About the Project

The Gender, International Law and Justice: Access to Gender Equality (GILJ) project is an in-depth socio-legal investigation of the gap that persists between the adoption of international laws targeted at the non-discrimination of women and the on-the-ground implementation of these laws.  The project focuses on international laws relevant to women’s human rights, in particular the binding commitments made under the International Convention on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), along with other relevant international agreements and non-binding commitments with gender equality aspects.

In particular, the GILJ project looks at the role that Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) play in creating, introducing, applying and enforcing international law in the area of women’s human rights.  The project examines the meanings attributed by CSOs and civil society to international law and the ways in which CSOs perceive and rely upon the role of international law in their work. The interplay of the juristic understandings of the scope and applicability of law and the factual realities in society and culture provide the foundational basis of the research efforts.

Localisation of women’s human rights forms a key concept underpinning the trans-disciplinary research work and analysis within the project.  The concept of localisation encompasses a broad setting for the research work, one that enables the research team to move beyond any preconceived assumptions that CSOs are the sole drivers for the localisation of women’s human rights laws. Instead, the project is demonstrating that a range of mediators comes into play when examining the process of transforming international law on gender equality to the local level and these mediators have their own set of impacts, influences and restraints on the CSOs and the subsequent perception by the CSO of the value or otherwise of international laws.

The Intersection of Law and Social Sciences

It is helpful to provide a brief explanatory overview of the role of law in a project that is sociologically driven within a legal context.  Legal research from a socio-legal context differs from legal research undertaken from a legal practitioner’s point of view or that of a legal doctrinal approach. Rather than viewing the law and society relationship in the context of society as a whole, or even sometimes as being somehow extraneous to society, socio-legal research places itself within an actual social context, seeking to extract information directly and interpret the information received “in the field” as a participant. Moreover, socio-legal researchers tend to extend their legal analysis beyond traditional legal methodologies and seek to draw upon other areas of social sciences (political, social or economic) to build upon legal analysis and knowledge. The aim is to view law and its social impacts in different ways that challenge the traditionally expected notions and theories.

It is important to note that there is often seen to be a level of disconnect between legal academics/practitioners and social science academics/practitioners.  Both approach their respective disciplines in a different manner, according to acquired techniques belonging to their specific discipline. When law and social sciences intersect, however, there is a need for both sides to see the different perspectives and to aim to reconcile the differences by finding commonalities in purpose, if not approach.

When undertaking socio-legal research, lawyers and legal theorists are faced with learning new philosophical and theoretical approaches to viewing law from a broad perspective that reflects the multiple interrelationships between law and society. At the same time, social science practitioners and theorists are faced with learning new meanings behind the way a lawyer views and practises the law. In truth this is a big task, for learning beyond one’s discipline takes additional time and resources. However, it is possible where experts from each discipline combine forces and share their knowledge and expertise, which is precisely the operational context of the GILJ project.

It has long been recognised that law has a great deal to benefit from a more concerted interaction with social sciences but putting this recognition into practice has been less commonplace. Both international law and sustainable development law benefit from cooperative knowledge sharing across the disciplines. International law, already a field of law often called on to defend its “legal nature”, and in many respects sustained more than domestic law by policy, politics and non-legal commitments that influence its development, application and enforcement, is itself at an intersection with domestic law that requires different legal methodologies in approaching legal analysis, interpretation and application.  In order to truly unravel why on-the-ground implementation of international laws strikes a range of challenges not faced by domestic law, legal scholars and practitioners can do well to look beyond traditional legal theorising based on legal reasoning and embrace appropriate social science methodologies and theories that will help to elucidate more information about what impacts and motivates on-the-ground transformation and what can stymie legal action and reaction.  As part of this process, the focus on legal fieldwork and what this consists of and seeks to achieve is an evolving area of analysis.

Adopting a socio-legal research approach in the GILJ project is intended to elicit a richness and depth of information that can only be derived from examining a wide range of perspectives and situations.  The international community and local on-the-ground communities consist of many varied voices and cannot be subsumed under one single concept of a “legal system”, nor by invoking generic approaches to the notion of a singular legal system.  The validity of the research will be derived from the breadth of inter-disciplinary input that takes into account varied local contexts and draws on multiple inter-disciplinary data approaches. 

In terms of CSOs, it is considered that the GILJ socio-legal approach will produce viable, enabling and enlightening outcomes that can demonstrate which specific tools, methodologies and language usage will better enable CSOs to implement and support international laws related to sustainable development and gender equality.  Leaving aside any proclivity to adopt preconceptions, it is considered that the final results will indicate positive support for the trans-disciplinary approach to the application of international laws on gender equality by means of a reduction in comprehension complexity, support for innovative research measures that can also continue to evolve and create a relationship of trust between legal academics and practitioners and their social sciences colleagues.

Objectives

There are four principal objectives of the GILJ project:

	To identify mediators between de jure international rights of non-discrimination of women and de facto realities that impact civil society work in case study countries;
	To conduct in-depth civil society process case studies on programmes and activities regarding states’ obligations to guarantee economic, social and cultural rights with a specific focus on women’s human rights;
	To engage in critical analysis of how women and civil society actors can facilitate gender-responsiveness in public service delivery related to core economic, social and cultural rights, key to ensuring inclusive sustainable development; and
	To strengthen the capacity of researchers in various disciplines to engage in a combined methodological approach to identify elements contributing to shifts in women’s needs, rights and identities, as well as being able to perceive and analyse adaptation of civil society discourse and actions in relation to international laws and norms.

Sustainable Development Gender Equality Objective

Following directly on from the achievement of these four key objectives, in addition, the project has as a further key objective, namely to outline the ways by which international human rights laws on gender equality will also provide a means for strengthening of women’s ability to participate fully in the opportunities provided by the implementation and follow-through of sustainable development projects across the world.  The economic, social and cultural rights are  a crucial factor here.

Without the ability to successfully make use of the relevant international laws that promote and protect women’s human rights, women are likely to be disadvantaged in the projects, undertakings and outcomes of sustainable development initiatives, which although they often target women, may not be successful, owing to the disconnect between the existence of women’s rights protections and the overriding realities of direct on-the-ground discriminatory practices and other indirect but pervasive cultural, ideological, economic or social factors, that interact to curtail the positive impacts of sustainable development for women.  The GILJ project will highlight the ways in which improved gender-responsiveness in public service delivery, public participation in decision-making and access to information and justice will result in gender aware sustainable development governance.