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。这项研究采用纵向研究方法，研究了1950至1975年间外交部关于联合国妇女地位委员会的信件和联合国辩论简要记录。它发现，殖民利益在英国人在20世纪50年代和60年代初处理妇女权利公约的方式中发挥了非常重要的作用。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护其帝国，以避免在其殖民地实施妇女权利条款的需要。这一做法反映了英国目前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制定过程中扮演的负面角色，与更广泛的殖民保守主义有关，在英国外交部内部变得制度化，并在20世纪60年代演变为英国阻碍联合国关于妇女权利的国际发展框架拟议的机制。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1950年至1975年期间英国愿意向联合国妇女权利议程提供的支持的性质和程度，以及确定其作为这方面的全球参与者的角色，具有重要意义。我想在这项博士后研究中加入这项研究，通过考察英国在非殖民化后期参与联合国所有四次关于妇女的世界会议，来比较英国最近与联合国妇女地位委员会的接触。作为我博士学位的一部分，我在1975年的第一次联合国妇女世界会议上研究了英国人对国际发展的参与，但我将在接下来的三次会议上更详细地探讨这一问题，直到1995年。通过这些案例研究，我会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，以及在这些后来的时刻，它给联合国关于妇女权利的空间带来了什么价值。总而言之，这项研究将对1950年至1995年期间英国参与联合国妇女权利议程的地缘政治因素--殖民主义和非殖民化的性质进行批判性评估。此外，它还将展示这些因素如何在塑造联合国一级妇女权利议程本身的轮廓方面发挥作用。

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.