LSJ 327 A: Women's Rights as Human Rights

POL S / LSJ 327: Women’s Rights as Human Rights

University of Washington

Summer Quarter 2026

Course Syllabus

Course Instructor: Ji Hyeon Chung

Email: jihyeonc@uw.edu

Office Hours: Wednesdays, 8 – 10 AM (over Zoom)

TA: Ali Bouterse (aliboute@uw.edu)

TA Office Hours: TBD

Lectures: Asynchronous Online

Course Overview

Women’s rights are human rights, yet women’s rights claims have often not been taken as seriously as other human rights claims.  Despite decades of progress in securing women’s rights around the world, important gaps remain, and both longstanding and new forms of discrimination continue to emerge. This course examines those gaps – from maternal health disparities and undervaluing of care labor to environmental injustice, gender-based violence and human trafficking – by exploring the political, social, economic, and legal dimensions of gender and human rights. Students will also critically examine the limits and benefits of data science approaches for gender and human rights, considering how data and policies might better address and protect the rights of people of all genders. No prerequisites are required.

Central questions include:

• How are global human rights issues related to gender?
• What are the limits and benefits of using data to advance human rights for women & people of all genders?
• How do different policy approaches to global rights issues affect women & people of all genders?
• What are the impacts of gender-conscious data on society and policy making?

In additional to critically examining these and other questions, students will have the opportunity to conduct an independent research project examining a gender-related rights issue of their choice. This process involves interactive learning opportunities in working with primary sources (raw data, court cases, treaties, policy reports) and secondary sources (peer-reviewed journal articles, books),  developing analytical skills in reading and evaluating social science research. By the end of this course, students will have gained a deeper understanding of the complexity of women’s rights as a global human rights issue, including how historical progress, persistent gaps, and emerging challenges shape the landscape today. Students will also have hands-on experience working with real data and primary sources, building practical analytical skills that are transferable across disciplines.

Required Reading & Lectures

All required materials other than the textbook will be available on the Canvas website. Lectures will be posted every Monday as videos every week, posted to Canvas. Readings are organized below by lecture block rather than by date, so students can pace themselves alongside the conceptual arc of each week.

Required textbook (purchase or rent):

• Merry, Sally Engle. 2016. The Seductions of Quantification: Measuring Human Rights, Gender Violence, and Sex Trafficking. University of Chicago Press

Assignments and Grading

Assessment in this course will be based on the above criteria. Detailed instructions can be found under the Assignments tab on Canvas. Receiving a zero on any one of the two main research papers will result in a failing grade for the course. Please inform me or the TA as soon as possible of any circumstances that will affect your ability to meet assignment deadlines. I am here to help. The syllabus marks clearly when assignments are due, enabling students to schedule their quarter accordingly. If you have conflicting commitments, please speak with me as soon as possible so accommodations can be made.

• Late policy: Assignments must be completed and turned in by their due dates unless you have received an extension from the TA or me. In this class, all extensions on deadlines should be requested before the deadline. Please inform the TA as soon as possible of any such circumstances. Assignments submitted late without a pre-approved extension will be penalized 5 percentage points for each day they are late. Please note that the instructor and TA will not be able to provide feedback on assignments submitted more than three days late. No work will be accepted after the last day of instruction (August 21, 2026) unless otherwise specified. No request for retroactive extensions would be accepted.
• Grade Scale & detailed instruction for each assignment are available on Canvas

If you wish to have a grade on an assignment, test, or your paper reassessed, please follow the outlined procedure:

1. Wait 24 hours, carefully review your answers, and your TA’s feedback.
2. Provide a typed statement to your TA (no more than one page) explaining why you believe the grade you received should be altered. This must be about the substance of your work, not the effort you put into it or this class. Likewise, it must reflect what is written in the submitted work, rather than what was intended.
3. Send the memo to your TA no later than one week after receiving your grade. Bring the work and your written concerns to your TA’s office hours after submitting your memo to have discussion about the assignment.
4. Your TA will reread and re-grade your assignment. While we will take your memo into account, there is no guarantee you will receive a higher grade upon initiating an appeal.
5. If you are still unhappy with the re-grade assigned by your TA, your instructor will take a second look. Again, there is no guarantee you will receive a higher grade.

Academic Honesty

Cheating and plagiarism will not be tolerated under any circumstances. A suspected instance will be immediately reported to the course instructor and necessary discipline may ensue (a link to those policies is on the section website or you can find it at this link). Make sure to consistently cite all of your sources using an appropriate citation method. If you are at all unclear as to how to do this, please come to my office hours.

