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:
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