464 Between Yesterday and Tomorrow (1914– )At the same time, though, Charlesworth has held back from endorsing
the thesis that there is necessarily any intrinsically and ineluctably feminist
version of international law. She looks forward “to the day when issues of sex
and gender will become less relevant,” with the concerns of “humanity” be-
ing correspondingly more signifi cant. She also concedes that international
law has not been a major oppressor of women— indeed, that international
law “gives much greater attention to the position of women than almost any
national legal system.”
If the value of the various rival conceptual approaches are to be judged in
terms of observable impact in the real world, then feminism would surely
score at or near the top. Concern over the victimization of women in armed
confl ict, for example, was refl ected in the 1990s, with the inclusion of rape
as a potential component of crimes against humanity in the statutes of both
the Yugo slavia and Rwanda Crimes Tribunals. Rape, along with sexual vio-
lence in general, was included in the Rome Statute’s defi nition of crimes
against humanity. Furthermore, the Rome Statute’s provision on war crimes
also expressly included sexual violence
In addition, women steadily, if slowly, gained a higher prominence within
the international legal profession in the years aft er 1970. Most conspicuously,
they gradually became more prominent in international- law positions in law
faculties and on courts and tribunals. Th e fi rst woman ascended the World
Court bench in 1985, when Suzanne Bastid, from France, was selected as a
judge ad hoc by the Tunisian government, for an off shore boundary case
against Libya. Th e fi rst woman elected to a regular term on the Court was
Rosalyn Higgins, from Great Britain, a professor at the London School of Eco-
nomics. She was elected in 1995. In 2012, there were two women (of fi ft een
judges) on the World Court, one (of twenty- one) on the Law of the Sea Tribu-
nal, ten (of eigh teen) on the International Criminal Court, and two (of thirty-
four) on the International Law Commission. Women also achieved top posi-
tions in various international organizations, including the World Health
Or ga ni za tion, UNESCO, and the IMF. Th e key UN High Commission
posts— for refugees and human rights— have also been held by women. Male
domination of the international legal world was certainly not a thing of the
past by the early twenty- fi rst century. But it had been signifi cantly reduced.