Regarding the use of generative artificial intelligence (GAI) tools, the use of GAI-generated texts/content in your research assignments for this class will be considered as cheating and plagiarism, and is strictly prohibited. You may use them solely to support your learning and work, but you must not present the output as your own work. Any use of GAI-generated content must be properly cited and disclosed using the appropriate citation style. Failure to do so will be treated as a case of academic misconduct and handled accordingly. For more information on citing AI-generated work, check this APA Style article (“How to Cite ChatGPT”).

Writing Resources

I am unable to proofread papers, but I am happy to discuss paper ideas, content, structure, and organization. If you need help with the technical aspects of writing, please check out the following resources:

Odegaard Writing & Research Center: http://depts.washington.edu/owrc

Access and Accommodations

Your experience in this class is important to me. If you have already established accommodations with the Disability Resources for Students (DRS), please communicate your approved accommodations to me at your earliest convenience so we can discuss your needs in this course.

If you have not yet established services through DRS, but have a temporary health condition or permanent disability that requires accommodation (conditions including but not limited to: mental health, attention-related learning, vision, hearing, physical or health impacts) you are welcome to contact DRS at 206-543-8924) or uwdrs@uw.edu. DRS offers resources and coordinates responsible accommodations for students with disabilities and/or temporary health conditions. Reasonable accommodations are established through an interactive process between you, your instructors, and the DRS. It is the policy and practice of the University of Washington to create inclusive and accessible learning environments consistent with federal and state law.

Religious Accommodations

Washington state law requires that UW develop a policy for accommodation of student absences or significant hardship due to reasons of faith or conscience, or for organized religious activities. The UW’s policy, including more information about how to request an accommodation, is available at Religious Accommodations Policy. Accommodations must be requested within the first two weeks of this course using the Religious Accommodations Request Form.

Self-Care

Undergraduate studies are hard enough in normal times, but these are unfortunately not normal times. We are currently living through a global pandemic, heightened economic uncertainty, a period of renewed attention domestically and internationally to racial injustice, conflict around the world, and an intensely polarized political environment.

The Counseling Center and Hall Health are excellent resources on campus that many UW students utilize. Students may get help with study skills, career decisions, substance abuse, relationship difficulties, anxiety, depression, or other concerns.

• Husky Health & Well-Being Portal
• Counseling Center
• Hall Health

Course Schedule

Readings listed below are required unless marked “Optional”. Optional videos and readings are provided to deepen engagement for interested students.

Week 1: Women’s Rights as Human Rights: History, Theory, Laws and Data
(06/22/26 – 06/28/26)

This lesson introduces women’s rights as human rights: its origins as both a movement and a policy approach. The lesson identifies the key historical turning points of the women’s human rights movement – from the 1979 Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), through the 1993 Vienna World Conference on Human Rights, to the 1995 Beijing Platform for Action and the Beijing+30 review in 2025 – and situate them alongside the set of material and political pre-requisites that make women’s rights possible. Then, we will explore the role that quantification (indicators, indices, rankings) has played in policies and societal understanding of gender & human rights. This will provide a basis for the critical questions and approaches we will continue to engage as we examine substantive areas of gender & human rights throughout the course.

1.1.: Introduction to the Course

• No required readings; review the syllabus before the first lecture

• Life Stories 2023, Charlotte Bunch Interview: “Women’s Rights are Human Rights” (Video, watch from 2:27 to 29:28)

1.2.: History of Women’s rights movement

• Bunch, 1990, “Women’s Rights as Human Rights: Toward a Re-Vision of Human Rights”
• Levenstein, 2020, “The Forgotten Origins of ‘Women’s Rights Are Human Rights”
• Optional: UN Women 2025, “Women’s Rights in Review 30 Years After Beijing”

1.3.: Role of data and quantification in Women’s rights

• Merry, 2016, The Seductions of Quantification, Chap 1 (A World of Quantification)
• UN Women, 2025, Progress on the Sustainable Development Goals: The Gender Snapshot 2025 (Action 1-6, p. 4-11, remaining pages are optional)

Data source to explore

• UN Women Count Data

Assignments due

• Weekly Response #1 due Friday(for initial post) & Sunday(for peer-response) 11:59pm (PT) on Canvas

Week 2: Women’s Rights and Health (06/29/26 – 07/05/26)

In this lesson, we will examine the ways in which women's health and access to healthcare shape the meaning and scope of women’s rights. If girls are not surviving childhood and women are not surviving childbearing years, civil and political rights mean little in practice. We

will also critically examine the inequalities experienced in global crises such as COVID-19, and the role that data collection and analysis can play in government and societal responses. Throughout, we ask what the data infrastructure can and cannot tell us about who is being harmed and who is being protected.

