 The cumulative result of these efforts has been to globalize both the issues and the approaches to them. Providing a global perspective encourages conditions favorable to the conceptual revision needed for legal reform. As nations join and sign international conventions and treaties that increasingly include rights for women, feminists are supplied with a foundation from which to argue that local laws must comply with these international commitments. For example, signing the Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women implies that a nation is committed to enacting and enforcing laws against violence toward women. Ratifying the U.N. Declaration of Political and Civil Rights implies that a nation is committed at a minimum to universal suffrage and more generally to equal citizenship. Becoming a state party to CEDAW affirms support for equal human rights and for elimination of all forms of discrimination against women. Although a number of states expressed reservations in their acceptance of CEDAW, the US did not. Thus, international law and treaty commitments can be used to argue for national or local legal reform (Schneider 2004; Peters &amp; Wolper 1995).