Beauty Pageants, FIU, and Worlds Ahead : An Open Letter to FIU President Mark Rosenberg

In response to FIU\u27s decision to rent space to Donald Trump\u27s Miss Universe Beauty pageant, it is argued that FIU has a responsibility toward its female and male students to work for a less sexist world. As the leadership of the university does not seem to be aware of the dangers of exaggerated beauty standards and female objectification, the letter draws on feminist insights to add non-sexist substance to FIU\u27s vision of being worlds ahead

Unlearning Sexual Harassment

In an androcentrist society, where men are the most privileged group, and where they are not taking issues seriously that do not personally affect them, they are the ones who need to change the most. In this spirit, I offer three suggestions that could help us move toward a less sexist future

Miami Dade County’s CEDAW Ordinance: A Tool of Local Transformation toward Gender Justice?

Cities4CEDAW represents a new form of activism in the United States, where a global framework – the UN Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW, of 1979) – is used in local contexts to advance gender equality. After San Francisco became the first municipality to adopt a CEDAW ordinance in 1998, Cities4CEDAW was founded in 2013 and has since triggered a significant number of initiatives that work with the CEDAW framework locally. This paper takes a scholar-activist perspective on the Cities4CEDAW dynamics in Miami Dade County, Florida. We start with an overview of the literature on global-to-local activism and the potentials and obstacles for transformation it has identified. We then trace local dynamics in Miami Dade County with a view to concrete steps taken, assessments of the actors directly involved in the County’s CEDAW ordinance as well as of local social justice organizations that focus on gender among other dimensions of discrimination. We find that the framework has had some impact that is considered significant by those directly involved, but that nevertheless has to be described as limited, especially due to lack of resources within local government structures, lack of wider and strategic community involvement, and an understanding of women’s rights that does not resonate with the intersectional realities of discrimination in the county. We draw conclusions from this process for a more transformative model of intervention in a local context whose extreme disparities have been exacerbated by the gendered impact of pandemic

Asking Fathers and Employers to Volunteer: A (De)Tour of Reconciliation Policy in Germany? -super-1

In Germany, up until recently, the combination of weak antidiscrimination laws and the rationale of family benefits had sustained the male breadwinner-female family caretaker model as the norm in social policy arrangements and gender relations. In the context of the unification of East and West Germany and the change in government to a left-wing coalition in the late 1990s, the biases of this deeply entrenched model have been significantly put into question. After providing a brief description of the German welfare state context, the article presents the development of reconciliation policies in two parts. First, the measures taken by the Christian Democrat/Liberal governments in the 1980s and 1990s are critically summarized. Second, we examine new steps taken by the Social Democrat/Green governments since 1998 and discuss the possible impact of the new approach on reconciliation policy. In this context, we also consider reconciliation policies at the firm level, an object of recent government attention. The article concludes with some further reflections on a gender-balanced future between work and family obligations in the German context. Copyright 2003 by The Policy Studies Organization.

How do international women’s rights norms become effective in domestic contexts?

Die CEDAW Convention war das 1. völkerrechtlich bindende Instrument zum Schutz von Frauenrechten und nimmt eine Schlüsselposition in der globalen Normbildung zu Geschlechtergerechtigkeit ein. Die Konvention hat einen Dialog zwischen dem CEDAW Ausschuss und den 180 Vertragsstaaten befördert, sie hat die Aufmerksamkeit innerhalb der UN bezüglich Frauenrechte erhöht, und sie hat NGOs animiert, lokale Auseinandersetzungen um Frauenrechte mit globalen Standards zu verknüpfen und damit zur nationalen Politikformulierung beizutragen. In Anbetracht dieser Dynamiken argumentiert die Arbeit, dass die CEDAW Konvention sich von einem zwischenstaatlichen Regime zu einem transnationalen Umsetzungsnetzwerk von Frauenrechten entwickelt hat. Die theoretische Perspektive verbindet Regimetheorie, Ansätze zu globaler Normdiffusion, und transnationale feministische Ansätze, um die Reziprozität zwischen globalen, nationalen und lokalen Kontexten in der Umsetzung globaler Normen herauszuarbeiten.The CEDAW Convention was the first legally binding international instrument for the protection of women's rights and marks a milestone in the process of global norm creation on gender equality. The CEDAW monitoring procedure has brought about a dialogue between the CEDAW Committee and the 180 states parties to the Convention. Apart from increasing attention on gender issues within the UN, the Convention has also motivated NGO activism that connects local understandings of women's rights with global standards to influence national policy developments. Taking these dynamics together, the thesis argues that the CEDAW Convention has started as a classical inter-governmental regime and developed into a transnational network enforcing women's rights. The theoretical perspective combines regime theory, approaches on global norm diffusion, and transnational feminism to stress the reciprocity between global, national and local spheres

"More and better jobs?" Politische Konzepte zur Qualität von Arbeit

Lepperhoff J, Scheele A. "More and better jobs?" Politische Konzepte zur Qualität von Arbeit. In: Brabandt H, Roß B, Zwingel S, eds. Mehrheit am Rand? Geschlechterverhältnisse, globale Ungleichheit und transnationale Handlungsansätze. Politik und Gesellschaft. Vol 19. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwiss; 2008: 127-144

Utilizing International Human Rights Frameworks and Treaties to Advocate in Local Communities

Moderator: Jackie Smith, University of Pittsburgh Presentations: Translocal Learning Across Human Rights Cities (Michael Goodhart, University of Pittsburgh - Main Campus) [virtual] Miami Dade County’s CEDAW Ordinance: A Tool of Local Transformation toward Gender Justice? (Susanne Zwingel, Florida International University; Jennifer Hill, Florida International University) [virtual] Truth and Accountability in Los Angeles: Global Norms Informing City Reckoning Around Racial Justice (Anthony Chase, Occidental College) [virtual] U.S. Human Rights Cities Alliance (Rob Robinson, U.S. Human Rights Cities Alliance) Police Surveillance Technology Ordinance (Julio Mateo, Coalition on Public Protection