Whose Rights Are Human Rights? The Gender Gap between Russian Feminist, LGBT, and Human Rights Networks

Abstract

Chapter 4 explores the inter-network dynamics between the human rights and women’s rights communities in Russia, and how the uneasy relationship between these two sectors of civil society helps keep Russian women’s sex-based discrimination claims from percolating up to the ECtHR. We draw upon our interviews with feminist activists and human rights activists in Russia to shed light on the experiences of feminist activists within the human rights and international litigation communities in Russia. We find that the separation between women’s rights and traditional human rights networks in Russia has until recently excluded feminist lawyers from learning how to take cases successfully to the ECtHR through legal training. We compare the experiences of feminist activists and the reception of Russian human rights NGOs (nongovernmental organizations) to gender-based claims of human rights violations to the strikingly different experiences of LGBT rights activists who have found common cause with human rights organizations in Russia in trying to contest hate crimes and other rights violations in court.