In 1994, the United Nations Conference on Human Rights agreed that Women's Rights are Human Rights, signaling the recognition that existing covenants on human rights failed to address the needs of women. However, the expansion of market liberalization and privatization since 1994, pursued and promoted by the International Financial Institutions, World Trade Organization, and many governments has not only failed to further the human rights agenda, but may in fact be responsible for the violations of economic and social rights of populations worldwide.

Since 1994, major global institutions like the World Bank, United Nations, and International Monetary Fund (IMF) have changed their rhetoric to focus on poverty eradication, include gender divisions, and pursue gender mainstreaming. These institutions and civil society have worked to develop indicators to assess the advancement of women's rights. Over a decade later, the findings are not promising. The recent UN Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD) study, "Gender Equality: Striving for Justice in an Unequal World" defines the current global direction as a "disabling policy environment," arguing that neo-liberalism has proved largely unsuccessful, even on its own terms and offers minimal promise of generating social development. While some women may have benefited fin the process of economic liberalization, the majority of women globally have not.

Neo-liberalism, characterized by market liberalization, privatization, and deregulation, has not only limited women's advancement, in some cases women have lost the ground they worked so hard to gain in the 1970s and early 80s. This deterioration has negatively affected women's struggle against deeply entrenched gender relations in all society. Inequalities based on sex, and exacerbated by class, ethnic and racial divisions, are a pervasive feature of all societies. They are the product of socially constructed power relations, norms and practices. Family dynamics, communities, religious bodies, states, institutions, political parties and "progressive" social movements all operate within these gender dynamics (UNRISD, 2005).

With the creation of the WTO and rapid pursuit of free trade agreements by the major world powers, it is clear that trade and the opening of developing country markets for corporate expansion s prioritized over the realization of economic, social and cultural rights, including the rights to food, clothing, housing, education, health, and just working conditions. There is growing acknowledgment that economic liberalization has not enhanced most women's movement toward equality, particularly in developing countries and for women in poverty in the developed world.

This topic is further expanded in the article, "What are Economic and Social Rights" by Mariama Williams.