Gender and globalisation: Engendering social and environmental justice through globalising women’s human rights

Abstract

Globalization has its critics and its champions. In large part, disputes over globalization’s relative merits are due to the lack of uniformity in globalization’s effects across difference. Globalization is experienced differently across countries and among different groups within countries based on race, class and gender. Globalization has mixed and multiple meanings for gender justice; some aspects of globalization are problematic, while other aspects are positive, perhaps sometimes simultaneously. To the extent the global economy can be characterized by its increasing integration, interconnection and independence among countries and communities; it is increasingly imperative that the indivisible, interdependent and interrelated nature of women’s social, economic, cultural, civil and political rights be given greater emphasis and the responsibility of non-state commercial actors to align their conduct with respect for women’s human rights explored further. This Chapter has three parts. Part I, deconstructs the position of gender in global economic integration considering how conventional gender roles have served to advance the process of globalization and how globalization is serving to alter the paradigm of conventional gender roles. Part II, describes the growing power and prominence of global networks promoting gender equality and environmental justice led by women. Part III discusses the constructive role international human rights law could play in the process of engendering social and environmental justice in an increasingly integrated interconnected and interrelated world.