Home-Word Bound: Women's Place in the Family of International Human Rights

Abstract

If global governance includes of rule at all levels of human activity?from the family to international organization?in which the pursuit of goals through the exercise of control has transnational reper cussions,2 then a creative analysis of the status of women in the family can inform and deepen our current understanding of regimes of power, systems of social discipline and control, and the structural embeddedness of certain crimes. In a world in which technologies of violence continue to be deployed with impunity, the notion of human rights?described by Charlotte Bunch as one of the few moral visions subscribed to interna tionally3?provides key conceptual tools with which to assess the well being of citizens under governments. Since the family is the normative primary sphere of female activity in most societies, the protection of women's rights is directly related to the extent to which women's primary location within the family is addressed, in social norms as well as in in ternational instruments such as human rights conventions. Closer exami nation of international documents in their exact wording and emphasis may suggest new strategies to enhance international standards of prohibi tion of violence in the home and to establish the limits of existing treaty language. In this article, my focus on women in the family is intended to expand the scope of human rights discourse to address abuses against women that have been overlooked until very recently in traditional human rights de bates. I explore the place of the family in international human rights through the lens of feminist political theory, examine the key human rights doctrines that offer a particular definition of the family, and assess the re sponsiveness of those rights to widespread and pervasive domestic abuses.