Despite global undertakings to safeguard the full enjoyment of human rights, culture, traditional practices and religion are widely used to discriminate against women. In this volume 17 scholars approach women's human rights globally, regionally and nationally, combining the perspectives of public and private international law. Comprehensive legal, culture-based and theoretical overviews are combined with analyses of topical issues, such as unbalanced sex-ratios, intercountry adoption, women as refugees or as 'surrogate mothers,' violence against women and cross-border enforcement of protection orders.
Dorothy Allison gives voice to issues dear to her: poverty, working-class life, domestic violence, feminism and women's relationships, the contemporary South, and gay/lesbian life. The interviews detail Allison's working-class background in Greenville, South Carolina, as the daughter of a waitress. Allison discusses her upbringing, her work (novels, short stories, essays, poetry) and her active participation in the women's movement of the 1970s.