Obama: Bring the U.S. into the 21st Century on Gender Equality

By Marjorie Cohn, AlterNet. Posted December 22, 2008.

Nearly 30 years after President Jimmy Carter signed the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), the United States remains the only democracy that refuses to ratify the most significant treaty guaranteeing gender equality.  One hundred eighty-five countries, including over 90 percent of members of the United Nations, have ratified CEDAW.  

U.S. opposition to ratification has been informed not simply by an objective analysis of how CEDAW's provisions might conflict with U.S. constitutional law.  Rather, it reflects the ideological agenda and considerable clout of the religious right and the corporate establishment. Issues of gender equality raise some of the most profound divisions between liberals and conservatives.  The right-wing agenda was born again in the Bush administration, which issued numerous directives limiting equality between the sexes. Bush targeted funding for family planning and packed the courts and his administration with anti-choice ideologues.  

The parade of horribles trumpeted by ratification opponents includes predictions that it would force the United States to pass an Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). Opposition to the ERA in the 1980s was also grounded in religious fundamentalism. There are fears that ratification may lead to the legalization of same-sex marriage, the abolition of single-sex schools, and create a nation of androgynous children.  

Much of the hysteria directed at ratification is based upon false assumptions. One opponent warned: "A messy divorce case shouldn't end up in the World Court." This is a reference to the International Court of Justice, which does not even have jurisdiction over marital dissolution cases. An editorial in Hanover, Pennsylvania's The Evening Sun predicted CEDAW backers will use the International Criminal Court as an enforcement tool. But, the International Criminal Court only has jurisdiction over war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity. Cecilia Royals of the National Institute of Womanhood said, "This treaty represents a battering ram against free and democratic societies, and particularly against women with traditional values." The Weekly Standard charged the treaty "mandates complete sex equality in the military, the overthrow of market wages and implementation of 'comparable-worth' pay scales, rigid gender quotas, abortion on demand, and federally mandated child care."  Many opposed to ratification seek to protect the large corporations -- the backbone of U.S. capitalism -- from having to enact equality provisions that would imperil the bottom line.  

Although President Carter signed CEDAW in 1980, the treaty has never been sent to the full U.S. Senate for its advice and consent to ratification. When the president signs a treaty, we are forbidden from taking action inconsistent with the object and purpose of the treaty. But we don't become a party, with all the treaty obligations, until the president ratifies the treaty with the advice and consent of the Senate.  

After Ronald Reagan became president and the Republicans gained control of the Senate, CEDAW languished in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.  Neither Reagan nor President George H.W. Bush sought ratification.  Reagan made his contempt for CEDAW perfectly clear when he said that once adopted, the treaty would lead to "sex and sexual differences treated as casually and amorally as dogs and other beasts treat them."  

In 1994, at the behest of the Clinton administration, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee held hearings and recommended full Senate approval of CEDAW. Yet Committee chairman Jesse Helms continued to hold CEDAW hostage by keeping it from a vote in the Senate. In response to a last-minute campaign against ratification fueled by radio talk shows, a "hold" was placed on the treaty, preventing the full Senate from voting on it.  

Five years later, 10 female members of the House of Representatives, including Nancy Pelosi, delivered to a hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (the Committee) a letter supporting ratification, signed by 100 members of Congress. Jesse Helms scolded them with, "Now you please be a lady," before ordering uniformed officers to "[e]scort them out."  

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Marjorie Cohn is a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, president of the National Lawyers Guild, and the US representative to the executive committee of the American Association of Jurists.

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