fDelia has 10 post(s)

In the article “Rights Talk and the Experience of Law: implementing Women’s human Rights to protection from Violence” by Sally Engle Merry She mentions how import is for a woman to take action if they are abused by her husbands.
At the beginning of the article, she made as familiarize in the topic of women against violence. As she mentioned a movement called “Battered women” was created to help women to find help if they were abused by their husbands.
Merry Interviewed thirty women about domestic violence, every story was different but with the same domestic violence in their lives. During the interview twelve women were in court for the first time, Some of them feel fear and anxiety about turning to the courts for the first time but they also feel supported in some ways. They also expressed how for them took a long time to decide to go to court and when finally they went most of the time they felt fear in court and the angry face of their husbands.In other cases, women were forced to drop off charges because they didn’t want their husbands going to jail. I believe most of the time men try to put all the fault on women making them believe they are guilty.
The essay also mentions for example in Hilo, cultural patterns justify violence in some cases because men were thinking women deserved that violence. “Men typically defend their violence as justified by the woman’s sexual activities or her failure to care for their children” (Pg.368)
From my point of view, Merry is showing us in this essay how men more of the time were having more support by the law in contrast to the women. I believe this was the reason why most of the women preferred to keep quiet and don’t tell about the abuse they were having by her husbands o partners. Women didn’t believe they were going to be protected by the law.
I believe this is happening these days because not all women get the protection they deserve, and some of them can be controlled by their own husbands to continue in the same domestic violence. Some women don’t say a word about their domestic violence and sometimes family or neighbor are the ones who claim something is happening. I know women who didn’t do anything until her husband hit his own child and send him to the hospital.

In the essay “Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving?” by Lila Abu-Lughod she mentions that one of her principal points is to make us as reader aware of all the differences in the world. When she talks about differences she is telling us about religion, cultures, and behavior.  Lila Abu-Lughod makes as to learn how in different cultures women have to follow rules or traditions in order to be considered “good women”.  Lila Abu-Lughod mentions how Laura Bush in one of her speeches mentioned that American help Afghan women get their liberation. She stated “Because of our recent military gains in much of Afghanistan, women are no longer imprisoned in their homes. They can listen to music and teach their daughters without fear of punishment”(Pg. 784).
The essay also talks about how Afghan women under the Taliban were forced to wear a burqa as a sign of oppression. The burqa was also seen as a demonstration of deep faith to the Islam maybe this is the reason why even now they still wear a burqa even though they don’t need to do it. But as the essay mentions some women still do this as a sign modesty or respectability. If they do not use the burqa doesn’t mean they have freedom. On the contrary, they are still prisoners of a government or a society that believes to be superior, to dictate how they should dress. At least wearing the burqa makes them feel part of their community.
When she talks about women wearing a veil she mentions how some people confuse this type of clothing as a unfreedom, on the contrary women wearing this veils, are free to decide for whom they feel it is appropriate to wear a veil. As the essay mentions wearing a veil or a burqa is a choice that women can make or decide to, sometimes they do it because of the commitment to honor their family or religion.
The Islam has presented itself as a religion that oppresses women. One of the justifications for US intervention. In Afghanistan was to defend the rights of Muslim women, who were oppressed by the Islamic faith. This intention to “save” Muslim women had nothing to do with human rights or defend women to be better treated. As Lila Abu- Lughod mentions in the last part of their essay we a society should focus in treat Afghan women as a human being and not look in their ways of dressing or follow traditions “ Our task is to critically explore what we might do to help create the world in which those poor Afghan women, can have safety and decent lives”(pg 790).

In the article “ Role in the buildup and Implementation of Security Council Resolution 1325 by Felicity Hill, Aboitiz ad Sara Poehlman, they explain to us how the creation of Resolution 1325. On October 23, 2000, the Security Council of The United Nations discussed and adopted a resolution called 1325. The principal goal was to recognize the role of women in conflict prevention, peacebuilding, and rebuilding war-torn societies. This resolution also indicates the importance of women have in the society and their participation having equality and being fully involved in all initiatives aimed at the maintenance and promotion of peace and security.
According to the article before this resolution, women’s were not considered agents of peace but this changed with the resolution 1325.

