Search

Begins with a survey of the realities of women's global inequality, asserting that attempts at legal regulation (notably the Women's Convention prepared for the UN's Second Conference on Women, held in Copenhagen in 1980) have fallen far short of the tasks of achieving gender equality. Explanations for this enormous disparity between promise and performance involve flaws in the legal framework, defects in the concept of equality used to promote the advancement of women, and the general inadequacy of law as an instrument for changing behaviours deeply rooted in tradition and culture, and supported moreover by global economic structures. For all these reasons, the chapter concludes by doubting whether legal regulation, particularly at the international level, can ever generate fundamental societal change.