José E. Alvarez & Judith Bauder

For over 40 years, the leading international treaty body on women’s rights, the Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (the CEDAW Committee), has been generating jurisprudence interpreting CEDAW’s obligations that states protect the equal rights of women. This book concludes that CEDAW’s re-engendering of property—although a flawed and evolving work in progress—has the potential to be transformative for the half of the planet who is more likely to be treated as property than to have any.

The book constitutes the first comprehensive synthesis of the CEDAW’s property jurisprudence in English, effectively summarizes criticisms made of CEDAW and international human rights regimes, as well as responses to the criticisms, and assesses the challenges facing the CEDAW regime as well as its potential to advance transformational change.