A World Society Perspective for Women's Rights and Women's Empowerment: Thirty Years of the CEDAW in Spain (1984-2015)

This paper tries to offer a global perspective of the process of expansion of women’s rights in Europe since the end of World War II to the present. We’ll assess the effectiveness of the UN human rights system nowadays, as well. For this purpose, we will analyse the case of Spain in the CEDAW monitoring process as the first step of a broader research involving more countries.

Spain ratified the CEDAW in 1984 and was first examined by the Committee on the CEDAW in 1987. This procedure took place in the early building of a gender equality architecture in Spain and it has been repeated in four occasions during the following two decades. Both, gender equality policies and feminist organizations in Spain have experienced complex changes during this period that will be studied.

We’ll pay special attention to the most recent examination experienced by Spain which is one of the 16 nation-states that has been examined in 2015 by the Committee on the CEDAW in a context of economic crisis, adjustment policies and gender equality setbacks. Both governmental and feminist movement’ strategies have already been displayed in Geneva at the 61 session of the Committee on the CEDAW.

This paper will address three issues through a chronological history of the CEDAW examination of Spain: 1) the way followed by the Spanish Governments towards the incorporation of CEDAW recommendations in their search for international recognition; 2) up to what point  CEDAW has promoted legal and institutional changes towards gender equality in Spain; 3) feminist political strategies displayed by Spanish women’s organizations to get their goals in terms of national/transnational networks, dissemination and mobilization.