Annotation:
This report " is designed to provide an overview of the state of women's human rights in 1997. It focuses in particular on the problems of violence and discrimination against women as committed and tolerated by states and is drawn from the work of Human Rights Watch in these areas over the past year." The report concludes that the political rhetoric surrounding women's human rights rarely produced significant action at either the national or international levels. International bodies gave only inconsistent attention to women's rights and seemed to act more in response to media pressures than the need to combat discrimination against women. As "research by the World Bank and others revealed, the world's governments continued more often than not to abuse women's human rights rather than observe them."