Smashing the patriarchy: international law should be doing more

The concept of “patriarchy” has been both a call to action and an analytical tool for feminist understandings of women’s place in the world as we know it. Over the past 100 years, feminist activists have made signs, worn on their chests, or loudly exclaimed the mantra: “smash the patriarchy”. In this article Cassandra Mudgway presents analysis on how patriarchy is used in international law and by treaty monitoring bodies, cautioning against limiting the scope and meaning of patriarchy by only associating it with some beliefs and practices and not also seeing it as a system of power.