Legislating for impact – Scaling up the use of temporary special measures for de facto gender equality in agrifood systems
At a time of accelerating change and increasing pressures on rural livelihoods, achieving substantive equality between women and men has never been so imperative.
The Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW Committee) has on several occasions reminded States Parties to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) of their obligation to improve the position of women to one of “de facto” or “substantive” equality with men (CEDAW Committee, 2004, 2016, 2018). Indeed, there is a critical difference between equality of rights under the law, and equality of opportunity to enjoy and exercise these rights in practice. This difference has often been overlooked on the assumption that the absence of direct discrimination in the law leads to equality in practice.
This Legal Brief "Legislating for Impact" builds on a Legal Paper entitled Achieving de facto gender equality in land, forest and fisheries tenure – Scaling up the adoption of temporary special measures in national legal frameworks (Kenney, 2022). Specifically, it identifies ways that government authorities, policymakers, parliamentarians, lawyers and development actors can use temporary special measures (TSMs) to achieve substantive gender equality in agrifood systems.
Read the Legal Brief here.