PYQ Vault · Paper 2 · Contemporary Global Concerns — II
Do you endorse that the conventional discourse on human rights has failed to include women’s rights? Explain in the context of feminist theories.
How the answer moves
The flow snapshot — the routes in, the body, the counter-view and the routes out.
Flow snapshot — how the answer moves
Intro routes
@) universalism only apparent → Okin: rights of “man and male household heads” → endorse the failure R1 the neutral human subject was male → de Beauvoir: “becomes a woman” → male bias built into rights
Body flow
Okin: framework defends male household heads → de Beauvoir: gender constructed, male experience as standard → public/private dichotomy, UDHR Art. 12 shields the home → women’s harms fall outside the state → Charlesworth: all three generations built on male life → evidence: reproductive rights scant, Amnesty on pregnancy deaths
Counter-view
failure is a defect to fix, not fatal to rights → CEDAW (1979) + Beijing (1995) reframe gender as a human-rights issue → Walby: transform the framework itself
Conclusion routes
R1 discourse failed by universalising a male subject + privatising women’s suffering → feminism exposes and repairs R1 not abandonment but a transformed, gender-sensitive conception of rights (Walby) → the exclusion is corrigible
Model answer
Handwritten, in the form it would be written in the examination hall.
