The fight over representation and rights: Defending gendered rights through the UN Economic and Social Council, 1948–1950

Abstract

A century after release of the ‘Declaration of Sentiments,’ a feminist statement countering laws that defined citizenship rights for women differently than those of men, representatives of the US Women’s Bureau offered a new post-WWII testimonial, now before the United Nations General Assembly. It defended civic and political rights for women, including eligibility to hold public office and to serve as international delegates in the UN itself, asserting, ‘A modern nation cannot afford to waste half of its adult populations in a state of second-class citizenship.’ The women who stood behind this and other propositions in the years that followed the war used the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) – the body producing the Universal Declaration of Human Rights – to press for global action with a gendered social purpose. From the basic premise of the right to representation they developed a discourse on a realm of additional rights: towards equal treatment, family welfare, justice for refugees and other migrants, and true social inclusion. This article focuses on the ways in which US women fought for representation and access within ECOSOC institutions in order to elicit policy change in the name of justice and international humanitarian reform.