Women’s Rights and Sovereignty/Autonomy

In recent years in both the United States and Latin America, indigenous peoples have taken increasing control over local justice, creating indigenous courts and asserting more autonomy in the administration of justice in their tribes, regions, or communities. New justice spaces, such as the Chickasaw District Courts in Oklahoma and the Zapatista Good Governance Councils in Chiapas, work to resolve conflict based largely on indigenous ‘customs and traditions.’ Many of the cases brought before these local legal bodies are domestic cases that directly involve issues of gender, women’s rights and culture. Yet the relationship between ‘indigenous traditions’ and women’s rights has been a fraught one. This forum article considers how these courts emerged in the context of neoliberalism and whether they provide new venues for indigenous women to pursue their rights and to challenge gendered social norms or practices that they find oppressive.

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Cuando se tejen los sueños. La voz de la mujer sapara y su pueblo

Ecología Política. Cuadernos de debate internacional ◽

10.53368/ep61fcbr06 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 91-94

Author(s):

Rosita Ortega Vásquez

Keyword(s):

Women's Rights ◽

Protective Action ◽

State Violence ◽

Women’S Rights ◽

Local Justice ◽

Indigenous Organizations ◽

Precautionary Measures ◽

The Relationship

This article analyzes the relationship between the extractivist model in Ecuador and state violence against Amazonian women defenders based on the case of Nema Grefa, President of the Sapara Nation of Ecuador (NASE), who has been intimidated and threatened with death on several occasions. From the demand for protective action and request for precautionary measures in favor of the leader and the Sapara people. The analysis of this case discusses collective and women’s rights in a local justice scenario, where the articulation of indigenous organizations, organizations for the defense of women’s rights, ecofeminists and the Ombudsman’s Office (Defensoría del Pueblo) will be key.

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Realisation of the right to self-determined development and the protection of indigenous women against discrimination in Tanzania

Journal of Law Society and Development ◽

10.25159/2520-9515/7074 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 5 (1) ◽

Author(s):

Miriam Zacharia Matinda

Keyword(s):

Indigenous Peoples ◽

Women's Rights ◽

Indigenous Communities ◽

Indigenous Women ◽

Self Determination ◽

Women’S Rights ◽

Gender Based Violence ◽

Cultural Survival ◽

Central Pillar ◽

The Right

The UN General Assembly adopted the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) in 2007, marking the culmination of thorough negotiations, lobbying and advocacy involving indigenous peoples’ representatives as key actors. Among other rights, the UNDRIP affirms the right to self-determination for indigenous peoples. Also referred to as the right to self-determined development, the right to self-determination, as stated in the UNDRIP, encompasses indigenous communities’ rights to determine their development trajectories. To indigenous peoples, the significance of the right to self-determination includes the promotion of cultural distinctiveness, which is central to their survival as communities. However, women’s rights scholars and activists are sceptical about the emancipatory potential of realising the right to self-determination for indigenous women. In contrast, exercising this right might also entail the perpetuation of gender-based violence and other forms of discrimination, thus heightening women’s fragility and subordination among indigenous communities and beyond. Using UNDRIP and other relevant international and regional human-rights instruments as vantage points, this paper seeks to juxtapose the implementation of the right to self-determination and the realisation of indigenous women’s rights in Tanzania. The article posits that the protection of indigenous women’s rights should form the central pillar of the enjoyment of the right to self-determination. This is because the cultural survival, vitality and continuity of indigenous peoples’ distinctiveness largely hinges on respect for the rights of indigenous women.

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Women’s Rights, Suffrage, and Citizenship, 1789–1920

10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190222628.013.22 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Ellen Carol DuBois

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Progressive Era ◽

Women's Rights ◽

Liberal Democracy ◽

The United States ◽

Women’S Rights ◽

Early National Period ◽

Political Landscape ◽

Antebellum Politics ◽

Early National

The United States was a pioneer in the development of women’s rights ideas and activism. Far-seeing women, determined to find an active and equal place in the nation’s political affairs, pushed long and hard to realize America’s democratic promise. Over three-quarters of a century, women’s rights and suffrage leaders steadily agitated their cause through a shifting American political landscape, from the careful innovations of the early national period, through the expansive involvements of antebellum politics, into the dramatic shifts of revolution and reaction in the post–Civil War years, up to the modernization of the Progressive Era. The meaning and content of “womanhood,” the sign under which these campaigns were conducted, also shifted. Labor, class, and especially race inclusions and exclusions were contentious dimensions of the American women’s rights movement, as they were of American liberal democracy in general.

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