2.1. Inequalities in Maternal and Infant Health

• WHO, UNICEF, UNFPA, World Bank Group & UNDESA/Population Division, 2025, Trends in Maternal Mortality 2000 – 2023 , (Executive Summary p.13 – 19)
• Crenshaw 2016, “The urgency of intersectionality” (TED talk Video)
• Hill, Rao, Artiga & Ranji, 2025, Racial Disparities in Maternal and Infant Health: Current Status and Key Issues

2.2. The Pandemic and its Lingering Effects on Women’s Health

• United Nations , 2020, COVID-19 and Ending Violence Against Women and Girls
• Center for Reproductive Rights, 2021, Guaranteeing Access to Sexual and Reproductive Health Services during the COVID-19 Pandemic and Beyond

2.3. Measuring Women’s Sexual and Reproductive Health

• D’Ignazio & Klein, 2020, Introduction: Why Data Science Needs Feminism (their book Data Feminism, MIT)

Data source to explore

• Center for Reproductive Rights, World’s Abortion Laws map

Assignments due

• Weekly Response #2 due Friday(for initial post) & Sunday(for peer-response) 11:59pm (PT) on Canvas

Week 3: Women’s Rights and Labor (07/06/26 - 07/12/26)

In this lesson, we will examine how gender shapes the experiences people have in the labor force and in relation to the labor force. Especially, how a great deal of essential labor sits outside the formal labor force entirely. It addresses the key role of care labor—often performed by women—in supporting other forms of labor, as well as the tendency for care work to be uncounted and undervalued. It also brings an intersectional lens to care work to consider how middle- and upper-class women in the paid workforce often rely on care labor performed by intersectionally-marginalized women. We close with persistent gender wage and opportunity gaps in the formal labor force, and ask whether the indicators we use to track these gaps actually capture what matters.

3.1. Care work as Foundational Labor

• UN Economist Network, New Economics for Sustainable Development: Purple Economy (Care Economy +) (read until “Policy Recommendation”)
• Optional video: Ai-jen Poo, “The Work That Makes All Other Work Possible” (TED, ~15 min)

3.2. Global Care Chains and Intersectional Labor

• Parreñas, 2020, Migrant Filipina Domestic Workers and the International Division of Reproductive Labor
• Optional: Hondagneu-Sotelo & Avila, 1997, 'I'm Here but I'm There': The Meanings of Latina Transnational Motherhood

3.3. Women and Work, and What we Measure

• FP Analytics, Elevating Gender Equality in COVID-19 Economic Recovery: An evidence synthesis and call for policy action

Data source to Explore

• WEF Global Gender Gap Index country dashboard

Assignments due

• Weekly Response #3 due Friday(for initial post) & Sunday(for peer-response) 11:59pm (PT) on Canvas
• Research Assignment #1: Thesis statement due Sunday(07/12/26) 11:59pm (PT) on Canvas

Week 4: Women’s Rights and the Environment (07/13/26 – 07/19/26)

This lesson looks at the connections between the environment, natural resource management, access to clean water, and women's empowerment. We focus on the basic needs and infrastructure and how these provide the foundation for women’s attainment of rights and equal status. Clean water and sanitation are inextricably linked to women's empowerment. This lesson shows the need to ground rights reforms firmly in a larger discussion of access to basic life needs. We cannot build one without the other. The lesson explores global indicators related to climate change and identifies gender data gaps on the environment.

4.1. Water, Sanitation, and Basic Needs

• McDonald, Women and the Right to Water (speech, United Nations Human Rights Council)
• Data2x, 2023, Mapping Gender Data Gaps in the Environment and Climate Change (p. 1 – 11; read until “Responses to Climate Change)

4.2. Climate Change and Gender (a global lends)

• Arora-Jonsson, 2011, Virtue and Vulnerability: Discourses on Women, Gender, and Climate Change
• Data2x, 2023, Mapping Gender Data Gaps in the Environment and Climate Change (p. 12 – 24; read from “Responses to Climate Change)

4.3. Indicators and the gender data gap

• Merry, The Seductions of Quantification, Chap 2 (Indicators as a Technology of Knowledge)

Data source to explore

• World Bank Gender Data Portal — Environment indicators

Assignments due

• Weekly Response #4 due Friday(for initial post) & Sunday(for peer-response) 11:59pm (PT) on Canvas

Weeks 5 & 6: Women’s Rights, Conflict and Gender-Based Violence (07/20/26 – 08/02/26)

In this lesson, we will look into the issue of gender-based violence. The lesson is both historical and contemporary covering major innovations in international laws and domestic legal instruments regarding gender-based violence. Gender violence has always played a role in wartime atrocities, but we are beginning to enter a period when both perpetrators and victims are better understood. We focus on different angles: conflict related sexual violence (CRSV) and long-running effort to hold perpetrators accountable; the Women, Peace, and Security agenda (UN Security Council Resolution 1325 and its successors). The lesson also situates this examination of gender violence and human rights in a larger conversation on the role of data and data science in responding to this persistent violation. The lesson includes the opportunity to consider the role of an international court in adjudicating gender violence claims. The data lens this week focuses how violence against women became a countable category and what gets lost in that translation. We close by looking into what it means to measure rights violations in places where information itself is contested.

