Season 5, Episode 3: Navigating International Human Rights and Gender Equality with Dr. Meghan Campbell

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Ellie: Thank you so much for coming on Law Talks and to start the interview. Please could you tell us about your career to date and how you became a reader in international human rights?

Meghan: Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. It's really lovely to be here this afternoon. So I am from Winnipeg, Manitoba in Canon and I did my first law degree there.

And while I was studying there, there was a case called Goslin from the Canadian Supreme Court and it was about social welfare benefits and cutting them back to below the poverty rate to encourage young people to find gainful employment in a time when there were, there were no jobs to find and I just thought it was, I guess it just seemed so wrong to me that in a country as rich as Canada.

It would be held in the court, said it was legal to do this, that it was held to be not a breach of equality rights to impose below poverty conditions on, on, on fellow Canadians. It just, just seemed, I can't describe the feeling, it just felt so viscerally wrong when reading the [00:01:00] judgment that I got became really interested in equality rights and then I graduated, uh, from law school and there wasn't a natural pipeline between wanting to do equality rights and a job.

So I worked for the government for a few years and worked as a crown prosecutor, which was really interesting work. But I really miss being able to think deeply about equality law and particularly women's human rights. So I decided to do a master's degree and thought it'd be a kind of fun adventure to go overseas.

So I did my LLM at the University of Edinburgh, which I really loved the experience and kind of got the book and wanted to continue thinking and exploring women's equality. And then I was really fortunate to get into the PhD program at the University of Oxford. I really started doing my thinking of researching a sort of academic career into women's equality, particularly economic equality.

And then from there I was fortunate enough to get a postdoc at the University of Oxford, and then very lucky to get a permanent job at the University of Bur, where I'm now a reader in international human rights law and have been very [00:02:00] fortunate to be able to continue doing research and work on women's human rights in both international and domestic spaces.

Ellie: Thank you. That's really interesting seeing how, I mean, you've also studied law in now numerous different countries, so Yeah. Very, very interesting. And how did you, if you don't mind me asking, how did you choose Edinburgh for the move?

Meghan: That is a very good question.

I had visited Edinburgh on a music trip when I was 15 and really love the city.

It's, I think it's one, still one of the prettiest cities in the uk. It's really kept that kind of medieval character. I'm from a very flat part of Canada, and so Edinburgh is definitely not flat, so I found it so beautiful. So I had some experience with the study, a friend who's also thinking about doing her master's in Edinburgh at the same time.

So it seemed, all of them are very personal reasons. There wasn't any kind of overarching principle, kind of high-minded, ideal. It was more that it seemed like a fun place to go do further study for a year, and that did hold true. Edinburgh is a wonderful city.

Ellie: Yeah, no, definitely. I've [00:03:00] visited and, and it was lovely and.

I think that's often the best phase to sort of pick where you're gonna study at university if you really like the, the area focusing now on your monograph, women poverty equality. So this focuses on gender-based poverty, so please could you kind of expand on what the main causes and contributors to gender-based poverty are?

Meghan: So the main causes and contributors of gender-based poverty are really gender power hierarchies. And by that I mean that women are seen as having lesser moral worth and value than men. And that belief in the inferiority of women and the superiority of men has infiltrated every aspect of political, economic, and social cultural ordering, and that impacts on women's economic status.

So historically, you can see this very easily, you know, women were not able to own land or property. Or they weren't able to have a credit card in their own name. And for, in some countries that's history is a loose sense of the work because that can be living history. Uh, [00:04:00] your grandmother or depending your mother, depending on your own age or yourself, may not have been able to have a credit card in your own name.

'cause they were deeply held beliefs that women didn't have the financial acumen to manage economic resources. But of course, not being able to own economic resources hacked their ability to be financially independent. Their law. These legal restrictions force women into relationships with economic dependence on men, and that still exists around the world today.

But thinking more contemporaneously, there's also restrictions on promoting women in certain industries. So in the Army, there might be restrictions on women being in certain roles because of stereotypes that women should be working in different professions or should be at home taking care of children.

Or perceptions that women are not physically strong or courageous, but of course those restrictions are gonna impact their ability to achieve economic success in their fields. Domestic workers who are almost always women and uh, in some jurisdictions are women of color or [00:05:00] predominantly women of color.

The work they perform is never seen as socially or economically valuable, so they're underpaid and undervalued because they're just doing housework or taking care of children. I put those in quotation mark. 'cause it's perception that those are not difficult jobs. Or if women shift of flexible work to manage their childcare responsibilities, which due to social, cultural norms around the world still remain women's responsibilities, they will then face debt, negative economic consequences, pensions, when they retire.

So those examples, all kind of illustrative of the fact that we've designed economic systems. We've designed systems with economic reward. Around typical male working patterns and around masculine beliefs and what is materially valuable work or socially valuable work. And that's really what the walk or the monograph is trying to do, is thinking about like, whoa, we've designed this world in a way that keeps women in positions of economic inferiority.

And how can we [00:06:00] go about undoing that? Because if women are gonna be equal, they have to be economically equal.

Ellie: Of course. Thank you. That was, that was really clear. And to see kind of how multifaceted across all these different type of work areas, and I actually hadn't considered, I guess, like the stereotyping in jobs like the army as you, as you described.

And I guess, yeah, my main follow up question would be the majority of our listeners are kind of aspiring lawyers, so hopefully they'd all be interested in how best the law can be utilized to improve gender based poverty.

Meghan: So that's a, that is a good question. And there are some skeptics who would argue that law could, we should not be focusing on law because law has actually been more of a tool to keep women in poverty as opposed to a tool to get them out of poverty or transform.

But I think that might be a slightly negative view. Yes, there's no doubt law has been a very powerful tool to impose gender poverty on women. We can start to turn law inside out and to [00:07:00] think, well, how can it be used in harness to different normative ends? Can it be used to actually achieve women's economic equality?

And so for as I, me, the example that I mentioned above, there's so pervasive, it's crossing across so many different types of law. We can see, you know, family law where in many jurisdictions there's still a struggle to recognize when you're getting divorced, say. That women's non-economic contribution is still valuable.

So the work you've done in the home, is that gonna account when you do that sort of accounting or when you're splitting up The assets not always gonna happen. So there are many parts of the law that need really strong lawyers who are committed to women's equality in family law, in workplace labor law, in constitutional law, wherever there's a type of law, there's almost invariably a gender dimension to it.

And we need so many different types of lawyers. Who have the specialization in those fields to start to think about and advocate for removing those restrictions and [00:08:00] turning the law towards women's equality. And more fundamentally, what it really requires is recognizing that law needs to break away from this idealized version of what it means to be human.

For most of history, law has been written to reflect the needs of the power. I mean, laws was always written to reflect the needs of the powerful and the power of only been one type of person. A kind of white man unencumbered by any sort of caring responsibilities. And what we need to be doing is writing laws and thinking about laws that reflect a broader and more encompassing understanding of human experience That requires taking women's voices seriously.

There were experiences seriously, and their understandings of the world seriously, and using law to echo, amplify and support and transform those gender hierarchies into gender equality.

Ellie: Yeah, that's so, so interesting 'cause I can very much, I think I've also similarly had before people kind of who are. [00:09:00] Suspicious of the law or because you know, they see the law as having created the problem. They don't see it as the solution or part of the solution. But yeah, actively lawyers actually fighting to, to change all these different areas, and particularly in kind of family law.

And I think something that as a student I've covered is like when it comes to land, the idea that just because it's not in your name, if you've lived there and it's a family home, that it's important to take that into account.

Meghan: Yeah. Just follow up on your comment there. We can see that. Powerful groups who are opposed to women's equality.

And there's been some documentation of the, the gender backlash. They are using law to cement a sort of patriarchal vision of the world. So if we seed that space and say we're not gonna use law 'cause laws have a bad track record, so to speak, we are seeding that space to groups who will actively continue to use law to try to reinforce traditional gender roles.

So I think it's really imperative on. Lawyers on academics, on anyone who works in the law to think [00:10:00] more progressively about how law can be used to achieve equality. 'cause if we don't, it will be weaponized against us to cement our inequality.

Ellie: Yeah, definitely. Thank you. And yeah, because the law is always changing and we want it to be moving in the right direction, not the, not the wrong one.

Exactly. Thank you. And to focus now slightly, I mean very similar sphere, but slightly different. Your documentary where which you are executive producer, the right to a better world that focuses on using human rights based tactics to achieve sexual and reproductive health for all. So could you, similarly talking, focusing on the law here, but please could you expand on how human rights law is central to, to those aims?

Meghan: Yeah. Taking a human rights-based approach to sexual reproductive health is crucial for two reasons. One is that it recognizes that the provision of sexual reproductive health is not just in the largest of the state or charitable act. It is [00:11:00] fundamental to your human rights as a person. It's fundamental to your right to autonomy, your right to equality, your right to life, your right to health, right to education.

It stretches across all these different rights. 'cause if you don't have good quality sexual reproductive health, your ability to be equal, your ability to participate as a member of the community can be really stifled. And it means also that the design, the delivery, and implementation of sexual reproductive health must be darted towards achieving human rights normative aims.

So to give an example, in some of the climate change rhetoric, there are misbeliefs or definitely beliefs that there are too many people in the world, and that's why we're facing a climate crisis. And the solution is to control the amount of people that inherently involves controlling women's fertility and women's reproduction.

There are policy debates and there are some policy mandates saying our target should be getting certain numbers of women taking contraception to reduce the number of children they're having. To reduce o [00:12:00] population with that from a human rights angle is deeply problematic because it's not the women's choices about when and how they wanna reproduce, but it's some, uh, exterior motive, exterior aims trying to dictate to them what they

should do.

Their bodies and when we peel back a layer, weak, their reproduction should be controlled, is often poor women of color in the global south who are perceived as having too many children, being too fertile. And so they're the ones we need to be targeting for contraception interventions. But this dramatic, while this policy aim, you know, it's achieving reproductive health rates.

In one end, we want women to have access to contraception. For many women as global south don't have good access to contraception. So on one hand it seems great, the contraception they need, but actually it's much more insidious because we are not wanting them to have contraception for their own ability to control their own reproduction and their own fertility.

But we're wanting it to control them [00:13:00] to achieve some other ends about population control. So human rights would say that's a real problem because it's not treating them as equal human beings of equal moral work. Is instrumentalizing their fertility and their reproduction for other motives. The second key aspect to human rights approach to sexual reproductive health is, is accountability.

So if the state fails to meet section reproductive health, we can't simply shrug it off and say, well, that's really sad, or That's too bad. Instead, state must be held accountable. So if the state has. Failed to guarantee maternal healthcare if the state has failed to ensure access to safe abortion. This means that there's been a failure of human rights and there has to be accountability, and that requires mechanisms where there can be clear diagnostics of what went wrong, and that also then that there are remedies for individuals who have the rights have been violated and there are more structural solutions to ensure that other women and and other people that this doesn't happen again.

So [00:14:00] that sexual reproductive health. In the human rights frame helps us understand what we hope to achieve with reproductive health and helps ensure that there is accountability for when things might go wrong.

Ellie: Thank you. And as a kind of slightly different question, somebody I'm interested in on the idea of like accountability is I can, I mean, I can imagine different states almost defining what they would say is reproductive.

Health quite, quite differently. So do you think that, like how, how would you define kind of a state having achieved reproductive health? If that's not too broad of a question?

Meghan: No, it's a very good question. 'cause you can definitely see it. They'll define things differently and there, there will be many overlapping definitions.

But we think about health as a state of a state wellbeing. So there's, there'd be that angle of that, the health aspect, you know, that women are not dying from maternal health, that they're not, that they're able to access enough prenatal care that they can deliver safely, but also the sort of [00:15:00] sexual reproductive aspects of it and wall are that women are having, I'm taking a very gendered lens, obviously, but this can apply to other groups who are, there's sexual reproductive health is also controlled, but that women are able to have agency and autonomy over the relationships they want to have.

Over the decisions they have about if they want to reproduce or if they don't want to reproduce, that they can access these healthcare services without that are of good quality, that are accessible physically and that are not gonna bankrupt you. If you want to be able to have a child or if you don't want have a child, or if you want to be able to access sexual education, or if you don't want to be taking a certain type of contraception, you should be able to be able to access the whole plethora of medical social.

Goods. You need to be able to make decisions about the relationships you wanna have, the sex you wanna have, and the reproduction you wanna have. Without stigma. Judgment or un un. I say undue burdens, that's not the right term. It'd be much more around the idea of [00:16:00] you not having to bankrupt yourself to be able to access these, these medical health and social goods services.

Ellie: Yeah, of course. I mean, I was just thinking as an example, that's coming up a lot news, like with the US election coming up, the price of healthcare and. Yeah, the idea of having no national healthcare seems a incredibly prevalent and relevant issue. And so focusing then on as an aspect that you focus on in your research, how do these challenges that we've just been discussing of achieving this sexual and reproductive health differ kinda significantly between urban and rural locations?

Meghan: Yeah, so there's a lot of, A lot of the writing and thinking and reflecting on sexual reproductive health is done by people who like academics and lawyers who live in urban spaces. So they can write and reflect sometimes an urban bias without even realizing they're doing it. And the big difference between Earl and urban urban locations is rural areas are marked by distance and lower population, and both of these things are gonna affect the ability of [00:17:00] women and girls to realize and enjoy sexual reproductive rights.

I can give three examples to help illustrate why rurality matters. So with respect to contraception. If you live in a small community and there might be only one or two places to access contraception. Women and girls report feeling very uncomfortable when they try to access contraception as they perceive themselves to be watched and judged by the community for when they're access and contraception, because they're gonna be seen to be having sex.

And depending on the community norms, it might not be seen as appropriate for them to be appropriate in quotation mark for them to be having sex. So the delivery of contraception needs to encounter the fact that in small communities, or be the words in communities of lower populations, it can be stigmatic to be seen as sexually active.

And it can be, that can put a, a real block on your ability to access contraception with abortion, it can also be more difficult in rural areas. As [00:18:00] abortion healthcare is concentrated in urban centers, as you mentioned in the US there's been lots of research and data about some of the US laws, free jobs that ended up concentrating, you know, creating like abortion deserts where it'd be hundreds if not thousands of miles between abortion centers.

And if you were nowhere near you then have to figure out how are you gonna get from your rural location to an urban center to have an abortion? For some women and girls in rural areas, they do not have the economic resources to travel that distance. It's not, it's rarely cheap to travel long distances anymore, but also because of the distance, they might have to be away from home for a longer period of time.

'cause we have to travel, say two or three days, have an abortion stay for a couple days to ensure any post-care needs, and they might not have what's perceived as a valid excuse to be away from home for those number of days. So they're gonna struggle to access an abortion migrant and [00:19:00] migrant women and girls who live in rural areas.

They might be afraid to travel because it raises the risk of being caught by immigration officials. Thus, for lots of rural women and girls, there might technically be a right to abortion. There might technically be abortion providers in their location, but because of the distance and the difficulties of traversing distance, they have no option to remain pregnant.

Lastly, for girls and women who live in rural areas, this the healthcare system may have forgotten that they might need emergency maternal healthcare. So when a complication arises, there might not be adequate transport links between wherever they're giving birth to the emergency medical centers and might not get them, might get them there, but might look at them there fast enough and that they might die because there is not those transport links between a rural center and an urban medical store.

There's a very famous case from the CDO committee that looked exactly that issue and pointed out that struggle problem that rural areas or remote areas or [00:20:00] semi-urban areas might not have easy access to those technically advanced medical interventions around maternal healthcare. And without those transport links, women will die.

So rurality really does matter for women's section reproductive health rights, and it deserves attention in law policy making. We can't assume that what works in an urban center would work in a rural, and all we gotta do is extend it out there. There are differences about how people live their lives because of its distances and the lower population density that need to be taken into account for when designing laws and policies.

Ellie: Thank you. That's, I think the, the different examples that really help to illustrate all the different areas from, as you said, maternal health to just the privacy that people need and require during kind of asking for contraception. And, and there's different aspects and yeah, it's really interesting to this perspective that it could potentially be a state that is aiming to achieve these levels but is just kind of blindly focusing on, on urban developments.[00:21:00] 

Meghan: Yeah. 'cause most law policy makers are, if they're not, they may be from a rural area at one point in their lives, at likely to be a successful pol politician, to be a successful policy maker. You often left home, gone to an urban center, done your education there, work in an urban center and. It can just be a simple, your brain didn't think about it because it is different or for many, they're, they've never been in rural spaces, so they don't think through the kind of implications of what it means to live in an urban space, and that, that is a, a challenge.

And it also speaks to the importance of sort of participatory democracy where people, different people, different voices are actively heard and meaningfully engaged and meaningfully. When they say this policy, this law doesn't work in our circumstances because we are human and we all have our faults and our blind spots for imagining things that are different than us.

But that's why we have a democratic system that is supposed to listen to difference, that is supposed to have forums to talk about [00:22:00] difference so that we can create laws and policies that are inclusive. And it's really important that those are strengthened as opposed to what we kinda live in right now, where they're becoming more fragile.

Ellie: Thank you. And just out kind of curiosity on the, the idea of policy, I can definitely see how policies would be directed to urban. Do you think that the kind of solution to that is to make them almost more general so then that they can act, I was gonna say grassroots level, that's the right word. But then again, at the different locational areas, they can then be altered to fix whether it's kind of rural or more urban.

Or just kind of, I suppose, like adding in different parts of the policy to reflect that there's going to be differences in those locations.

Meghan: Yeah, I think that's a really good question. I think on one hand there might be some value at, at particularly high level lawmaking and policy to keep it as open textured as possible to allow for those differences to kind of be addressed through the natural process of implementation.

In other cases, it might be that it's more beneficial to have. [00:23:00] A detailed level policy for an urban area and a different detailed level policy for a rural area. It'll really depend on lots of different factors. Some of it about the, the kind of structure and architecture of the state. Um, how do they make laws and policies in the area?

Is it much more local level? Is it a top level? And then thinking about how to harness the strengths of each level to make sure that. Differences are accounted for as opposed to ignored. And

Ellie: thank you. Thank you. Yeah, that's really kind of so many interesting aspects. Thinking about when thinking of this like locational issue, and again to sort of focus on a slightly different area and looking at the, the Oxford Human Rights Hub writes up podcast, you participated in discussion on sex education, I think in UK schools.

So I suppose there's kind of two main questions I would wanted to focus on from that. So. Do you think that UK schools are providing sufficient sex education and also then importantly, that link between how is sex education related [00:24:00] to human rights?

Meghan: Yeah, I think the UK schools are trying, there's been lots of innovation to try to have a, what I've called the human rights based approach to sex education.

It's imperfect. I don't know if there's, there are very few places in the world that probably have it perfectly, in part because it, it's a difficult. It's sex is difficult to talk about with children. Mm-hmm. And young people. It's, we can think back, everyone can think back to their own experience about how they learned about sex, sexuality, and relationships.

And it's usually if comical, if not horrific story of adult ineptitude to say it, to say it politely.

Mm-hmm.

Meghan: And they're trying in part because it's, but it's important to get right. And it's important to keep pushing, to have human race, sex education because it really does matter for children's rights.

It's a tool for fulfilling that a whole range of rights, and I'll just focus on two. So children and adolescents have a right to be free for violence, but at that time in their lives, they are at heightened risks of violence thinking, particularly in the [00:25:00] modern era. We live in digital violence. You know, it's very easy for children to access digital spaces, but they do not know how to keep themselves safe on digital spaces.

No one comes into the world knowing how to keep themselves safe on the. Sexual comprehensive sexuality education can be a tool to make sure that children are safe. It can, and particularly for groups that are at heightened risk like girls or children with diverse sexual orientation, gender identity. So education on healthy relationships, consent to sexual activity.

What does consent look like? What does it mean? What does it mean to be groomed? What does it mean to be. In an abusive relationship, in a coercive and controlling relationship. You know, these are things that are very times very subtle and very nuanced, and children need education to help them identify all forms of violence and that knowledge will keep them safe and help protect their rights.

And secondly, comprehensive sexual education is also crucial. [00:26:00] Thinking about the equality rights of children. So we can see comprehensive sexuality education being weaponized to really reinforce some dangerous messaging around sex, sexuality, and relationships. So this is happening around the world right now, the rise of absence only education, that you should only be having sex in a heteronormative marriage.

It's been legally or religiously blessed. We can see restrictions on the information and education around sexual orientation. We can also see restrictions on education, information around gender identity and gender expression, differences in gender and sexual characteristics. So when we can see stigmatizing of girls and women's sexuality, denigrating sexuality, that's different than heterosexuality and only reinforcing strict gender binaries.

So we. Comprehensive sexual education being used to further inequalities. So this is kind of your earlier question about how can we flip the switch [00:27:00] so we can be using sex education to break gender and sexual inequalities and transform gender relations that promotes respect for sexual orientation that celebrates women's sexual agency and autonomy and put a more bluntly, even women and girls, sexual, maybe more women and girls who are of an age to, to consent and lawfully give consent.

Mm-hmm. Their sexuality and their, their, their enjoyment of sex. And that we can value all different types of relationships and families. So comprehensive sexual education is not just about the biological aspects of reproduction, but it's learning how to have safe, healthy, and enjoyable relations and relationships, which ultimately protects children from their right to be free from violence and their right to equality.

Ellie: Thank you. I think just to comment on something that you said early on in your answer. That particularly stood out to me was the idea of the online people don't come. No person is born able to protect themselves on the internet. I think I was, I think [00:28:00] the book was called The Right to Sex and there's all different kind of chapters and there was an area that potentially the kind of generation that are just now adults.

One way that made them particularly vulnerable was because. They were more, they had better skills at using the internet than their parents, that there wasn't really any way that at home their parents would be able to warn 'em of dangers because they couldn't access these any digital channels themselves.

So it's almost like the difference in skills kind of exasperated the problem.

Meghan: Exactly. So I can think to my own experiences of using social media, what I use and what the next generations uses are completely different and I don't understand anymore. I can feel myself moving into the. The older person camp who's, who's not understanding technology as well as they should.

And then my, the, the ability of individual parents to help their children understand digital spaces can sometimes beyond their, their skillset, their, their ability, and it, and the internet is a [00:29:00] structural thing and it moves quickly, and that kind of education can be really, really crucial to fill knowledge gaps.

