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The introduction of a “Sub-Commission on the Status of Women” within the United Nations has led to the progressive development of legislation designed to promote women’s rights and to heighten the awareness of the international community on the subject. Indeed, the international community now includes the gender issue in its thematic conferences. The creation and the purpose of the new Sub-Commission are however strongly debated: its detractors protest against this “particular” right (granted only to women), considering it to violate the principle of universality of human rights. Its supporters retort that the “issue of women’s rights” would never have been considered in the international debate had specific institutions not been created. Also, the promotion of women’s rights has provoked other pre-existing divisions, which started during the Cold War between the opposing “blocs”, as well as between the North and the South. Since the nineties, however, the traditional structure of this debate, the theme of which is central to national policy in numerous States, has broken apart as dissension has emerged between traditionalist States and more progressist ones, notably on the issue of “procreation rights”.