ON JULY 30, the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted to send the international Convention for the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women to the Senate floor for a vote on ratification. If all goes well, the Senate will take up the matter this fall, more than 20 years after President Carter signed the treaty and recommended approval of the international convention on women's equality.

If President Bush has his way, however, there will be more twists in the road to ratification. After initially supporting the convention, the administration is now backpedaling - a political move by Bush to shore up his conservative base.

As one of the few countries in the world that have failed to ratify the convention and formally endorse women's equality rights, the United States is keeping company with - and giving cover to - the likes of Afghanistan and Somalia. US ratification would have a positive effect on the international dynamic, further isolating those countries that truly deny women equal rights and substantially increasing the international pressure available to promote constructive change.

The treaty requires that states ratifying the convention on women's equality take action in all fields - ''civil, political, economic, social, and cultural'' - to guarantee the human rights of women. In many areas, the United States is already an international leader. Women here have had full rights to own property for several decades, and women's civic participation as voters and officeholders extends back even further.

In other areas addressed by the convention, such as education or child care, there is room for improvement. A recent study by the National Women's Law Center shows that high school girls are still often excluded from vocational classes 30 years after Title IX barred discrimination in education. Similarly, the United States lags behind many other industrialized countries in its support of child care for working parents.

But conservative charges that ratification of the convention would give other nations control over US domestic policy reflect a misunderstanding of the ratification process. International human rights law develops through a dialogue between nations about values and cultures. And countries engage in this dialogue when they participate in the process. In the case of the convention on equality for women, participating nations submit periodic reports to an elected Human Rights Committee that then initiates a consultative dialogue with each nation on how they might make further progress. The assertion that this same Human Rights Committee could blatantly override US policy without our consent is baseless.

Moreover, ratification of the convention is not an all-or-nothing proposition. In fact, the United States has already staked out a series of reservations that would effectively ensure that no US laws would change as a result of ratification. One of the most significant reservations would make the convention non-self-executing. In other words, once ratified, it could not itself be used as a basis for challenging domestic laws. Instead, it could be implemented federally only through additional legislation enacted by Congress. While often criticized as undermining the treaty process, this reservation does blunt the arguments espoused by conservative critics of the convention. Clearly, even if the convention is is ratified, the United States will continue to assert sole control over its domestic policy.

In short, by ratifying the convention, the United States would simply be recommitting itself to women's equality and signaling its willingness to participate in the global dialogue with 169 other ratifying nations about how to achieve that goal. Increasingly, the line between domestic rights and international rights is blurred; very little, if anything, is truly domestic. Women's rights in Afghanistan have an impact here, as do the conditions for women workers in Mexico, female genital mutilation in Africa, and prostitution in Indonesia.

The isolationists' view that the United States must ''go it alone'' is unworkable in the 21st century. In a global world, we need international dialogue to move forward on the more difficult problems of implementing women's human rights here and abroad. If the Senate ratifies the convention on women's equality this fall, the United States will finally join the rest of the world in facilitating and hopefully leading that dialogue.

Martha F. Davis is an associate professor at Northeastern University School of Law.

© Copyright 2002 Globe Newspaper Company

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