The United Kingdom and Human Rights - College of Social ...

British Constitutional-cum-Human Rights System 131
excluded from the benefits of society lies behind
increasing awareness of the economic plight of women.
Credit is due to those who, despite much hostile reaction,
have repeatedly challenged the de facto discrimination
faced by women. Fortuitously, EEC standards have
significantly assisted in bringing about removal of
inequalities. Another new source of pressure will be the
CEDAW Committee, established in terms of the Convention
on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination
against Women. The United Kingdom's initial Report to
the Committee describes measures adopted and institutions
established to give the Convention force and
explains means being used to promote and ensure the
full development and advancement of women. 20 Even
more illuminating was the CEDAW Committee's Report
on their scrutiny of the United Kingdom in January 1990
and their many questions about the United Kingdom's
reservations to the Convention, which the Committee
believed could contravene its objectives. Several Committee
experts declared that the number and purposes of
the reservations seemed to reflect unilateral interpretations
of the Convention; that there was doubt whether
reservations were really necessary; and that there was
concern whether the reservation, based on "essential
and overriding conditions of economic policy," implied
that if the economy was not buoyant, then equality was
to be sacrificed. 21 Issues affecting women are from 1990
to be co-ordinated by a Minister rather than by a
Ministerial Group on Women's Issues chaired by the
Home Secretary, so there may be greater progress. It is
needed. Yet it is not only Governments who are to
blame: the responsibility is that of all political parties and
of public attitudes, which, for example, have resulted in
only 6.2 per cent, of Members of Parliament being
women, although women constitute the majority of the
population.