There has been a lot of efforts to ensure this resolution is implementing, for example, the NGOS Working group of women, peace, and Security to ensure this resolution mention how in one of the meetings in the Arria Formula meeting some countries gave their testimonies about crimes during a war. One of the testimonies was about The ”Tokyo Tribunal on Japanese military sexual slavery” Where the Japanese military used women as sex slaves. They called “comfort women” and this was during World War II. This shows us how women are not just sexual abuse but were not considered part of peacebuilding at that moment on the contrary women were considered “war weapons”. All these testimonies of Japanese women and women from other countries show how innocent people as women and also children were affected by war and how important is to have protection for them. “The public hearing encouraged the ongoing work of women for genuine justice, peace, and an end to impunity”. Pg.1263)

I am not clear if this resolution is being fulfilled in its entirety in all countries because this is the first time I heard of this resolution but according to the article, the author mentions” the demand for women to be included in decision-making and in peace and security negotiations has had some effect. Women have been included in the talks on the reconstruction of Afghanistan and in the Inter-Congolese Dialogue”. The most important thing is this resolution was build to protect women in during and after a war. It clear that during a war the most affected are women and children and the purpose this resolution is to ensure women have a role in taking decisions about prevention and peacebuilding.

In the article “Globalisation and US prison growth: From military and Keynesianism to post-Keynesian militarism by Ruth Wilson Gilmore, she explains to us how the expansion of prison populations has increased because of the “law and order” where this involves the handling and control of cases such as robbery, any kind of violence or disturbance of peace.

This type of bad behavior was treated as a punishment with the fulfillment of people in prisons.But not all the time the penalty was fair since, as Gilmore explains, there existed many racial, economic and political factors.The most common population in a California’s prison was African Americans and latinos and some women of all race.

What was causing this expanding in prison? I will call crisis to the circumstances to let more people go to prison. One of the reasons is the “drug epidemic and the threat to public safety posed by the unrestrained use and trade of illegal substances”(172). Because of the unemployment illegal sale of drugs became one of the ways people used to survive. Unemployment was notable and many people opted for easy money and this came from the illegal drug trade.

The lack of employment was another reason for prison expansion in California. When people were not having employs opportunities they were forced to commit property crimes and drugs traffic. The number of prisoner increase “the percentage of people in prison for property offenses more than doubled since 1982” (Pg. 173)

Gilmore also tells us that the function of prisons was to “fix” social problems. For example, she mentions that there was a civil disorder where people of color were out of control and there was some group of people who wanted to organize big movements. All this crisis, a prison was supposed to resolve to have more prisoners and to fix these social problems. Prisoners had to fight for their rights because most of the time they had a long sentence that not always were correct. They were trying to fight in federal courts to get new reforms to help themselves. The author also mentions that people of color and Latinos compromised a big part of the prison population.

In conclusion, we can say that the “surplus labor” incremented the prison population in the U.S was the excedent of unemploy people because there were more people that employments at that time. The mid-1970s recession produced that big corporation eliminated jobs and workers were suffering from unemployment. There were a lot of people who could not get jobs and also there were more people coming as an immigrant looking for jobs.

In The Caliban and the Witch by Silvia Federici, she begins saying how in Europe land privatization was the beginning of the Capitalism. In the 16th century, for example, European merchant got land from the Canary Islands to convert this land in a sugar plantation giving to Europe an easy way to increase their wealth.

After reading this chapter it is clear that the degradation of women that Federici refers is the treatment women had during this period of transition to a Capitalism. The state felt it was the owners of the women body. Since the beginning, there was a sexual division of labor making women more dependent on men. For example, the state and the people who hired women to do any kind of labor established the wage based on men’s labor. As a result, women’s wage was lower and they still had to dependent on men all the time(Pg. 75). From this unpaid labor or not equal wage the State was able to get more wealth.

As the book mentions the reduction of wage affected not just men who had to work more and get less money but also affected women’s wage in a tremendous way. “In the 14th century, they had received the half pay of a man for the same task; but by the mid-16th century, they were receiving only one-third of the reduced male wage” (pg. 77). This reduction in wages caused several women to choose prostitution as a way to earn money and support their families.  Of course, this was another way to minimize women since prostitution was not considered as a job.

Something that surprised me to read was how women were judged and punished if something happened to their children. During the  16th and 17th century there were forms of surveillance for women during pregnancy and maternity. If for some reason the baby was born dead or died during childbirth the only guilty person was the mother. This was considered  infanticide and  the mother had to receive a punishment as be executed.(Pg.88)

In this chapter by Silvia Federici, we found how women’s bodies were controlled by the State. Women were considered machines that only served to work and as the author mentions “produce children for the state” (Pg.92). Women could not have any important employment and there were forced to get jobs as domestic servants, farmhands, spinners, knitters and even all these occupations were considered not important and not “productive”.

