Chanana, K. (2002). Women and Human Rights. Asian Journal of Women’s Studies, 8(2), 104 – 114. https://doi.org/10.1080/12259276.2002.11665928
Abstract
When I state that womens rights are human rights am I stating the obvious? Not really. Because the scale at which womens human rights are being impinged upon both at the familial and the societal level one begins to wonder whether women are human beings at all. As mentioned earlier the role of NGOs who have been working with women has helped in highlighting discrimination against women and the denial of human rights to them. They have brought the problem of gender inequality center-stage. For example in countries where son preference is associated with economic survival and social status intentional neglect of daughters and female malnutrition along with female infanticide are commonplace. In fact according to one estimate a hundred million women were not in this world in the late 1980s as a result of male preference and female infanticide. Thus the condition of women is a worldwide phenomenon and affects all aspects of their lives. Yet South Asia ranks very low on the human and gender development scale of UNDP and India contributes the largest number of the poor and illiterate women to South Asia.