This book covers more than eighty-five years of history between women and inter-governmental organisations. Unrecorded by history and untold by the media, this book looks at the success of women within the League of Nations and the United Nations, for the advancement and empowerment of women, especially in the 30 years since the first UN World Conference on Women in Mexico City in 1975.

This book provides a critical history of influential women in the United Nations and seeks to inspire empowerment with role models from bygone eras. The women whose voices this book presents helped shape UN conventions, declarations, and policies with relevance to the international human rights of women throughout the world today. From the founding of the UN up until the Latin American feminist movements that pushed for gender equality in the UN Charter, and the Security Council Resolutions on the role of women in peace and conflict, the volume reflects on how women delegates from different parts of the world have negotiated and disagreed on human rights issues related to gender within the UN throughout time. In doing so it sheds new light on how these hidden historical narratives enrich theoretical studies in international relations and global agency today. In view of contemporary feminist and postmodern critiques of the origin of human rights, uncovering women’s history of the United Nations from both Southern and Western perspectives allows us to consider questions of feminism and agency in international relations afresh. With contributions from leading scholars and practitioners of law, diplomacy, history, and development studies, and brought together by a theoretical commentary by the Editors, Women and the UN will appeal to anyone whose research covers human rights, gender equality, international development, or the history of civil society. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9781003036708, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

As Marko Dumančić writes in his introduction to Gender, Sexuality, and the Cold War, "despite the centrality of gender and sexuality in human relations, their scholarly study has played a secondary role in the history of the Cold War. . . . It is not an exaggeration to say that few were left unaffected by Cold War gender politics; even those who were in charge of producing, disseminating, and enforcing cultural norms were called on to live by the gender and sexuality models into which they breathed life." This underscores the importance of this volume, as here scholars tackle issues ranging from depictions of masculinity during the all-consuming space race, to the vibrant activism of Indian peasant women during this period, to the policing of sexuality inside the militaries of the world. Gender, Sexuality, and the Cold War brings together a diverse group of scholars whose combined research spans fifteen countries across five continents, claiming a place as the first volume to examine how issues of gender and sexuality impacted both the domestic and foreign policies of states, far beyond the borders of the United States, during the tumult of the Cold War. Table of Contents Preface Introduction: Hidden in Plain Sight: The Histories of Gender and Sexuality during the Cold War Marko Dumančić Part I: Sexuality Faceless and Stateless: French Occupation Policy toward Women and Children in Postwar Germany (1945-1949) Katherine Rossy Patriarchy and Segregation: Policing Sexuality in US-Icelandic Military Relations Valur Ingimundarson Queering Subversives in Cold War Canada Patrizia Gentile "Nonreligious Activities": Sex, Anticommunism, and Progressive Christianity in Late Cold War Brazil Benjamin A. Cowan Manning the Enemy: US Perspectives on International Birthrates during the Cold War Kathleen A. Tobin Part II: Femininities Indian Peasant Women's Activism in a Hot Cold War Elisabeth Armstrong The Medicalization of Childhood in Mexico during the Early Cold War, 1945-1960 Nichole Sanders Africa's Kitchen Debate: Ghanaian Domestic Space in the Age of the Cold War Jeffrey S. Ahlman Mobilizing Women? State Feminisms in Communist Czechoslovakia and Socialist Egypt May Hawas and Philip E. Muehlenbeck A Vietnamese Woman Directs the War Story: Duc Hoan, 1937-2003 Karen Turner Global Feminism and Cold War Paradigms: Women's International NGOs and the United Nations, 1970-1985 Karen Garner Part III: Masculinities "Men of the World" or "Uniformed Boys"? Hegemonic Masculinity and the British Army in the Era of the Korean War Grace Huxford Yuri Gagarin and Celebrity Masculinity in Soviet Culture Erica L. Fraser

What are the limits of human rights, and what do these limits mean? This volume engages critically and constructively with this question to provide a distinct contribution to the contemporary discussion on human rights. Fassbender and Traisbach, along with a group of leading experts in the field, examine the issue from multiple disciplinary perspectives, analysing the limits of our current discourse of human rights. It does so in an original way, and without attempting to deconstruct, or deny, human rights. Each contribution is supplemented by an engaging comment which furthers this important discussion. This combination of perspectives paves the way for further thought for scholars, practitioners, students, and the wider public. Ultimately, this volume provides an exceptionally rich spectrum of viewpoints and arguments across disciplines to offer fresh insights into human rights and its limitations.

