approach for doing so is the wave metaphor, where she will map the following sequential, overlapping and counteracting global waves of:

• the growth of women’s rights in domestic, regional and international forums,
• the evolution of legal, social and political accountability, and
• the emergence of backlashes to women’s rights.

The interplay among these waves can be understood sequentially overtime, geographically among national, regional and international actors, or progressively and retrogressively in actually achieving women’s rights. Finally, Cook will offer some thoughts on addressing the shortcomings in their implementation.