The goal of this article, published in the journal Societies Without Borders, is to explain the micro-political aspects of women’s participation within the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) by explicating how Non-Governmental Organisation’s (NGO) representatives negotiate and perceive their work. Data from ethnographic participant observation of CSW meetings between 2009 and 2012 demonstrate the simultaneity of both clear insider/outsider distinctions, as well as blurred and permeable boundaries between the intergovernmental body of the CSW, and civil society in the form of women’s rights activists who attempt to shape CSW outcomes.
The author suggests that concepts of fluid insiderness and outsiderness (Naples 1996) can help explain that women activists perceive themselves simultaneously as insiders and outsiders in relation to the UN system, but also in relation to other, more privileged, activists. Additionally, the concept of "situated accessibility" – the varying accessibility to the UN according to NGO background and NGO notoriety, geopolitical location, funding, experience, language skills, and personal relationships and notoriety within the UN system – brings nuance to notions of insiderness and outsiderness and adds to a deeper understanding of the intricate and complicated global human rights agenda.
On the one hand, there is an apparent paradox in that the more "inside" a woman may be in terms of the embodiment of the social location under consideration (e.g. being a rural woman who does not speak English at the CSW meeting that focused on rural women in 2012), the more "outside" she becomes in terms of the factual production of global gender equality policy. On the other hand, not needing to physically get "inside" the informal CSW negotiations may indicate that an activist has better, informal channels through which she can obtain information. Consequently, she is less reliant on the more conventional interaction patterns between civil society and the UN system.
The paper concludes that while feminist activists bring insider knowledge about women’s experiences to the table of UN negotiations, and are experts/insiders on the very topics negotiated at CSW meetings, they face challenges in terms of access to the UN. Activists are incorporated but also disenfranchised at actual CSW negotiations by means of their NGO status. They legitimise outcomes and have a place and a space at CSW meetings, but largely remain outsiders in the process of shaping normative gender policy.
The author finds that inequality along the axes of class, race, language, and notoriety within the UN system structure access and accessibility within the UN, and substantiate the fact that "global feminism" is not one monolithic block. Along the lines of Merry (2006) and Naples (2002), the data underscores the contradictory role of privileged women, who lobby for marginalised women without working to shift the "situated accessibility" through the redistribution of resources and information.
[adapted from source]