Chapter 6: Operationalising a gender and rights approach II: Legal structures, administrative processes and political activism

Introduction

The normative framework sets standards, but making the rights guaranteed in that framework real in the lives of poor women and men is about the processes that turn those standards into living rights. This chapter is focused on exploring the different institutional processes through which this can happen. It discusses a range of legal and administrative structures through which rights are delivered, and the processes through which citizens contest rights.

The first section describes different types of legal structures, which represent different levels at which rights claims can be made. It discusses some of the ways in which different types of legal systems have historically acted in connected ways to deny women’s rights, thus focussing on the need to make legal processes answerable to gender equality standards in constitutions and international agreements. It also explains why getting legal structures to deliver gender justice also involves struggles in broader society where meanings about gender relations are made, and then reflected in the law.

The second section focuses on the role of administrative bodies which deliver rights. Turning attention specifically to development organisations, it explores the different processes in which intervention is needed to turn policy commitments to gender equality and rights into living rights. It also sets out some ways in which gender equality objectives in different elements of rights based approaches can be assessed.

Political processes are key to the formulation of rights, as well as their interpretation and implementation because it is through these that claims are made and accountability to rights sought. The third section discusses the implications of this, setting out the different levels at which activism, advocacy, lobbying have been used to demand accountability to rights, as well as some of the challenges.