Finally, because there were no jobs prostitution became a form women used to survive and this was also judged with punishments, for example in Madri if a woman was in the prostitution she could receive a hundred lashes (pg.94).

In the paper “Are women human? It’s not an academic question” by V. Spike Peterson and Laura Parisi, they argue that most of the time women critiques “human rights” as rights just for men, as a result women believe they do not have the same rights as men and they do not deserve the same role in society. In this chapter, Peterson and Parisi argue that first, it is very important to define what is the difference between androcentrism and heterosexism. Androcentrism is defined as “centered on, emphasizing, or dominated by males or masculine interests”. according to this definition, just men are considered humans with rights. On the other hand, the heterosexism defined as “relationship to sex difference (male and female bodies) and oppositional gender identities (masculine and feminine subjectivities) (Pg. 133) means the role of men or a woman influence at the moment of being part of the “human rights”

In order to analyze why women were marginalized because of their gender (female) the authors of this chapter considered women’s right according to the “three generations of human rights” (Pg 142). The first generation rights correspond to civil and political liberties were men were considered “humans” and women “others”. There was a gender inequality where women should be at home (private sphere) and were not able to work (public Sphere). Women were denied to have property and most of the time they were treated as property to men.

The second generation rights correspond to economic, social and cultural: where women’ job at home was not considered important and valuable. On the contrary, this is established as something with less value from a men’s work. In this case, also exists inequality of gender because if a woman has a job she gets less money that men. In the social aspect, women have a specific role as a housewife and mother. (Pg. 148)

Finally, the third generation corresponds to the rights of Collective/Groups rights. In this case, women do not have economic and political independence and they do not have their own identity. Women are not able to make decisions for themselves
As I was reading this chapter most of the points about how women are treated stood me out. It is really sad to see how big is the difference because of the genders (female/male). I believe the heterosexism has a big impact on gender difference and how human rights and are not the same for women and men.
I think even now women are treated as “things” rather than humans. Most of the time women are subject of oppressing in different situations as: domestic violence, rape, sexual harassment and everything looks normal just because we are women.

In chapter one of Samuel Moyn work, The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History, he mentions how in the last decades is has been trying to understand the origin of the human rights and the difference between the rights of man” and “human rights.”

Over the years there have been attempts to explain the true origin of human rights. Samuel Moyn mentions how important it is to establish a connection between rights and the states. We must remember that when we talk about “rights” we emphasize this a right to act, participate or demand something that we consider is part of us as human beings.

Before “human right” Samuel Moyn mentions in his text ”The last Utopia” how “natural rights” were considered the rights of nature derived most often from God. One of the philosophers considered that people have the natural right to life, liberty, and property.

According to Moyn, human rights over the years have been considered as “The Heritage of Humanity “assuming that all human beings are part of the same group. But as we have been reviewing in the last readings this has not happened and human rights have been considered only for certain people.

In the 1960s, human rights focused mainly on civil and political rights. This is why inequality exists because not everyone has the same rights but the same obligations as citizens of a nation.

According to Moyn, the “rights of man” were about a whole people incorporating itself in a state, not a few foreign people criticizing another state for its wrongdoings (pg 26). He also mention that human right came

In the nineteenth century “the right of man” was trying to secure the rights of a citizen but were not considered some people as women or slaves. For example, the Italian Giuseppe Mazzini maintained that “the right of man” was created to protect just some individuals excluding others. He also mentioned that an individual should be free and have equality.

After reading this chapter of Samuel Moyn I understand that the “rights of man” were focus in protecting an individual’s property more than give them rights on specific terms. On the contrary “human rights” are focus in giving rights to all people letting them to participate in different roles inside a nation. These “human rights” are supposed to protect all men and also women and be able to fight for their rights and have a voice as anyone else. (Pg. 19)

According to Wendy Brown in her book “‘The Most We Can Hope For…”: Human Rights and the Politics of Fatalism,” Michael Ignatieff states that Human rights are a protection or privilege that every human should have in order to protect themselves from, cruelty, torture, abuse or violence. But for Brown Human right is not just protect people from the injustice is let them act and have these rights. When we talk about human rights it is not just about people’s rights but also about the political power over these rights.

Wendy Brown mentions how Michael Ignatieff has three claims about human rights. In his first claim, Ignatieff argues that every individual who has rights is able to decide about his life and what is good or bad for him. Contrary to Ignatieff, Brown believes that even though people have rights it will be always somebody deciding what is best for them. One of the examples she mentions is the 2003 Invasion of Iraq by the United States and Britain. In that moment this invasion was supposed to help people in Iraq giving them a message of human rights. But the reality was different and this invasion ended in a war and a lot of dead people. In this example, there were more political and economic interests than human rights (Pg,456).

