Unfortunately, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights took the minimalist approach of saying that "everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex" .... with little further reference to women's issues. This proved unhelpful in practical terms and it took campaigners over 30 years to cajole the international community into solid interpretation and commitment to address gender injustice.

Woman leader at meeting, Benin © Dan Gerber

This commitment came in the shape of the Convention to Eliminate All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) which was adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1979. CEDAW has been described as a bill of rights for women; it spells out the areas in which women experience discrimination and commits countries to amend their laws, construct national gender policies and create institutions to deliver them. The most solid subsequent endorsement of CEDAW came at the Fourth World Conference on Women, held in Beijing in September 1995, at which governments committed themselves to the Beijing Platform for Action, a detailed template for eradication of discrimination and poverty.

This generally positive global commitment to women's rights has not been reflected in the rate of progress. Ineffective enforcement of legislation is the most common constraint, possibly not helped by the plethora of UN organisations addressing different aspects of gender inequality. As part of the UN reform process, there have been calls for a more streamlined architecture of agencies to bring greater coherence to women's issues. Another important obstacle has been the failure of the US to ratify CEDAW, a move which has been repeatedly blocked by right wing interests who perceive a threat to sovereignty.

One of the most shameful failures of legislation relates to the practice of sex-selective abortion and female infanticide in India and China. Originally believed to be a characteristic of impoverished rural communities, recent disclosures suggest that over 10% of female pregnancies in middle class New Delhi are aborted. In China, 118 boys were born in 2005 for every 100 girls. There can be no more explicit illustration of the strength of cultural norms to attribute low status to women.

It is such cultural traditions in developing countries that create the most stubborn obstacle to the essential steps towards women's equality. The belief that girls should work in the home and in the fields rather than go to school, and the presumption that a woman acquires no right to property on marriage are deeply entrenched in many societies. Whilst development agencies are normally anxious to respect cultural traditions in their programmes, they are reluctant to compromise on issues of gender equality.

The disempowerment of women is often reinforced in a country's laws; for example, many countries in sub-Saharan Africa are in various stages of amending laws which prevent women from gaining access to land and property. The HIV/AIDS crisis has accelerated these pressures, given that over 30% of households in southern Africa are now headed by women, few of whom can claim ownership rights.

Legal issues are most problematic in Islamic countries where elements of Sharia law governing the behaviour of women remain in place. The Pakistan government has encountered fierce resistance from Islamic political parties to its efforts to reform the Hudood ordinances, ancient laws which declaim that adultery is a crime when carried out by women, and which make it virtually impossible for a man to be convicted of rape. The Taliban regime in Afghanistan represented the most extreme and unacceptable implementation of laws which deny a role for women. Shirin Ebadi, the Iranian Nobel laureate, believes that the treatment of women in Islamic countries does not reflect the teachings of the Koran. She advocates a reinterpretation of Sharia law to recognise women's rights.

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