The disadvantages, discrimination and subordination suffered by women globally have been well documented in a variety of contexts. Yet the issue of women’s human rights has, until relatively recently, been neglected in international law. The instruments composing the International Bill of Human Rights contain general non-discrimination clauses which include the prohibition of discrimination on the basis of sex or gender, whereby the rights within these instruments are held to be applicable to everyone, regardless of, inter alia, sex. As this chapter will discuss, these generic non-discrimination clauses have, in a number of ways, proved inadequate to capture the specific nature of violations suffered by women and to provide adequate protection. Women’s human rights are an overarching phenomenon touching on all aspects of the international human rights framework. The importance of addressing human rights issues as they specifically pertain to women and others suffering disadvantage or oppression within gender-based power structures, has now been widely recognised.

This chapter explores Elizabeth Bishop’s animal poems within an ecofeminist framework, referencing her subversion of traditional religious teachings when engaging with animal otherness. Bishop’s incarnations of female animals in “Brazil, January 1, 1502,” “The Moose” and “Pink Dog” are discussed in contention with her more typical casting of animals and nature as male. With a focus on “Rainy Season; Sub-Tropics,” her use of anthropomorphism and her manipulation of boundaries is suggested as a means of traversing the expectation of what is human and what is animal. Her encounters with animal otherness are considered as reaffirmations of human selfhood and, at the same time, as gestures toward an idea of spiritual otherness. The chapter culminates with an in-depth analysis of “Roosters,” drawing together the ideas of female and animal otherness, while examining the suggestion of transcendence through nature.