Women, and All of Us: Article 5(a) CEDAW as a Protection for All Gendered Individuals

This article explains the disruptive potential of Article 5(a) of the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) building on psychoanalytical, feminist and queer theories. Reading CEDAW through the prism of Article 5(a) makes the Convention an instrument to protect not only women from the adverse effect of gender-stereotyping, but all individuals. This reinterpretation of Article 5(a) contrasts with mainstream interpretations of femininities and masculinities, portraying femininity as vulnerability and masculinity as domination. By comparing the scope and principles of CEDAW with those incorporated in the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD), I show that the reinterpretation of Article 5(a) CEDAW supports a renewed understanding of gendered dominationsubordination under international human rights law. The norm can secure the rights of all gendered individuals by requiring states to eradicate preconceptions and practices based on the ideas of inferiority or superiority of certain forms of masculinity or femininity. Albeit contained in an instrument focused on one specific gendered group (‘women’), Article 5(a) enshrines a symmetrical configuration sex/gender in relation to men-women, masculinity-femininity and inferiority-superiority which allows this provision to protect all of us. The provision finally opens to the uniqueness of subjective positionalities in psychoanalytical terms, by addressing gender stereotyping as a constraint to existential possibilities.