Whose Rights Are Human Rights? The Gender Gap between Russian Feminist, LGBT, and Human Rights Networks

Chapter 4 explores the inter-network dynamics between the human rights and women’s rights communities in Russia, and how the uneasy relationship between these two sectors of civil society helps keep Russian women’s sex-based discrimination claims from percolating up to the ECtHR. We draw upon our interviews with feminist activists and human rights activists in Russia to shed light on the experiences of feminist activists within the human rights and international litigation communities in Russia. We find that the separation between women’s rights and traditional human rights networks in Russia has until recently excluded feminist lawyers from learning how to take cases successfully to the ECtHR through legal training. We compare the experiences of feminist activists and the reception of Russian human rights NGOs (nongovernmental organizations) to gender-based claims of human rights violations to the strikingly different experiences of LGBT rights activists who have found common cause with human rights organizations in Russia in trying to contest hate crimes and other rights violations in court.

Police, Prosecutors, and Ping-Pong: Legal Barriers

Chapter 3 focuses on the obstacles inherent in the domestic legal system itself, inhibiting women from making claims about gender discrimination in Russian police structures and courts. Here we examine both the legal obstacles and the practical barriers to bringing such cases. The law enforcement system creates incentives for police not to investigate cases that are hard to solve, such as on discrimination. In cases of domestic violence, court rulings may not produce satisfying results. Courts are reluctant to recognize gender-based employment discrimination. Sexual harassment in the workplace is not acknowledged in Russian law. Lawyers’ lack of legal training in discrimination law adds to the difficulty of proving discrimination in court.

What Gender Discrimination? Psychological and Sociocultural Barriers

Chapter 2 examines the barriers that often prevent women from taking even the first step of initiating a domestic court case on discrimination. This chapter investigates the domestic psychological, cultural, and material obstacles to gender discrimination cases in the Russian court system. It discusses the psychological and cultural obstacles to bringing sex-based discrimination cases to Russian courts (such as the popular tendency to regard sex-based discrimination in the public sphere as a natural and justified reflection of sex-role stereotypes, and the desire to solve “personal” problems such as domestic violence privately rather than in the public eye). It discusses the negative views toward feminism in Russia. The chapter covers different types of sex-based discrimination in Russia: employment discrimination and maternity leave, gender discrimination in custody suits, gender discrimination in education, and violence against women as a type of discrimination. The chapter concludes that people who are inclined to activism are the ones most likely to be willing to bring a court case and persist in the legal process.

Conclusion

Chapter 7 concludes the book with a focus on the findings from our analysis that suggest lessons for nongovernmental organization (NGO) activists, lawyers, and officials at the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) and within the wider Council of Europe institutions to draw upon in understanding how to facilitate justice for victims of gender discrimination in Russia and other Council of Europe states. In an era when many European and former-Soviet states appear entrenched in or are moving closer to authoritarian rule, the possibility for citizens to seek protection of their human rights from transnational institutions becomes increasingly important. We argue that although human rights protection and multilateralism in general are under threat from popular nationalist, xenophobic, and socially conservative forces in many countries, the recognition of women’s rights as being part and parcel of human rights must remain central to our understanding of meaningful citizenship, and that upholding the international treaties that offer such protections is crucial to the expansion and reinforcement of democracy and human rights.

Gender Discrimination Cases at the European Court of Human Rights: Why So Few?

Over the past two decades, Russian citizens whose rights have been violated at home have appealed tens of thousands of cases to the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), which rules on the basis of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). But only three of the Russian cases that have reached a judgment from the ECtHR have included gender discrimination claims, and all three of these cases were brought by men, not women. This chapter briefly discusses the domestic and international barriers to bringing gender discrimination complaints to Russian courts and to the ECtHR. The chapter also introduces our cross-national and cross-issue comparison cases: discrimination against women in Turkey, and against the LGBT community in Russia and Turkey, and court cases on these issues in Russia, Turkey, and at the ECtHR. The chapter includes our methodology (a description of our research process and our interviewees in both countries) and a brief explanation of how the ECtHR works. The chapter summarizes our findings as to what enables legal victories in domestic and international courts on gender discrimination cases: activism requires activists; winning cases requires legal expertise on discrimination cases (which is often lacking); winning discrimination cases requires systematic data proving a pattern of bias; winning cases is contagious, in that winning a legal victory on one issue (such as domestic violence) leads to further legal victories on that issue. Chapter 1 also includes summaries of the rest of the book’s chapters.

International Obstacles to Russian Gender Discrimination Cases at the European Court of Human Rights

Chapter 5 takes up the international obstacles to successful gender discrimination claims at the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), both across the Council of Europe, and from Russia specifically. The reluctance of the Court until recently to find violations of Article 14 alongside violations of other articles of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), the limited set of circumstances in which discrimination falls under the Convention’s jurisdiction, and the very high bar of evidence required to prove discrimination, all play a large part in explaining the Court’s miniscule case record on gender discrimination. Yet we also document how the Court has become more open in the past several years to finding sex-based discrimination violations, in part due to the diffusion of successful logics of argument among women’s rights lawyers, as well as the emergence of standards in other international women’s rights conventions that the ECtHR has begun to acknowledge, such as the Convention on Eliminating All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). The chapter discusses a variety of landmark cases at the ECtHR in this area, such as Opuz v. Turkey and Konstantin Markin v. Russia.

Turkish Gender Discrimination Cases in Domestic and International Courts

Chapter 6 is a comparative inquiry into the international and domestic opportunity structure for gender discrimination court cases. The chapter asks, how generalizable are the barriers and opportunities to bringing sex-based discrimination cases to the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) from Russia to other Council of Europe member states? The chapter examines social, interpersonal, and material barriers to bringing gender discrimination and LGBT discrimination cases in Turkey. It looks at types of gender discrimination, including domestic violence and honor killing, as well as violence against members of the LGBT community, such as hate crimes. The chapter includes an in-depth analysis of discrimination cases from Turkey regarding both women and LGBT citizens, and finds that, with a few illuminating exceptions, the barriers in Turkey are similar to those in Russia (these include reluctance to go to court, stereotypical attitudes toward sex-based and LGBT discrimination among law enforcement and in the courts, a lack of statistical data to prove patterns of discrimination, lengthy procedures and unsatisfying court decisions and/or implementation of decisions, and a lack of legal training on discrimination). In addition to discussing important gender discrimination and LGBT discrimination cases in domestic court in Turkey, the chapter covers ECtHR rulings on Turkish cases, as well as the impact of the Convention on Eliminating All forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), and the Istanbul Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence.