Toward a Definition of Women's Human Rights

The purpose of this issue of Human Rights Quarterly with a special symposium on Women and International Human Rights is to define women's human rights. It should not be necessary to do so. The very term human rights is inclusive with no discriminatory meaning implied. However, practice does not always comply with principle. Within recent history of Western civilization, leading male scholars, philosophers, and theologians seriously debated whether the female of the species was really human or some sort of lower form of life. The question of whether a female had a soul was debated by Muslim leaders. In our own day, experience shows that it is an error to assume that terms such as humanity, human rights, or mankind are inclusive. Mary Daly, in her book Gyn/Ecology, has conclusively demonstrated the real power and meaning of language as a tool to deny and exclude female values and indeed to make women invisible.1