To ensure, ensure that children are safe because it is a real space and it is a real, where people live. People live more their lives digitally and and children have very easy access and they're very digitally literate, but they're not always literate or aware of how violence perpetrated over the internet.

And so comprehensive sexuality ation can be used to harness. Harness would be the wrong word. It can be used more to compliment parents teaching and learning about keeping yourself safe from violence, but giving them those tools in the digital spaces, which not every parent is gonna be able to do.

Ellie: Yeah, definitely.

And yeah, the idea that as, as you say, and I agree, it's always, people always kind of talk about how difficult it was when they first, oh, just how people find, have a [00:30:00] lot of embarrassment involved when they first learn about sex and these things, but. When considering that a lot of it is teaching people how to be safe and protecting children from violence, it's so important that the message is put across, and I suppose the uncomfortableness needs to be overcome in in that aspect.

Meghan: Yeah, and like much of the rhetoric sometimes is around the opposition to sex education is that, oh, you're teaching children to have sex, and you're encouraging them to have sex before they're ready for it, or before the parents believe they're ready for it.

Tells a very different story and the aim isn't to, and comprehensive sexual education based on human rights isn't to say you need to be doing this thing or that thing. It's giving children knowledge, critical understandings, competencies for them to reflect on what are the relationships that I want to, into, what does it mean for me to be safe?

What does it mean for me to be in a healthy and enjoyable relationship? So it's more about. [00:31:00] Knowledge and the imparting of knowledge and the imparting of competency to, for children to critically reflect on their own what they want out of their lives, as opposed to saying, you need to be doing X, y, and Z thing at a, b, and c time.

It's much more about giving children the, those skills for them to think about this is a kind of relations or relationships I would like to have.

Ellie: Definitely. Yeah, I think that that's, that's really, really clear and I can, um, watching some kind of. Different. I, I guess quite lot. A lot of the time it's like political of people who are opposed to sex.

That is definitely the view that people are saying, we shouldn't be telling people to children to be doing this and this where it's actually educational and it's not any kind of indication of what people should be doing at certain ages or anything like that.

Meghan: Yeah, and, and just to further pick up on that, there's often opposition around sexual orientation, gender identity, that children are too young to be learning these, that there are people who have.

Diversity of sexual orientation and diversity of gender identity, [00:32:00] expression, and sex education is always supposed to be age appropriate. It is tailored to children's developing communities. And it is also important that children recognize that just because someone is different than you doesn't mean that they should be treated worse or that it, it's permissible to treat them badly or permissible to stigmatize them or permissible to commit violence against them.

So while. Certain parents or religious organizations might say, we don't believe in diversity in sexual orientation, or diversity in gender identity. The aim of sexual comprehensive sexuality education is to foster respect for differences as opposed to saying, you need to be doing this thing. It's saying, because we live in a pluralistic society where people believe different things and have different experiences.

The aim isn't to say everyone needs to be the same or think the same, but we do need to make sure that we respect each other's differences and don't see difference as a source of stigma or disadvantage or at its worst forms. [00:33:00] Violence.

Ellie: Yeah. Thank you. And I can, I can see so clearly how human rights is such a large aspect of that.

It's essentially treat, you know, ensuring that everyone, no matter. And I think children of all ages notice differences between, that's part of like making friends and so important, the important of treating everyone as human and respecting them and who they are and their identities. Um, so yeah. Thank you very much.

And to focus, again, we've talked about lots of different and really interesting aspects during this interview. So one article when I was looking, um, at all your, your research and thing that really stood out to me, um, was some of your research on. It's a intersectionality story comes up. I'm like studying law at the moment, and it comes up in some of our, uh, readings and I think it's a really, really important thing to, to learn about.

So, to kind of focus on your article of CDA and women's intersecting identities, a pioneering approach to intersectionality, it kind of explores [00:34:00] intersections impact on gender discrimination and inequality. So, again, kind of a two part question, but please could you explain the general recommendations of the article on intersectionality and then the importance of intersectionality in gender discrimination?

Meghan: Yeah, so CDOs, this, the un mention on the elimination discrimination against Women. It's a landmark treaty, one of the first treaties. If not, it's not the first treaty, but it's, it's up there in a really important treaty that centers on women's rights. At the time it was drafted, which was in like the 1960s, 1970s, intersectionality had not been recognized in law.

Kimberly Crenshaw's, uh, groundbreaking article wasn't until I think 1989, I believe, and the text of caw, this universal treaty that's has been signed by 189 state that protects women's equality rights has been accused of being non intersectional. And that means that it's been accused of being only recognizing the [00:35:00] equality concerns of white middle class women.

