Moeders in de Mainstream: een genderanalyse van het werk van het VN-Kinderrechtencomite

Abstract

The relationship between women's rights and children's rights is strong and complex. Their rights and interests are often assumed to coincide, but in practice that is not necessarily the case. Granting rights to children may be to the benefit of women. However, appeals to the rights and best interests of children may also have the effect of curtailing women's rights. Feminists, therefore, have always eyed the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child with some suspicion and ambiguity. In 1993 states, convened in Vienna for the World Conference on Human Rights, decided that the human rights treaty bodies had to integrate the human rights of women. For the Children's Rights Committee this meant that it had to take the differing positions of boys and girls into account when formulating its recommendations to States parties to the Convention. Two years later, at the occasion of the fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, the United Nations agreed to mainstream a genderperspective into all their acitvities in order to speed up the advancement of the position of women. For the Children's Rights Committee this implied an extension of its task. Since 1995 the Committee must consider any possible gender bias that may result from its recommendations, including effects on the position of mothers and fathers. This study contains a gender analysis of the work of the Children's Rights Committee as it influences the position of parents. Three themes in the Committee's work have been analysed: the right to identity and filiation law, the right to be cared for and the sex-based division of roles, and the right to life and survival in combination with reproductive rights. The indicators chosen for the analysis were (legal) sex equality, empowerment of women, and transformation. Employment of these three indicators provides a clear picture of the extent to which gender has been mainstreamed in the work of the Children's Rights Committee. A myriad of issues are dealt with, ranging from the right to nationality, day-care centres, co-parenting, anonymous birth, interactive play with toddlers, teenage and solo-motherhood, breastfeeding, and maternal and child mortality to abortion and social security benefits. The analysis shows that the number of recommendations that may benefit women is impressive. However, gender mainstreaming is a complicated and gigantic endeavor, and it is not surprising that much more can and should be done. In particular, the value attached by the Committee to the involvement of a father figure, should be modified. To 'add fathers and stir' is not always the only or best solution for the problem at hand. A less normative standard that focuses on the quality rather than the form of family life will benefit children as well as their mothers and women more generally.