Document Type
Introduction
Publication Date
2011
Volume
31
First Page
799
DOI
https://doi.org/10.58948/2331-3528.1784
Abstract
(Excerpt)
Pace Law School founded its Women's Justice Center nearly two decades ago, and since then the school has built a reputation for work on sex, gender, and women's rights. Continuing its commitment to these critical issues, the school hosted Pace Law Review's Symposium, After Gender?: Examining International Justice Enterprises, on November 12, 2010.
When I first proposed this Symposium, I had been writing on international legal regimes related to sex, gender, and sexuality. My work engaged the preeminent international convention concerning these issues, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), a critique I published as Unsex CEDAW: What's Wrong with Women's Rights. I questioned the juridical entrenchment of sex differences and how a binarist sex identity undermines gender equality remedies. I concluded that a nonidentity-based right to sex equality would benefit people of all sexes more than a women's rights regime.
At the same time, this controversial thesis proved troubling—it provoked heated disagreement and raised related questions about equality, identity, and international law. What costs do international women's human rights carry for broader equality projects? Who wins, who loses, and how can we face some of the ugly truths about power and rights discourse? Thinking prospectively, may we envision structures to further equality norms that avoid identitarian traps?
When I asked these questions, more than a few others were simultaneously engaged by the questions and isolated in their musings on the answers. I sought to foster a critical mass on these crucial matters with this Symposium. I was especially fortunate to have the institutional support to gather a multidisciplinary international conference of contemporary thinkers to ponder these challenges.
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