Open Working Session of the Working Group on Feminism and International Law

From the Editor

The Working Group on Feminism and International Law was one of the working groups of the ILA to hold an open working session at the conference. Annette Lansink (Rapporteur of the Working Group and Dean of the School of Law at the University of Venda, South Africa) had begun the session by introducing the purposes of the working group. The working group, while it acknowledges the insights of various feminist theories, is not concerned with the study of feminist theories and their influence in international law. Rather, its aim is to give women a voice within the law (taking into account the social and economic context), and to work towards transforming the law so that it can ensure substantive equality of women.

Unlike formal equality, which is concerned with the status of persons as equal bearers of rights, substantive equality - which forms the focus of the working group’s activities - requires the law to ensure “equality of outcome” in the treatment of men and women. Generally speaking, the work of the working group addresses the reality that international law is not a gender neutral system : that the lens though which the law is viewed is affected by the viewer’s preferences and prejudices, including gender (as well as national, geo-political, racial, ethnic and class) prejudices.


The main focus of the open session of the working group was the presentation and adoption of its final report on Women and Immigration. (See report on the ILA 2010 website).


Like its previous reports on women and immigration, the report highlighted the discrimination and other human rights violations facing women immigrants. In the course of the presentation, the panelists had recommended a number of changes in the treatment of immigrants. One of them is that irregular immigration should be dealt with administratively and not as a criminal offence. As the rapporteur of the working group observed, the point here is not to make irregular immigration lawful, but to change the manner in which it is handled. The working group had also recommended a better focus on the rights of immigrant women, such as property rights, medical care and - in the case of trafficked women - rights as a witness testifying against alleged traffickers. She also recommended that efforts at ensuring gender equality should take into account the opinions of feminist scholars embedded within their cultures, and not just the views of women estranged from their religious or cultural groups.