Gender Stereotyping in International Human Rights Judicial Discourse

The talk explores the role and impact of prejudices, stereotypes and biases (PSB) in the discourse of international human rights courts. By taking the example of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), it illustrates how PSB are conceptualised by the ECtHR and what PSB it was able to identify when general assumptions raised by States parties to justify restrictions or denial of rights protected under the European Convention on Human Rights were successfully challenged. To this end, the talk focuses on PSB involving social groups who share a common gender and/or sexual orientation in the area of sexual, parental and reproductive rights, as a good example that shows the ECtHR’s possibly ambiguous approach and the continuous challenge of contrasting, also through language, the original and heteronormative interpretation of the ECHR.