Women’s national leagues: does CEDAW go far enough?
The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW, CEDAW on the Elimination of All Forms ofDiscrimination Against Women (CEDAW), 1249 U.N.T.S. 13, 1979) states the goals of equality between men and women in sports. However, today there are only a limited number of women’s national leagues in the world, but hundreds of men’s national leagues, which seems to go against CEDAW’s edict of equality. This paper will consider the issues relative to the goals of CEDAW with regard to equality as specifically applied to the idea of women’s national professional sports leagues and whether or not CEDAW goes far enough in supporting this goal.
Women's rights in Africa: an examination of African human rights systems in the context of CEDAW and the universalism versus cultural relativism debate.
Many African women suffer discrimination on the grounds of their gender and other factors, such as religion, customs, age and marital status. They continue to be victims of harmful practices whose perpetrators are never held to account because the practices have their roots in cultural values and traditions. Attempts to initiate a change in human rights especially in relation to women, is countered with the argument which rejects the imposition of Western culture on other regions of the world. This argument is based on the premises that human rights should be tailored to people's cultural beliefs and therefore can never be universal. By comparing provisions of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and with examples of African human rights instruments, this article investigates the influence of cultural relativism, if any, on the formulation of women's rights policies in African countries.
Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women.
The Government of Sierra Leone ratified the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women on 11 November 1988.