Markets and Women's International Human Rights (Roundtable Discussions)

This article is the transcript from two roundtable discussions on the impact of globalization on women's human rights held at the Brooklyn Law School, chaired by Kathleen Peratis. Joanna Kerr, a senior researcher at the North-South Institute in Ottawa, addresses globalization as an economic growth model and the extent to which this model negatively impacts on women in their home and paid abour duties. Martina Vandenberg, a researcher with Human Rights Watch, discusses how globalization has impacted on women in concrete contexts - employment discrimination on the basis of sex in the Russian Federation and in Mexico, and the trafficking of women and girls into Thailand. Liz Schneider, a professor at Brooklyn Law School, provides a broader historical framework to talk about evaluating successes and future plans. In particular she discusses the hallenge that feminist work has made to the paradigms of international human rights and economic development and issues of the public/private divide.