So I think this is slightly historically inaccurate reading of Caw as when you look at the drafting history of Caw, it's much more complex and show that there were voices from all over the world, from the global south, global North, global east, global West, actively participating on the drafting of CA and putting concerns that were, that made sense from their perspective to be in the treaty, and particularly from the Philippines as there's.

If you look at the drafting history, there's these two or three key drafts that sort of start the ball rolling of the whole drafting process. And the first draft was from a woman from the Philippines, the UN delegate from the Philippines. And she was the one basically said, this is gonna be the template for what we start working on.

And it reflected the concerns of a whole range of people and was written from the global perspective, or at least from her perspective, about what should included. But it is true that when you look at the text, there's only really up. Partial recognition of [00:36:00] intersectionality in the text of caw, recognition of motherhood, a recognition of rural women, but nothing like you would see.

Today. We were gonna sit here and redraft Caw, but the text of Caw, the text of any sort of human rights instrument is not dead. It's not frozen in time. So the CAW committee that monitors implementation of the treaty takes a living or evolutionary approach to the text. It's constantly interpreting and reinterpreting the text in lay of changes and new understandings.

And so the general recommendations about 25 and 28 are where they really start to develop what intersectionality means within women's equality and within the CO framework. And this is very important. It's important because it makes clear that seed up protects all women and that states need to pay clear pay, really close attention.

To how sex and gender interact with a host of other identity characteristics and experiences including race, disability, [00:37:00] sexual orientation, migration status, rurality prisoner status, being a sex worker, being a victim of violence, living in a conflict zone, living in a host conflict zone. These all matter for how women experience inequality.

It's no longer accurate to only analyze women's inequality along the line, solely of sex and gender. It is these intersections that are really important, and so what they're really saying is that it's not just one type of woman's experience of inequality that legally matters internationally, rights, law, all different types of women and all their experiences, inequality matters.

There are obligations within the treaty to redress intersectional inequality. So even thinking some of the examples I've talked through today, talking about migrant women trying to access abortion, rural women trying to access perception, these matter for understanding the problem. So if you try to impose a solution that's based on urban, normative, normative [00:38:00] ideas, or if you're trying to impose solutions based purely on.

What white women think is the right solution, you're going to be missing a dimension so of the problem and your solution's gonna be inadequate. So intersectionality matters 'cause it's expressing something about who matters international law. But it also matters if we think it's important to solve inequality.

'cause they want a solutions to work. And if we don't have an intersectional understanding, we will have incomplete or ineffective or inadequate solutions. So intersectionality really matters. Uh, internationally we might solve because it's saying that the differences are not something we should ignore, but they're something that could be taken very seriously and that those differences can be made up of a multitude of different identities, experiences, circumstances, characteristics, and that there are obligations on the state to redress those just as much as certain obligation to redress any other type of violation.

Ellie: Thank you. That's, that's really, really clear. How. Intersectionality [00:39:00] is so matters and is so relevant in gender discrimination and from the As. I think that was really helpful 'cause I didn't actually have the background there of cita that previously, actually, as it was developed, there was a lot of different considerations and the gender, the gender recommendations that almost kind of just crystallizing.

Yeah. The importance of including these whole different range of people's life experiences. What has kind of been the, with that kind of understanding now, what has kind of been the impact of the general recommendations in the article going forward?

Meghan: Yeah, so that's a more complicated picture. So there are positive negatives.

So CDO committee is genuinely pretty good at recognizing intersectional discrimination. So it's done in almost every concluding observation, which is where it kind of gives the state a report card to say, you've done this, great, you've done that. Not so great in individual communications where it decides.

If a woman's rights have been violated, which is much more like a, a kind of legal judgment or when it does these inquiry procedures where it does these sort of [00:40:00] big systemic reviews of big issues in a state it, 99.9% of the time, if, if not a hundred, always thinks about intersectionality and teases out what are the intersectional dimensions of this claim.

So it's got some really great. Decisions from Eastern Europe on Roma women and their sexual reproductive health rights. So when their sexual reproductive health rights are violated, it's not just because they're women, it's because they're Roma women, and there are perceptions that Roma women are poor, work shy women who are sexually promiscuous and have too many children to be able to get state benefits.

So if you only address the gender dimension, but miss the race and ethnicity dimension, you're not gonna solve the problem. And the committee's pretty good at at at addressing that. That's just one example of many where the committee really does pull out how the confluence of factors contribute, underpins the inequality of these women are experiencing, where sometimes it can be frustrating would be in the depth of its analysis or the depth of its recommendations.