Women, Empires, and Body Politics at the United Nations, 1946-1975 tells the story of how women's bodies were at the center of the international politics of women's rights in the postwar period. Giusi Russo focuses on the United Nation Commission on the Status of Women and its multiple interactions with the colonial and postcolonial worlds, showing how--depending on the setting and the inquiry--liberal, imperial, and transnational feminisms could coexist. Russo suggests that in the early stages of identifying discriminating agents in women's lives, UN commissioners overlooked the nation-state and went through a process of fighting discrimination without identifying the discriminator. However, it was the focus on empire that allowed for a clear identification of how gender constructs were instrumental to state politics and the exclusion of women. An emphasis on colonial practices also generated a focus on the body and radically shifted the commission's politics from formal equality to a gender-based equilibrium of rights that emphasized practice rather than law. Through a multidisciplinary approach, Russo looks at the women living under colonial and postcolonial systems as the key actors in defining the politics of women's rights at the UN.

Chronicling the emergence of an international society in the 1920s, Daniel Gorman describes how the shock of the First World War gave rise to a broad array of overlapping initiatives in international cooperation. Though national rivalries continued to plague world politics, ordinary citizens and state officials found common causes in politics, religion, culture and sport with peers beyond their borders. The League of Nations, the turn to a less centralized British Empire, the beginning of an international ecumenical movement, international sporting events and audacious plans for the abolition of war all signaled internationalism's growth. State actors played an important role in these developments and were aided by international voluntary organizations, church groups and international networks of academics, athletes, women, pacifists and humanitarian activists. These international networks became the forerunners of international NGOs and global governance.

This book uses an open, explorative approach to deal with the different aspects of gender discrimination and gender empowerment policies, as well as their impact on economic development and capacity-building in several African countries. It uses primary and secondary data to present the argument that, without the full input of women, sustainable development will not be achieved in many African countries. This book is the first text written by knowledgeable gender issue experts that understand the culture of, and lived and conducted research in, Africa. It provides many examples of the relationships between gender and economic development around the African continent, highlighting different processes and practices. As such, the contributors here illustrate the impact of weak gender policies, and the ability to adequately develop female capacity building that could lead to wide-spread sustainable economic growth in Africa. They also explore a wide range of new dimensions and variables that are commonly ignored by other text books on gender equality. The book will help graduate, undergraduate students and other readers to understand women’s policies in the past, present, and future by analysing and illustrating cultural, political and socio-historical contexts which have shaped women’s role in the economic and sustainable development of Africa.

The twentieth century, a time of profound disillusionment with nationalism, was also the great age of internationalism. To the twenty-first-century historian, the period from the late nineteenth century until the end of the Cold War is distinctive for its nationalist preoccupations, while internationalism is often construed as the purview of ideologues and idealists, a remnant of Enlightenment-era narratives of the progress of humanity into a global community. Glenda Sluga argues to the contrary, that the concepts of nationalism and internationalism were very much entwined throughout the twentieth century and mutually shaped the attitudes toward interdependence and transnationalism that influence global politics in the present day. Internationalism in the Age of Nationalism traces the arc of internationalism through its rise before World War I, its apogee at the end of World War II, its reprise in the global seventies and the post-Cold War nineties, and its decline after 9/11. Drawing on original archival material and contemporary accounts, Sluga focuses on specific moments when visions of global community occupied the liberal political mainstream, often through the maneuvers of iconic organizations such as the League of Nations and the United Nations, which stood for the sovereignty of nation-states while creating the conditions under which marginalized colonial subjects and women could make their voices heard in an international arena. In this retelling of the history of the twentieth century, conceptions of sovereignty, community, and identity were the objects of trade and reinvention among diverse intellectual and social communities, and internationalism was imagined as the means of national independence and national rights, as well as the antidote to nationalism. This innovative history highlights the role of internationalism in the evolution of political, economic, social, and cultural modernity, and maps out a new way of thinking about the twentieth century.

Every human life form encapsulates an idea of humankind and humanity. Today, this very idea is challenged by the various and diverging needs for cultural orientation in the age of globalization. One of the recent attempts to meet these challenges is provided by a new humanism with an intercultural intent. Such humanism can be conceptualized only by the collaborative efforts of different academic disciplines at exploring the human being as the gist of what is meant by humanity. Thus, this volume explores the pertinent fields of knowledge from the perspectives of philosophy, theology, anthropology, sociology, economy, psychology, neurobiology, history, and gender studies. Focusing on the guiding question of what is meant by being a human, the contributions of this volume encompass a fascinating spectrum of insights, which will orientate future discussions on humanity and humanism. Every human life form encapsulates an idea of humankind and humanity. Today, this very idea is challenged by the various and diverging needs for cultural orientation in the age of globalization. One of the recent attempts to meet these challenges is provided by a new humanism with an intercultural intent. Such humanism can be conceptualized only by the collaborative efforts of different academic disciplines at exploring the human being as the gist of what is meant by humanity. Thus, this volume explores the pertinent fields of knowledge from the perspectives of philosophy, theology, anthropology, sociology, economy, psychology, neurobiology, history, and gender studies. Focusing on the guiding question of what is meant by being a human, the contributions of this volume encompass a fascinating spectrum of insights, which will orientate future discussions on humanity and humanism.