Any new book on gender equality faces the challenge of demonstrating its contribution to an already very large body of literature. Yet, as Rebecca Cook decries in the opening pages, the gap between the principle of gender equality and its realization is widening. In that context, this is a timely collection that offers readers a sense of how much more work is needed to reach the unrealized goal of gender equality. Responding to this predicament, Cook sets out three main goals: first, to enlighten thinking beyond formalistic approaches to discrimination; second, to provide a retrospective assessment of why some struggles for gender equality and particular methods have been more successful than others; and third, to reconstruct gender equality and offer readers future areas for research.
The chapters that tackle the multiple and intersecting axes of gender discrimination do best at advancing critical thinking. In Chapter 3, Shreya Atrey provides an excellent account of hierarchies of inequality, revisiting Kimberlé Crenshaw's now renowned ‘basement metaphor’ to interrogate how recent jurisprudence by the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW Committee) makes clear the obligation on States Parties to focus on compounded discrimination and avoid segregation. Atrey takes on the generally intersectionality-blind International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) in Chapter 7. In Chapter 4, Daniel Del Gobbo's analysis of the at-times minoritizing and at others, universalizing language of the Yogyakarta Principles, cautions us not to see intersectionality as a laundry list of bases upon which discrimination may occur but rather ‘a heuristic for understanding the complex operation of power along gender, sexuality, and other lines’ (p. 84). The goal of reconstructing gender equality is met by offering new directions. Meghan Campbell, for instance, in Chapter 8, sets out ways for the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR) to focus on the overlooked and marginalized aspects of women's rights to avoid duplicating the work of the CEDAW Committee.
The absence of Asia from chapters 10 to 14—which are focused on regional treaties in Europe, the Americas, Africa and the League of Arab States—is a reminder of how far the region is out of step with global trends. Yet countries from Asia find their way into the collection. Reservations to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women by India and Singapore, and their withdrawal to some extent in Bangladesh, are discussed in Siobhán Mullally's persuasive chapter on the limitations that reservations pose to the transformative potential of human rights. Asia's female migrant workers are an undercurrent in Sandra Fredman's study of adult care work in the UK. Naina Kapur offers an eloquent and stand-out reminder of the individuals who sit behind public interest litigation—in this case, BD, a forty-year-old Indian woman who is a village-level activist and victim of a gang rape—and make great sacrifices in pursuit of justice in ways that may be a gateway to expanding women's rights.
Overall, the book is a solid account and does well to touch upon developments in recent years. Authors illustrate their theories on inequality and discrimination with the experiences of, for example, transgender women athletes, indigenous women and water access, the under-representation of women in clinical research and the spike in domestic violence during the COVID-19 lockdown. The book therefore offers newcomers a foundational text while for others, it is a thought-provoking addition to the scholarship, with reconfigured theories on how to strengthen the institutional structures, both internationally and domestically, that have been designed to protect rights and particularly for those individuals currently left behind.
Competing interests
The author declares none.
