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Defining ‘Gender’ Across Europe: A Linguistic Analysis of the Definition, Translation, and Interpretation of the Word ‘Gender’ from the Beijing Declaration to the Istanbul Convention

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Abstract

The present work discusses the complex nature of the term ‘gender’ in legal discourse, in the wake of the recent pushbacks that the 2011 Istanbul Convention has received from anti-feminist movements and nations that have not signed/ratified the document or have withdrawn from it. Though its original aim was to protect women’s rights, the debate has eventually surfaced deeply-rooted problems linked to gender-related vocabulary. For this reason, the study will analyse the use of the terms ‘gender’ and ‘sex’ in the 1995 UN Beijing Declaration, the 1998 Rome Statute, and the 2011 Istanbul Convention, from a synchronic and diachronic perspective. It aims to provide a critical comparison of the definitions, translations, and interpretations of the term ‘gender’, in an attempt to overcome some of the issues involved in the harmonisation of EU documentation, which could certainly help guarantee fundamental rights and convince more states to sign/ratify the Convention, or at least, not allow them to use issues not related to women’s rights to not accept the document. The interpretation of gender-related violence is still ‘in progress’, and the lack of harmonisation could eventually hinder fundamental human rights instead of helping the Istanbul Convention save lives.

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Change history

  • 21 January 2023

    The words indicating tables position “below”, “:” needs to be removed from the published version.

Notes

  1. All the translations of the words ‘sex’ and ‘gender’ used throughout the work have been retrieved from the versions of the texts included in the corpus, available online at the Council of Europe’s website https://www.coe.int/en/web/conventions/full-list?module=treaty-detail&treatynum=210 and from the European Institute of Gender Equality (EIGE) thesaurus, available at https://eige.europa.eu/thesaurus [18]. The author would like to thank  Prof.s Luca D'Anna, Donata Di Leo, and Donatella Guida for their specialised support for Arabic, Russian, and Chinese.

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This research has not received any grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

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  1. Dipartimento Asia, Africa e Mediterraneo, Università di Napoli ‘L’Orientale’, P.zza S. Domenico Maggiore, 12, 80134, Napoli, NA, Italy

    Giuseppina Scotto di Carlo

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Correspondence to Giuseppina Scotto di Carlo.

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Scotto di Carlo, G. Defining ‘Gender’ Across Europe: A Linguistic Analysis of the Definition, Translation, and Interpretation of the Word ‘Gender’ from the Beijing Declaration to the Istanbul Convention. Int J Semiot Law 36, 1217–1238 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11196-022-09944-z

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