The Convention to Eliminate all forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) — the most-oft used reference document on women’s rights — took more than 30 years (1946-1979) to hammer out — indication of how tenacious the compulsion to continue women’s oppression and marginalization can be. Although CEDAW is considered an international treaty, the United States has not ratified it. Such reluctance is not illogical. As the home base of some of the largest transnational corporations, the US is obligated to maintain the quasi-feudal and, in some cases, quasi-slave, status of women, particularly women of color, because a large portion of the new economic order’s profits depends precisely on women’s oppression. Within the US itself, murder is the top cause of workplace deaths for women and 62% of all women murdered are killed by those closest to them.
This should provide, albeit in a casual way, an inkling of women’s status in the supposedly most advanced country in the world; and of the dangers attendant to being female in this new phase of globalization.
