Assessing International Progress on
Women’s Rights on research by
BETH SIMMONS Andrea Mitchell University Professor in Law, Political Science and Business Ethics
In a groundbreaking article, co-authors University of Pennsylvania Law School Professor Beth Simmons and University of Minnesota Assistant Professor Cosette D. Creamer marshal empirical evidence to demonstrate for the first time that self-reporting processes within international human rights treaty regimes actually generate positive domestic policy changes. The article, “The Dynamic Impact of Periodic Review on Women’s Rights,” appears in a recent issue of the Journal of Law and Contemporary Problems and challenges the conventional wisdom that the process of self-reporting on compliance with human rights treaties serves no useful purpose. Simmons is the Andrea Mitchell University Professor in Law, Political Science and Business Ethics at Penn, and her research focuses on international affairs. Creamer’s research interests are at the intersection of international law and politics, and the empirical analysis of law. In the article, Creamer and Simmons focus their study on the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), a treaty that has been described as an international bill of rights for women. Core provisions call for nations to ensure women’s equality before the law, respect women’s rights to work and receive equal pay, prevent violence against women and sex trafficking,
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and more. Under CEDAW’s self-reporting regime, ratifying states “must submit reports every four years on the legislative, judicial, administrative, or other measures adopted to give effect to their women’s rights obligations.” The reports are submitted to the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CmEDAW), which is “comprised of independent experts nominated and elected by states parties. CmEDAW then considers these reports in the presence of government representatives, acknowledges progress made, and identifies areas for improvement.” Historically, several human rights treaties have called for selfreporting. However, “until the CEDAW, no treaty on women’s rights or issues contained an obligation for parties to self-report.” In terms of compliance with the self-reporting obligation, CEDAW has been relatively successful: “Of the 188 states parties to the CEDAW in 2016, only five countries had still not submitted their initial report,” Creamer and Simmons write. As an initial step in their evaluation of the effects of selfreporting, Creamer and Simmons read all 621 reports submitted to the CmEDAW from 1982-2014 and coded them along four dimensions: implementation, compliance, and data — which relate to report quality — and responsiveness. “A report’s ‘quality score’
