The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women defines discrimination against women and legally binds states to identify and correct gender inequality. Why won’t the U.S. ratify it?
It’s been 45 years since the United Nations adopted the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), often described as an international bill of rights for women. Yet some younger feminists haven’t even heard of it.
This multilateral treaty defines discrimination against women and establishes an agenda to end it, legally binding states to comply with provisions to identify, investigate and correct gender inequality. The vast majority of the world’s nations—96 percent—have ratified CEDAW, though some with ironic modifications. Saudi Arabia, for example, makes religious exception for male guardianship laws, multiple wives, divorce by announcement and more.
The U.S. is not a signatory. It’s arguably the only industrialized democracy in the world that has yet to ratify CEDAW—alongside Iran, Palau, Somalia, Sudan, Tonga and Nauru. An elected committee of 23 international, independent experts on women’s rights holds three sessions per year. Ratifying countries must submit reports on measures they’ve adopted and progress they’ve made within one year of ratification and every four years thereafter. Critics scoff that the committee has no teeth to prosecute violations (so far, no country has been taken to the International Court of Justice at the Hague for noncompliance), but the reports do apply the pressure of public shaming on governments to improve.
Each session reviews reports from different member states regarding issues ranging from labor exploitation to violence against women; the status of disabled, Indigenous and refugee women; women’s leadership in sustainable development; and conflict prevention.
Since 2020, the committee has heard reports on trafficking and post-COVID gender-responsive recovery measures. It also pronounced Afghanistan’s Taliban in gross violation of women’s rights. It has called for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, noting, “The very basic principles of the Convention protecting women and girls are challenged when mothers in the Gaza Strip … bur[ied] at least 7,729 children in the past four months.”
The U.S. has debated ratifying CEDAW at least five times. It was one of CEDAW’s earliest signatories in 1980 shortly after the treaty was officially adopted—but it has never made it to the Senate floor for a ratifying vote. The treaty came into existence as the U.S. was transitioning from President Jimmy Carter to Ronald Reagan—alongside the rise of the religious, right-wing Moral Majority, which reframed a landmark women’s rights measure as “a terrible treaty negotiated by radical feminists with the intent of enshrining their radical antifamily agenda into international law,” in the words of the late Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.).
Akila Radhakrishnan, the strategic legal adviser for gender justice at the Atlantic Council, said that U.S. reluctance to join CEDAW has been based “for a lot of politicians [on] the fear of some of the really strong substantive provisions that are contained in the treaty. … There’s always been pushback because of the fear that CEDAW’s rights protections do, in fact, go significantly further than the equality provisions currently in the U.S. Constitution, under U.S. law.”
She added, “We see that a lot of campaigns around CEDAW … really talk about the importance of the U.S. ratifying CEDAW because of its leadership role … We don’t see it as something that’s necessary or that could be utilized and would benefit women here in the United States.
“Look at where we’re at in 2024. CEDAW was passed in the 1970s … You really see how much we’ve regressed in the United States and how much we actually need strong protections and provisions around the range of women’s rights.”
This story originally appeared in the Summer 2024 issue of Ms. magazine. Join the Ms. community today and you’ll get the Summer issue delivered straight to your mailbox.
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