So the [00:41:00] case I mentioned earlier about Brazil, and it was an Afro-Brazilian women who lived in a sort of rural area who died, um, in childbirth because she couldn't access emergency medical care. The fact that she was poor, the fact that she was Afro-Brazilian, the fact that she was rural were all really important factors to explain the poor health outcomes.

It wasn't happenstance that she, she died. It was related to her race,

her, her poverty, and her geography. When you look at the, the committee's recommendations, they might, they miss some of that depth there. Don't always talk about remedying socioeconomic inequality. They don't always recommend remedying racial inequality.

They don't always recommend. Remedying geographic inequality. So sometimes I would argue the committee can be a bit unsure about how to bring intersectionality into its remedies, which is unfortunate. But you know, there's always room for improvement in these things. The committee by and large does a, does do a good job, and it is one of the better bodies for intersectionality.

There can be space to think more deeply about what does it mean to have these insights? [00:42:00] So I've been doing some reading around obstetric violence, uh, in many countries, including the UK and it's black women and women from ethnic minorities who are more at higher risk and more likely to experience obstetric violence.

And often it has to do with their race and the perceptions of that. Misconceptions really, that black women withstand pain better than other groups, or that black women are complaining too much and that we can just ignore them. Rather than taking black women's voices seriously when they're trying to communicate to their medical professionals about the experience of childbirth.

Mm-hmm.

Meghan: So only addressing the gender aspects would be missing the racial dimensions or missing the uniqueness that black women experience when they're interacting with the, with the medical profession. Uh, and the reporting I've seen on in the UK is that they're, they're aware of the problem, but they're still trying to figure out solutions, much like the CO committee.

In part, in fair, in fairness, would be because the solutions are very difficult. It involves social, cultural changes about how we perceive black women. Mm-hmm. How we perceive the way they speak, the way they speak. I'm saying that [00:43:00] doesn't come across right, but when a black woman's saying, I feel pain, as opposed to saying, well, she's just complaining too much, taking that seriously.

Mm-hmm. That requires a kind of social, cultural mind shift into how we, you're perceiving what a black woman is saying in a moment of childbirth. So there are, that's a big shift and that's requires training and rethinking and. Or reimagining and that that takes time and it's difficult. So that's where intersectionality is so important, and that's often where things get harder is trying to think about those solutions to these really deeply embedded problems.

Ellie: Yeah. Thank you. I think I might actually be the same, like the same research, but I think I. I read a report about in the UK treatment by doctors in the NHS and they looked, I think, first at like the difference between if you have a male doctor, the treatment between like treating a female and then a male patient.

But then they, they looked at the difference then between if you are a white female patient and a black female patient and their just the, the really clear difference in reporting of [00:44:00] pain and getting, I think also like getting prescribed pain medication when you go in for a problem. But yeah, I agree. I don't, I don't think the report.

Dealt with the recommendations from that. But so throughout kind of the medical profession and treatment, that was really eye opening. See, and I guess that's to an extent consideration of intersectionality, not just looking at gender, considering other factors.

Meghan: Yeah, exactly. It's important that we don't assume that, uh, the white woman's experience is experience of all women when they're interacting with their medical professionals, that different groups are gonna have different experiences because those.

Groups are gonna have different socioeconomic, sociocultural positioning in society, and that positioning will follow them into the hospital and can be replicated and reinforced in the hospital. So taking that ser intersectionality says we take that seriously and then we diagnose that we don't ignore it.

That's another real challenge in this area, is often an intersectionality. It can be difficult to get the data, you know, in UK is reasonably, reasonably [00:45:00] clear on the data that black women are experiencing. Worse maternal health outcomes than white women. But if you look at some other countries, it can be very difficult to find de data based on race and gender.

So those women's experiences sort of disappear from the official reporting, the official narrative. So it's intersectionality is still so important to, to be cognizant of because it's important to ensure that those differences are accounted for and then to keep pushing, advocating for solutions, even if those solutions are gonna be.

Short term, medium term, long term and require collective mind shifts in in how we perceive people who are different from us. But if we really believe in equality, we don't shy within those difficult things, we shy away that they're gonna be hard. They're gonna be maybe touching on sensitive areas or that they're going to be taking time.

If we believe people are equal, we believe everyone is equal moral worth. We'd never give up on pushing for that equality in all the forms it needs to take.

Ellie: [00:46:00] Definitely. No, I, I completely agree and I think that's a, such a good kind of summation of it, that just because the solution's really difficult doesn't mean that it should be ignored or shouldn't be pushed for to be achieved.

And thank you so much for coming on the podcast. It's been a really interesting episode and I feel like all these different aspects I've, I've learned so much. And just from hearing your commentary on them,

Meghan: it was my pleasure. Thank you so much for a really great conversation.