Susanne Zwingel – författare

The struggle for women’s rights and to overcome gender oppression has long engaged the efforts of inter-governmental and non-governmental organizations. Feminist Strategies in International Governance provides a new introduction to the contemporary forms of this struggle. It brings together the voices of academics and practitioners to reflect in particular on the effectiveness of human rights strategies and gender mainstreaming. It covers three international issue areas in which feminists currently seek change: women’s human rights and violence against women; the participation of women in peace-making and their protection during conflict; and the gendered effects of development, economic and financial governance.

The book combines a critical reflection on the current state of feminist politics with an introduction to urgent issues on the contemporary international agenda. In addition, the book draws on innovative conceptualizations from constructivism in international relations, legal anthropology and discourse theory to provide new framings of current feminist struggles.

Offering an accessible guide to the engendering of international governance and examining the challenges for international feminist politics in the future, this work will be of great interest to students and scholars of international organizations, gender politics and global governance.

The struggle for women’s rights and to overcome gender oppression has long engaged the efforts of inter-governmental and non-governmental organizations. Feminist Strategies in International Governance provides a new introduction to the contemporary forms of this struggle. It brings together the voices of academics and practitioners to reflect in particular on the effectiveness of human rights strategies and gender mainstreaming. It covers three international issue areas in which feminists currently seek change: women’s human rights and violence against women; the participation of women in peace-making and their protection during conflict; and the gendered effects of development, economic and financial governance.

The book combines a critical reflection on the current state of feminist politics with an introduction to urgent issues on the contemporary international agenda. In addition, the book draws on innovative conceptualizations from constructivism in international relations, legal anthropology and discourse theory to provide new framings of current feminist struggles.

Offering an accessible guide to the engendering of international governance and examining the challenges for international feminist politics in the future, this work will be of great interest to students and scholars of international organizations, gender politics and global governance.

This book looks at the centerpiece of the international women’s rights discourse, the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), and asks to what extent it affects the lives of women worldwide. Rather than assuming a trickle-down effect, the author discusses specific methods which have made CEDAW resonate. These methods include attempts to influence the international level by clarifying the meaning of women’s rights and strengthening the Convention’s monitoring procedure, and building connections between international and domestic contexts that enable diverse actors to engage with CEDAW. This analysis shows that while the Convention has worldwide impact, this impact is fundamentally dependent on context-specific values and agency. Hence, rather than thinking of women’s rights exclusively as normative content, Zwingel suggests to see them as in process. This book will especially appeal to students and scholars interested in transnational feminism and gender and global governance.