Human Rights for Women and World Public Order: The Outlawing of Sex-Based Discrimination

Abstract

As the United Nations commemorates 1975 as "International Women's Year," in a concerted effort to "promote equality between men and women" and to "ensure the full integration of women in the total development effort," the concern of the larger global community for outlawing sex-based discrimination is being articulated with increasing vigor. This concern both builds upon and expresses a more general norm of nondiscrimination which seeks to ban all generic differentiations among people in access to value shaping and sharing for reasons irrelevant to individual capabilities and contribution. The particular norm against sex-based discrimination finds expression in many authoritative communications, at both international and national levels, and is rapidly being defined in a way to condemn all the great historic deprivations imposed upon women as a group.