In the wake of the women’s movement of the second wave (1960s/1970s), academic research has shown how gender relations are inscribed in laws and norms, cultural practices, social relationships, and collective action, and in social institutions such as markets, state systems, family norms, educational systems and in the media. Some of the findings of this research have found their way into international instruments that spell out a clear mandate for the United Nations system to work towards the realization of gender equality and the human rights of women. These instruments also require compliance by governments, in order that women’s empowerment across social, political, economic, and cultural domains may be realized.

Within UNESCO, the Gender Equality and Development (GED) Section of the Social and Human Sciences Sector conducts and supports policy-oriented research on globalization and women’s human rights, cultures and gender equality, and conflict, peace, and reconstruction. Specific studies investigate the social rights of working women, family laws, and women’s roles in post-conflict reconstruction. Capacity-building includes technical assistance for women’s studies in the African Great Lakes region and in Afghanistan, and the establishment of women’s research and documentation centers in the Palestine Authority and the Democratic Republic of Congo. The work is guided by international instruments such as the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) and the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action. Policy-oriented research commissioned by GED is intended for use by our partners within academia, the women’s movement, and the national machinery for women, such as the Ministries of Women’s Affairs.

This publication reports on the GED workshop on Women’s Human Rights: The Research-Policy Nexus, which was part of the larger International Forum on the Social Science-Policy Nexus (IFSP) that took place in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on 20-24 February 2006. Organized in conjunction with the Governments of Argentina and Uruguay, the municipalities and universities of Buenos Aires, Córdoba, Montevideo and Rosario, and with the support of a wide range of academic, policy, and NGO partners, the Forum offered an innovative space for a new kind of dialogue, bringing together social science and policy in the search for a common language and shared terms of engagement. The more than 2000 participants included 13 Ministers of Social Development and Education from Africa, Asia and Latin America; five Secretaries General of regional organizations; government representatives and local authorities; students and professors; project representatives, and members of civil society. As Peruvian Minister of Women and Social Development, Ana María Romero-Lozada noted during the closing ceremony: “The Forum is aiming for three essential results. The first is to propose a diagnosis on current collaboration between researchers and policy makers in order to identify their strengths and weaknesses comparatively and transversally with regard to the five themes of the Forum. Second, the Forum has highlighted a certain number of problems that restrain or paralyze the creation of the Nexus. On the basis of this diagnosis, the Forum aspires to propose recommendations that will emphasize the strategy needed to overcome the existing gap.”

The workshop explored the relationship between academic research and public policies towards gender equality and women’s empowerment. Key questions were: How does research assist in policy design or reform? What kinds of relations exist between researchers, activists, and policy makers in various countries? How might policy and decision-makers such as Ministers of Women’s Affairs make better use of the academic research on various aspects on women’s conditions and rights? How might researchers and advocates for women’s human rights help build the capacity of ministries of women’s affairs by providing them with important inputs for the policy work of the ministries?

The workshop had a two-fold purpose. First, it was to contribute to the larger Forum and explore the ways in which the work on gender in SHS is deliberately and methodically located at the intersection of social science research, on the one hand, and policy dialogues and formulations pertaining to women’s human rights, on the other. Second, it was to bring together academics and policy-makers to discuss policy-oriented research around the three broad themes of our work on gender:

• globalization processes (economic and political) and their impact on women’s human rights; the objective being to help make globalization work for women;
• how cultural practices and institutions may impede women’s rights and gender equality, but also how cultural resources may be used by activists and policy-makers to legitimize legal reforms and policy measures;
• how women’s perspectives and feminist scholarship can contribute to new thinking and policies pertaining to prevention and resolution of conflict, meaningful peace-building, and post-conflict reconstruction and governance; the objective being to contribute to the promotion of SCR 1325 on women, peace and security.