Gender Equity bulletin, Issue 0, August 2014

The Gender Collaborative Information and Knowledge Network is an online collaborative platform, part of Lebanon Support’s Civil Society Knowledge Center (CSKC), bringing together civil society organizations, researchers, practitioners, and experts to enhance local and national capacities, improve access to knowledge and its development, and provide evidence-based research, information, and literature on gender issues and concerns.

Why the Gender Equity Newsletter?

This newsletter aims to connect gender actors and practitioners in Lebanon through the sharing of expertise, in an attempt to create a space for better collaboration, networking, and equal access to knowledge, research, and information. Each issue will cover the work of actors, their activities, and projects, in addition to recommending relevant resources and tools, as well as information and statistics relevant to gender work in Lebanon.
 

Gender equity v/s gender equality?

These terms, often used interchangeably, nevertheless carry important differences. International  human rights law, more specifically the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), clearly adopts “equality”. This caused controversy and debate between UN and international agencies, on the one hand, and some human rights activists, on the other.

CEDAW(1) refers to the concept of “equality”, assuming it would set broad and objective standards for member states to monitor compliance with the treaty through periodic reports. CEDAW defenders in general argue that “equality” is based on three principles: non-discrimination; state obligation, and the principle of substantive equality, or equality of results(2).

Institutions and UN agencies also consider “equity” to be a broad concept, which might allow governments to offer all types of justifications for their shortcomings. Whereas, they consider equality to be a human right and, therefore, a legal obligation which cannot be avoided.

“Equality”: an androcentric term?

Some scholars and feminists tend to consider the term “equality” as carrying a normative androcentric content (i.e., centered on men), considering that men are the reference or norm against which equality is “measured”. Standardizing equality aims to eliminate differences. However, it disregards the relation of gender with ethnicity, economic class, geographic location, immigration status, sexual identity and orientation, age, abilities, and so on. 

Beyond legal equality

Gender is defined as distinct from sex as it refers to social and cultural constructs that contribute to define and shape a person’s role in society. A rights-based definition of gender equality can be developed with reference to two of the fundamental international instruments in this regard. 

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights(3) (UDHR) declares that all humans are born free and equal – reiterated in the second paragraph of CEDAW. The terms “equal rights of men and women” and “equality of rights of men and women” are repeated at least four times in the first five paragraphs, reaching “full equality of men and women” in the final opening paragraphs before Article 1.

CEDAW goes on to enumerate the “same rights” and the “same opportunities”, which must be available to all men and women in various fields of human activity, including, but not limited to, education, marital legislation, and labor. 

Thus, the concept of gender equality may be taken to primarily refer to the full equality of men and women in enjoying the full range of political, economic, civil, social, and cultural rights, without anyone being denied access to these rights or deprived thereof based on their gender.

However, to achieve full equality in the meaningful sense, equality under the law may not be sufficient, although critical. The historically and traditionally “inferior” positioning of women needs to be addressed and contextualized. In that sense, formal or legal equality, which involves simply “adding women” to the existing paradigms, may be an insufficient response to women’s inequality.
Thus, it is not sufficient to look at legal obstacles facing women. Attention must be focused on the existing motivations and causes driving the conditions of women’s oppression and gender discrimination to a large extent. This entails addressing institutional structures that continuously sustain oppression and discrimination against women, and, by effect, challenging the cultural, traditional, and religious norms that typecast women as “inferior” to men.

For such reasons, there seems to be an emerging move away from the term "Gender Equality", notably among some feminist and gender groups towards using “Gender Equity”, which encompasses justice as an integral element of its application and looks at the whole society as the subject of its interventions. Thus, it surpasses the limited nature of legal reforms, which might guarantee rights but does not necessarily guarantee women’s ability to practice such rights, nor does it put an end to the existing dynamics of social, economic, and cultural discrimination.
In that sense, a justice-driven approach for gender (i.e. Gender Equity), encompassing both the legal track – which guarantees much needed rights and protection mechanisms – and the mobilization track – which intends to mobilize different social groups and society as a whole – is neededto ensure that such rights are applied and to defeat the conditions and the motives of existing discrimination and violence.