Stereotypes and human rights law

The scope of the book includes different stereotyping grounds – such as race, gender, and disability. Moreover, this book examines stereotyping approaches across a broad range of supranational human rights monitoring bodies, including the United Nations human rights treaty system as well as the regional systems that are most developed when it comes to addressing stereotypes: the Council of Europe and the inter-American system

Editorial: Mainstreaming Equality in EU Law and Beyond

This Special Issue addresses the topic of mainstreaming equality. Put simply, mainstreaming equality entails that all policy fields must take a core principle into account, namely equality. While there is extensive political science and governance literature on this topic, mostly from a gender perspective, there is much less EU legal literature studying the concept of mainstreaming. The contributions in this Special Issue have in common that they reflect on the challenges of mainstreaming equality in different areas of law. Several of the articles identify EU law as both part of the problem and of the solution, exploring the ambivalent role which law can play in both maintaining and reducing inequality. The articles identify obstacles as well as some recent opportunities to mainstream equality

Editorial: Mainstreaming Equality in EU Law and Beyond

This Special Issue addresses the topic of mainstreaming equality. Put simply, mainstreaming equality entails that all policy fields must take a core principle into account, namely equality. While there is extensive political science and governance literature on this topic, mostly from a gender perspective, there is much less EU legal literature studying the concept of mainstreaming. The contributions in this Special Issue have in common that they reflect on the challenges of mainstreaming equality in different areas of law. Several of the articles identify EU law as both part of the problem and of the solution, exploring the ambivalent role which law can play in both maintaining and reducing inequality. The articles identify obstacles as well as some recent opportunities to mainstream equality

Putting Women’s Rights to Work: The Participation of Women on Company Boards as a Human Rights Law Issue

Most of the legal scholarship on the participation of women on company boards focuses on European Union (EU) law and/or national law. In this chapter we take a novel approach by offering a critical reflection on the question to what extent international human rights law mandates the use of positive measures to improve the participation of women on company boards, and what obligations this entails on the state and on companies themselves. We thereby use the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) Committee’s multi-layered conception of equality—consisting of formal, substantive and transformative equality—as framework to assess and critique human rights law. This chapter shows that the proper implementation of CEDAW indeed requires States Parties adopt measures to tackle the underrepresentation of women in top corporate positions, though there is considerable discretion as to the content of these measures. Also under the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) states should take an active stance towards the private sector on this topic. Responsibilities for companies are based on the UNGPs’ corporate responsibility to respect. We argue that promoting the participation of women on company boards falls into the scope of what is currently expected from companies

A comparative analysis of gender equality law in Europe 2022

This report provides a general overview of the ways in which EU gender equality law has been implemented in the domestic laws of the 27 Member States of the European Union, as well as Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway (the EEA countries), the United Kingdom and five candidate countries (Albania, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia and Turkey). The analysis is based on the country reports written by the gender equality law experts of the European equality law network (EELN). At the same time, the report explains the most important elements of the EU gender equality acquis. The term ‘EU gender equality acquis’ refers to all the relevant EU Treaty and EU Charter of Fundamental Rights provisions, legislation and case law of the CJEU in relation to gender equality