Do Our Laws Promote Gender Equality?

In the past three decades - since the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) - the nations of the East and Southeast Asia region have enacted many laws establishing gender equality standards and guaranteeing gender equality and non-discrimination. Worldwide, UNIFEM has supported gender equality advocates in Governments and civil society organizations in conducting legal reviews of national laws for compliance with CEDAW and pursuing legal reforms that advance gender equality. Yet ample instances remain of laws that explicitly discriminate against women on the basis of their sex. Many Governments believe that gender-neutral laws benefit women and men equally, while in fact - due to deeply rooted structural, institutional, social, and cultural barriers for women - the opposite is often true. Therefore, advocates for gender equality must persist in their endeavour to identify legislation that is inconsistent with CEDAW, propose necessary corrections, and help create stronger legal frameworks for gender equality. To assist in this compound task, UNIFEM has developed a handbook - Do Our Laws Promote Gender Equality? - for CEDAW-based legal reviews, providing practical, step-by-step guidance regarding critical review of national laws, and incorporating a set of indicators developed and tested through actual legal reviews.