The Women's Rights Committee

Among the principal committees of the United Nations is the Women's Rights Committee. Since its formation it has devoted itself to the study of women's rights in all their variety and to drawing up recommendations concerning them. In this article the writer reviews the most notable of what the said committee has accomplished in the four years that have passed from its founding until now.

(1) The Gathering of Information:

Perhaps the most important of these works of all is the gathering of trustworthy information on the status of woman and her rights, in the various fields and in the different countries. In several resolutions it adopted, the committee requested the Secretary-General of the United Nations to address to the member states ample lists of the questions on which the committee wished to obtain information; and the result was that there accumulated at the Secretariat a unique collection of precise legal information on the standing of woman in each one of the member states in the eyes of the laws, public and private alike, and in national traditions, in custom, and in public opinion.

The questions which the Secretary-General addressed to the member states — and copies of which he also sent to the international non-governmental organizations — concern woman's right to vote, to hold public office, and her rights of nationality, as well as woman's educational, professional, civil, and financial rights. All this concerns woman's rights in public law. As for private law, the questions dealt, first, with the married woman's right to own property, to inherit, and to hold guardianship over minor children; second, with her right to work and to earn a living; and third, with her family status, and her rights in matters of betrothal, marriage, divorce, and the other provisions of the laws of personal status.

Thus, thanks to the Women's Rights Committee, there has accumulated in the records and publications of the United Nations a rich collection of analytical studies describing precisely, from every aspect, the standing of woman in the laws of the nations.

It is worth mentioning that this information, which the committee undertakes to gather, is not confined to women's conditions in the independent countries, but extends beyond them to the countries not enjoying self-government, especially the countries under the international trusteeship system.

And if the first service rendered by the Women's Rights Committee concerned the gathering, classification, and distribution of information — in everything connected with woman's position — this work, momentous in itself, was but a preliminary step toward raising woman's position in actual fact, enlarging the rights she exercises, and achieving her real equality with man in all rights: political, educational, economic, social, family, and the rest.

(2) Political Rights:

From the beginning of its work, the committee resolved to concern itself, first of all, with raising woman's political standing, in the certainty that the advancement of her political station is the condition of every other progress woman may achieve in the field of the enjoyment of fuller rights.

It also resolved that the highest aim it must pursue, in the field of political rights, is to secure complete equality in rights and duties between woman and man — including the right of the citizen, whether man or woman, to elect and be elected and to hold public office.

Accordingly the committee — the Women's Rights Committee, and with it likewise the Human Rights Committee, the Economic and Social Council, and the General Assembly — each addressed explicit recommendations to the governments of the member states, urging them to widen the scope of the political rights which woman exercises under law.

And since the "recommendations" issued by the councils and committees of the United Nations carry no binding character, and enjoy — as recommendations — no legal effect unless the governments and their legislative assemblies choose to accept them and adopt them into their national laws: the committee has striven, and still strives, to draw up a legal instrument which, once concluded, will become an international treaty binding its signatories to abide by its texts and provisions. And at this its fifth session the Women's Rights Committee will study a draft international covenant concerning women's political rights.

(3) Cultural and Educational Rights:

I mentioned a moment ago that the committee has adopted, in its stands and its work, the principle that the advancement of woman's political rights is the condition of her enjoyment of the other rights.

But this does not mean that the committee has neglected woman's rights in the other fields — pending the completion of her enjoyment of political rights. Not at all. Rather, the Women's Rights Committee has given education, instruction, and culture the utmost care, just as it has also concerned itself with woman's financial, social, and personal rights; and it has aimed, from the outset, to bring all peoples to a stage of social progress in which the rising generation — boys and girls alike — enjoys equal opportunities in education: compulsory, free, complete education; and in specialization, and in the enjoyment of the fruits of learning.

Nor was the committee content to register this principle and leave it ink on paper: it announced its resolve to strive for its application and generalization, and accordingly entrusted the Secretary-General with drawing up a comprehensive program for this purpose, in cooperation with the UNESCO organization and the International Labour Organization.

(4) Economic Rights:

The committee realized that equality in political rights and educational rights does not suffice unless it is joined with equality in economic rights as well. It has therefore set before its eyes the principle of complete equality between man and woman in the enjoyment of the rights of work, wages, rest, and whatever pertains to them. The question of economic systems, and the degree to which they allow men and women equality in work and wages, is still under study by the committee, in cooperation with the International Labour Organization and the World Federation of Trade Unions, and under the supervision of the Economic and Social Council.

(5) Nationality:

The Women's Rights Committee has also felt, from the outset, that the subject of nationality is one of those in which discrimination between man and woman abounds — I mean by this the nationality of a woman married to a foreign man. The committee has striven, and still strives, for the adoption of the principle of equality in the right of each of the two spouses to keep his or her original nationality after marriage, and to leave the nationality of their children for the children themselves to decide after they reach the age of majority.

(6) Family and Personal Rights:

Finally, the Women's Rights Committee has turned its attention to woman's family position, and to the rights which the laws of the various countries grant her in home and family. In this respect it has set before its eyes the condemnation of the principle of the plurality of wives, and has worked to bring the member states also to condemn it, and to generalize the principle of one wife for one man. The committee has also called for equality in the right of each of the two spouses to dissolve the bonds of marriage, and for the equality of the two sexes in the choice of the other party in marriage — which cannot be safeguarded unless all the restrictions are lifted which now stand in the way of free intermarriage among people, regardless of nationality or race or color or religion, and unless all the legislation is repealed which prevents people from moving from one country to another after marriage. The Economic and Social Council has adopted this principle, and has condemned — in a formal resolution — those laws and regulations which obstruct this desired absolute freedom in marriage.

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This is a brief glimpse of the principles for which the Women's Rights Committee has striven, in its four past sessions, to establish the full measure of equality between woman and man — in fulfillment of the chief principle upon which the United Nations has proceeded, and which it inscribed in the heart of its Charter and at the opening of its Universal Declaration of Human Rights: namely, the equality of woman and man in all fundamental rights and human freedoms.

And these are the subjects whose examination and consideration the Women's Rights Committee resumed when it held its fifth regular session recently, and studied a number of reports, studies, and proposals relating to woman's political, economic, social, and family rights.

It goes without saying that the committee, the Women's Rights Committee, abides, in all it does, by the clear lines which the Economic and Social Council has drawn for it, and in which it fixed its powers, as it works to apply the principle that woman and man must be equal in rights — all rights.