The Washington state legislature approved a measure last week urging the US Senate to ratify the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), the 1979 treaty that bans gender discrimination. The state Senate voted 33 to 14 for approval of the joint memorial (see PDF) in March and the state House voted last week to approve the memorial in a 74 to 24 vote. The US is the only industrialized western country that has not ratified CEDAW, which has been ratified by 185 countries. In a press release, Washington State NOW Board Member Linda Malanchuk-Finnan said “US ratification of CEDAW would include us in an international effort to recognize gender equality as necessary, women’s lives as valuable, and discrimination as solvable.” The memorial asks that “President Obama and Secretary Clinton place the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women in the highest category of priority in order to accelerate the treaty’s passage through the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the full United States Senate with the goal of ratification by the United States.”
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