In Ignatieff’s second claim, he says that the human rights of an individual should be limited to the ability of the individual to act, leaving aside vital needs such as food, shelter, and medicine. At this point I agree with Wendy Brown that human rights activism is more than “a pure defense of the innocent and powerless”, is a way to violate their rights to have free access to vital needs as food, housing, and healthcare.This is what we would call Capitalism over human rights.

In his third claim, Ignatieff’s argues that human rights “empower individuals (Pg. 458), to protect themselves and against suffering.  Even though human rights means that an individual has the decision in some aspects of their lives, as Wendy Brown mentions there will always be a government or political power who decides what is good or bad for that individual.

Finally, Wendy concludes her essay saying that “the most we can hope for” is maybe the reduction of the suffering that human rights are supposed to give all people in the world. (pg, 462).

According to Carole Pateman in her book “The Sexual Contract” men dominated women and had the right to treat them as someone of less value. During a marriage, rape was considered part of a right that the husband had it (Pg.7). In the original contract, it was established that men had rights over women, they could dominate them because they were their subordinates. I believe this has been happening all the time, even today in some countries women are considered not equal.

Women were not part of the original contract (pg, 6) but were part in the contract of marriage. I assume women have been incorporated in a different way than men in a “civil society”, this was at the moment of the contract of their marriage and also at the moment of having a child.  In the natural condition, all men were considered “born free” and they were equal as any other men, contrary to this women were not considered “born free”  this means they did not have freedom and equality (pg, 6).

Pateman also explains that women didn’t have this freedom because they were considered subordinate, this means women should obey their husband all the time. According to Pateman, she mentions that in the social contract freedom becomes obedience and in exchange, protection was provided (Pg, 7), I believe women were feeling that protection when they accepted a contract of marriage.

The origins of the patriarch have been since the Seventeenth century where women knew that wives were subordinates by husbands. Women were also being exploited because they belonged to a contract. In this case, in the marriage contract, one of the parties had the right to make decisions and use the other party in the way that he wanted. In this case, the women were used sexually and also had to fulfill the tasks of the house (pg 8).

At present time  I believe that marriage contract has not changed much because even now women are dominated by husbands especially women who grew up seeing a man as the only one in making decisions in a marriage.  I think this subordination also comes from our culture, for those who come from countries in South America is very common that men dominate their wives. Even today the role of women in some marriages is to serve the husband and procreate a family, without having a voice in the relationship and only trying to accept their husband’s requirements.

Hello, my name is Delia Rosero. This is my third semester in CWE and my major is Liberal arts with a concentration in Disability studies. I have a part-time job working with a lovely lady who is in a wheelchair. I have a beautiful son, he is 6 years old and he has autism. I really like to spend time with him, playing or working in areas he needs a lot.  He is doing better and better even though doctors told me a few years ago that he would never talk, now he has some words to communicate. When I understood that his condition was something that could happen anyone and this did not him make different I started to love the way he is. At the beginning, I was comparing him to the rest of the kids but now I know he is unique and he is my son.

I decided to take this class because my adviser recommended me but I also was reading the description of the class before I took the decision and I really call my attention. I believe that having knowledge about rights as human beings it is very important. I was born in Ecuador and in my country even these days women are considered less that men and not have the same rights. This is something that I hope one day will change.

According to the Introduction by Lynn Hunt (2007), the Declaration Of Independence said that “ “all men are created equal”. Thomas Jefferson wrote: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.“(Pg,15) . Even though there were some changes the final Declaration of Independence was supposed to include all people without distinction.

While I was reading this Introduction I can not believe how  “Bill of Rights “ did not recognize of people because some of them were still not considered to be part of the Human rights. Lynn describes how children, people with no property, slaves, some black people, women and some religions were not considered capable of participating in a political process. I can not understand how they were talking about “equality of rights” when they were leaving aside several people who were part of society and have the same rights as the rest of people.

There was also “The Paradox of Self-Evidence”  where Jefferson wrote, “ We hold these truths to be self-evident.” This part of the book mentions how all human rights were not self -evident when not all people were part of those rights. As the author of the book mentions “how can human rights be universal if they are not universally recognized?” (pg.20, 21).  I believe this is happening every day with women, people with disability, black people and people who have a different sexual orientation. Every day we see news about how immigrants have to work more hours and get less money or just how people don’t have the same rights as other.There are million of people who are exposed to human rights abuses every day.