NOTES: For Week 5 (07/20/26 – 07/26/26), lecture videos will be uploaded, but no weekly response assignment for the week, for you to work on the research assignment #2 (Indicators)!

Week 6 (07/27/26 – 08/02/26) will also have lecture videos – that are more focused on the specific theme (gender-based violence and Women, Peace, and Security) and you would have to submit the weekly responses as usual (initial post due Friday 07/31/26 and peer-response due Sunday 08/02/26 on Canvas)

5.1. Measuring and defining gender-based violence

• Merry, The Seductions of Quantification, Chap 3 (Measuring Violence against Women)
• Merry, The Seductions of Quantification, Chap 4 (Categorizing Violence against Women: The Cultural Work of Commensuration)

5.2. International law, institutions and GBV

• Cichowski, 2016, The ECHR, Amicus Curiae and Violence Against Women

• UN Secretary-General, 2025, Annual Report on Conflict-Related Sexual Violence (p.1 – 8)

5.3. Women, Peace and Security

• Cohn, 2012, Women and Wars: Toward a Conceptual Framework
• Optional: UN Women, 25 years of the Women, Peace, and Security Agenda

Data source to explore

• Georgetown WPS Index

Assignments due

• Research Assignment #2 - Indicators due Sunday (07/26/26) 11:59pm (PT) on Canvas – follow instructions on Canvas.
• Weekly Response #5 due Friday 07/31/26(for initial post) & Sunday 08/02/26(for peer-response) 11:59pm (PT) on Canvas

Week 7: Women’s Rights and Trafficking (08/03/26 – 08/09/26)

The lesson for this week focuses on the issue of global trafficking and the effects on women’s rights. We will cover labor trafficking and sex trafficking and explore this phenomenon at the local, state and international level. Data collection and analysis of human trafficking patterns is particularly challenging. We will discuss new developments in data science in the area of trafficking and critically reflect on issues of measurement and policy development and impact.

6.1. Defining and Measuring Trafficking 

• Merry, The Seductions of Quantification, Chap 5 (Measuring the Unmeasurable: The US Trafficking in Persons Reports)
• Optional: 2025 TIP Report (Since the report is *very* long, feel free to check out the Methodology section and country narrative for your country of choice. You can select them by clicking the “Location” tab on the right)

6.2. Governance Effects of the TIP Report

• Merry, The Seductions of Quantification, Chap 6 (Knowledge Effects and Governance Effects of the Trafficking in Persons Reports)

• Optional: US Department of State, 2025, The Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Trafficking in Persons

Data source to explore

• US TIP Report tier rankings

Assignments due

• Weekly Response #6 due Friday(for initial post) & Sunday(for peer-response) 11:59pm (PT) on Canvas

Week 8: Women’s Rights and Technology (08/10/26 – 08/16/26)

Technology, data, and AI are reshaping the terrain of women’s rights more quickly than the law and the indicator infrastructure can keep up. This week examines three areas in which that shift is most visible. Starting with algorithimic bias and the way large-scale AI systems are encoding gendered (and racialized) patterns in everything from hiring to healthcare. We turn to tech-facilitated gender-based violence as a frontier policy domain. We close with the gendered politics of digital surveillance and the digital divide, drawing throughout on the Data Feminism framework.

7.1 Algorithmic bias and AI as a gender-rights issue

• D’Ignazio & Klein, 2020, Chapter 1: The Power Chapter (their book Data Feminism, MIT) (pp.21-47)
• MIT Media Lab, Gender Shades Project

7.2 Tech-facilitated gender-based violence

• Dunn, 2020, Technology-Facilitated Gender-Based Violence: An Overview

7.3 Digital divide, surveillance, and gender

• UNESCO, 2024, Challenging Systematic Prejudices

Data source to explore

• ITU Gender Digital Divide indicators
  • https://www.itu.int/itu-d/reports/statistics/2024/11/10/ff24-the-gender-digital-divide/

Assignments due

• Weekly Response #7 due Friday(for initial post) & Sunday(for peer-response) 11:59pm (PT) on Canvas
• Research Assignment #3 – Presentation(video recording) due 08/12/26 11:59pm on Canvas

Week 9: Conclusions (and Research Paper workshop) (08/17/26 – 08/21/26)

8.1. Conclusion: What does Quantification do for Women’s Rights?

• Merry, The Seductions of Quantification, Chap 8 (Conclusions)

8.2. Research paper workshop – Open Door

• No new readings – freely join me over Zoom to talk about your research paper
• Date and time: TBD

Assignments due

• Research Paper due 08/19/26 11:59pm (PT) on Canvas