International Women’s Rights Law and Gender Equality

Ramona Vijeyarasa is a global scholar of gender equality. She is a Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Law at the University of Technology Sydney, Australia. Her research has helped shape theory and practice in areas of migration and trafficking, human rights and international women’s rights. Ramona is the Chief Investigator behind the Gender Legislative Index, a tool used to rank and score legislation for its gender-responsiveness. She is the author of the academic best-seller Sex, Slavery and the Trafficked Woman: Myths and Misconceptions about Trafficking and its Victims (2015) and a plethora of academic, policy and general media publications on law and gender issues. Ramona has been the recipient of a number of awards and grants, including from the Academy of the Social Sciences of Australia (2020–2021) and the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (2020–2022). She was the 2020 Women’s Leadership Institute of Australia Research Fellow. Before joining academia, Ramona held several positions related to women’s rights in international organisations, and local and international NGOs.

• Foreword Part I. Women and the Law: Addressing Inequality Chapter 1. In Pursuit of Gender-Responsive Legislation: Transforming Women’s Lives Through the Law Chapter 2. Women’s Rights – The State of Play: How Far Have We Come Since the Beijing Declaration? Part II. Legislating for Women: Successes and Setbacks in Delivering Gender-Responsive Outcomes for Women Chapter 3. Domestic Violence Law: When Good Intentions Go Awry in Practice Comment: Promoting Safety and Accountability: Clarity, Consistency and Interconnected Laws Chapter 4. Towards a Gender-Transformative Approach to Abortion: Legislative Perspectives from South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa Comment: Gender-Transformative Law Reform as Healthcare Chapter 5. Employing the Law for Women: Gender, Work and Legal Regulation in Australia Comment: Women and Work – How Useful is the Law? Chapter 6. Enhancing Equality in Political Life: Successes and Limitations with Electoral Gender Quotas Comment: Enhancing Equality in Public Life Part III. Legislating with Women in Mind: A Demand for Gender-Responsiveness at the Drafting Table Chapter 7. Gender, Race and Environmental Law: A Feminist Critique Comment: Gender and Queer Perspectives on the Sustainable Development Paradigm for Environmental Law Chapter 8. ‘No One Left Behind’? Gender Equality Taxation and the UN 2030 Global Agenda Comment: Tax, Gender Equality and Sharing the Costs of Care Chapter 9. Women in Anticorruption Laws: The Case for More Gender-Responsive International Treaties Comment: Perverse Reactions and the Missing Link in Gender-Smart Anticorruption Policy Part IV. Accountability for Embedding Women’s Rights in Domestic Law Chapter 10. CEDAW and Global Standards for Women’s Rights: The Convention’s Actual and Potential Influence as an Accountability Mechanism for Gender-Sensitive Legislation Chapter 11. Lighting the Spark: Reimagining the Statutory Landscape Through the Feminist Legislation Project Chapter 12. Gender Audits and Legislative Scrutiny: Do Parliamentary Human Rights Bodies have a Role to Play? Chapter 13. Conclusion – Women and the Law: The Challenges Ahead for Gender-Responsive Legislation

"Feminist critiques of law have challenged claims of the law's neutrality over the past few decades. While these critiques have been powerful, the task of designing laws to take gender into account has received much less attention. This book offers rich insights into the complexities of taking women’s lives seriously in legislative design across a range of legal fields. Its optimism that the law can be an important site for social change, along with its practical guidance, are inspiring."Hilary Charlesworth, Laureate Professor at Melbourne Law School and Distinguished Professor at the Australian National University, Australia"No country in the world has entirely eliminated discrimination against women in law and practice. Not only have we witnessed profound regression on women’s rights in some quarters of the world, but the risk of a roll-back of the progress made globally towards gender-equality has become increasingly clear. This insightful compilation of chapters on diverse aspects of women’s lives and the law will undoubtedly be an important resource and tool for legal practitioners, policy-makers, and activists who, in the aftermath of a once-in-a-century global health and economic crisis, are now faced with the daunting but critical task of building an equitable and just future for all based on a transformative vision of women’s human rights."Melissa Upreti, Vice Chair of the UN Working Group on Discrimination Against Women and Girls"International Women’s Rights Law and Gender Equality: Making the Law Work for Women is a bold and diverse collection that seeks to promote gender-responsive legislation… As Vijeyarasa notes, the "cornerstone" of the collection is that "gender equality laws are not enough" and that "[g]ender-responsive legislation across all fields of the law is pivotal to delivering gender-equal outcomes"… This thought-provoking collection provides both a snapshot of global progress on achieving women’s rights, and a roadmap for further progress through its case studies of laws and accountability mechanisms. It will be of interest to scholars, practitioners, law-makers, and citizens who are interested in the law’s potential to advance (or hinder) progress towards gender equality."Emma Dunlop, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia, writing in the Asian Journal of International Law (2022), 1–2