[googlopharm]

In the poll, I have only 3 categories : legal rights (set by law), intelligence and physical abilities. I completely understand your points, but I think that discrimination, be it against women or on racial grounds, does not fit in the category of legal rights, except if the law specifically give unequal rights to men and women or different ethnic groups. Men and women may have different rights (e.g. different retirement age), but I am not sure whether all the combined differences are always unequal.

I was approaching the idea from another angle. In other words, not what things should be like, but what they are like. Therefore I was suggesting that legal instruments can be conceived as unable to protect the rights of individuals because such inequalities do in fact exist.

Alternatively, if you look at it from the perspective of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights then discrimination is covered by the law, asuming one respects international law.

In regards to domestic laws which are disriminatory, consider Syria, where a man is entitled by law to kill his wife in the case of infidelity, but a woman has no such rights.

I can't think of any law favouring men only in Western countries.

That's what I meant in saying "idealised states", but I tried to avoid the terms 'democracy' or 'Western'.

Would you consider the glass ceilings in pay scale existent in most Western countries a discriminatory law? Perhaps not a law per se but a regulation ?

Now that I think about it, women may enjoy more rights in some Western countries, as they avoid conscription

Do you mean women have more rights in this case because they have the right to not be in the military? I daresay that in most countries where there is conscription, women generally do not on the other hand have the right to serve in combat military roles, so one right is traded for another. A good deal, I wonder?