A BIT of help? The divergent effect of bilateral investment treaties on women’s rights

Abstract What effect do bilateral investment treaties (BITs) have on women’s rights? We argue that BITs have divergent effects on women’s rights dependent on the type of women’s rights examined. We posit that BITs have a negative effect on women’s economic rights in host states because of an initial “locking in” effect, whereby states seek to become more attractive to potential bilateral partners by decreasing the quality of conditions prior to signing a BIT. Host states then become reluctant to prosecute foreign investors due to the threat of legal arbitration, which further enables foreign investors to engage in women’s rights violations. In response to the possibility of unrest generated by the BITs, host states then seek to improve women’s political rights, compensating women for the decreasing quality of economic rights in turn. In testing these assertions, our expectations are broadly and consistently confirmed.