To many Americans, the words "women's human rights" conjure issues of burqas and honor killings in distant lands, only dimly understood. Not to Jim Horan, though. To him, they bring to mind his carpentry shop down on San Francisco's industrial fringe.

In truth, the macho, male-dominated culture of the "Yard," as it is called at the city's Department of Public Works, is probably not so different from many blue-collar workplaces around the country. Then again, none of them is governed by a United Nations treaty on gender equity.

When San Francisco adopted the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women in 1998, it put a unique twist on the issue of women's rights in America. Twenty-three years after President Carter signed CEDAW, the US Senate has not passed it. Indeed, San Francisco remains the only city or state that has codified the treaty into law.

To critics, it is a tool for feminists to promote abortion and a liberal agenda. To proponents, it is a global bill of rights for women. Now, with San Francisco finishing its five-year implementation plan, it offers America a look at how the guidelines - ratified by 170 countries - could change the nation.

For the most part, the changes have been incremental, such as the establishment of a women's support group at the Yard, notes Mr. Horan of Public Works. But the program's very existence here, to many, is the beachhead for a whole new way of thinking about problems of race, poverty, and gender in the United States: as matters of human rights that demand much greater attention.

Other cities are considering the San Francisco model, particularly Los Angeles. But even here, in a city considered by some the capital of the women's rights movement, the effort is showing the difficulty of changing old ways, as well as subtle but significant successes in improving women's lives.

"We refer to what's been happening in [San Francisco] to show what the power to human rights can be," says Kim Slote of the Wellesley Centers for Women in Massachusetts. "It's pushing the movement along to get human rights respected ... as not just something for the third world."

In some ways, CEDAW does seem like a document for the third world. The United States would not need to make any legal changes to adopt it: The Constitution and various antidiscrimination laws already surpass the standards of the 1979 convention.

But ratifying CEDAW, activists say, would provide a framework for reexamining fundamental issues of public policy - from hiring practices to building codes - through the lens of their impact on women.

San Francisco's experience bears that out. The primary goal of the CEDAW task force here has been to raise awareness about how every decision can affect women. Its operative words have been cajole, educate, and prod, not punish. It is not a regulatory board.

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