Colonialism, Decolonisation and Women's Liberation: The Geopolitics of Britain's Engagement in the UN Women's Rights Agenda 1950 - 1995

我的博士学位于2020年完成，研究了英国殖民遗产在联合国妇女权利公约和国际发展框架中的作用。该研究采用纵向方法，研究了1950年至1975年间外交部与联合国妇女地位委员会的通信和联合国辩论摘要记录。研究发现，在20世纪50年代和60年代初，殖民地利益在英国对待妇女权利公约的方式中发挥了巨大的作用。作为一个殖民大国，英国试图通过破坏联合国妇女权利公约的发展或限制其适用性来维持其帝国，以避免在其殖民地适用妇女权利条款的需要。这种做法反映了英国当时试图在其他联合国人权公约中加入“殖民适用条款”的做法。英国在联合国妇女权利公约的发展中所扮演的消极角色，与更广泛的殖民保守主义联系在一起，在英国外交部内部制度化，并在20世纪60年代演变成英国阻挠联合国有关妇女权利的国际发展框架的拟议机制。这些研究结果表明，了解殖民主义的作用及其在外交部的持久遗产，对于了解英国在1950年至1975年期间愿意为联合国妇女权利议程提供的支持的性质和程度，以及确定其在这方面作为全球参与者的作用至关重要。我想在博士后研究的基础上，将英国最近的参与与联合国妇女地位委员会的参与进行比较，考察英国在非殖民化后期参与的所有四次联合国世界妇女会议。作为我博士学位的一部分，我最后考察了英国在1975年第一次联合国世界妇女大会上参与国际发展的情况，但我将在接下来的三次会议上更详细地探讨这个问题，一直持续到1995年。通过这些案例研究，我想问英国对妇女参与发展的理解是如何随着时间的推移而变化的，以及在后来的时刻，它给联合国在妇女权利方面提供了什么价值空间。总的来说，这项研究作为一个整体，将提供对殖民主义和非殖民化的本质的批判性评估，作为英国参与1950 - 1995年联合国妇女权利议程的地缘政治因素。此外，它将展示这些因素如何在联合国一级塑造妇女权利议程本身的轮廓。

My PhD, completed in 2020, examined the role of Britian's colonial legacy within women's rights conventions and international development frameworks at the UN. The research took a longitudinal approach to studying Foreign Office correspondence on the UN Commission on the Status of Women and UN debate summary records between 1950 and 1975. It found that colonial interests played a hugely significant role in Britian's approach to women's rights conventions in the 1950s and early 1960s. As a colonial power, Britain sought to maintain its empire by undermining the development of UN women's rights conventions or to limit their applicability in order to avoid the need to apply women's rights provisions in its colonies. This approach mirrored Britain's attempts to add 'colonial application clauses' to other UN human rights conventions at this time. Britain's negative role in the development of UN women's rights conventions, linked to a broader colonial conservatism, became institutionalised within the British Foreign Office and, in the 1960s, morphed into Britain stymieing proposed mechanisms around international development frameworks at the UN on women's rights. These research findings are significant in demonstrating that understanding the role of colonialism - and its lasting legacies within the Foreign Office - is essential to understanding the nature and level of support Britain was willing to provide to the UN women's rights agenda between 1950 and 1975, and to ascertain its role as a global player in this regard. I would like to add to this research in the postdoctoral fellowship to compare this more recent engagement by Britain with the UN Commission on the Status of Women, by looking at Britain's engagement with all four UN World Conferences on women in the later era of decolonisation. As part of my PhD I finished with an examination of Britian's engagement around international development at the first UN World Conference on women in 1975, but would explore this in greater detail alongside the following three conferences through to 1995. Through these case studies I would ask how Britain's understanding of women in development changed over time and what value it give the UN spaces on women's rights within these later moments. Taken together, this research as a whole would provide a critical assessment of the nature of colonialism and decolonisation as geopolitical factors in Britain's engagement in the UN Women's Rights Agenda from 1950 - 1995. Further, it will show how such factors played out in shaping the very contours of women's rights agenda itself at UN level.