Lost in translation: Re-scripting the sexed subjects of international human rights law

Abstract

International human rights law ‘sexes’ its subjects, (re)producing unequal relations of gender power, but at the same time providing important opportunities for contestation and change; at least that is the hope that has sustained feminist human rights advocacy. Around the world, women's human rights campaigners have engaged assiduously with the discourse as activists, victims, policy-makers and lawyers, pushing against its masculinist and imperial underpinnings in their efforts to glimpse its emancipatory potential. This engagement has revealed that, through a variety of techniques and historical residues, women are systematically marginalized by the masculine standards and conceptions of t..