Rights-Based Approaches: Empowering Women in Development Policy

Across the world, millions of women are denied land rights, excluded from political decision-making, and left unprotected by the very states meant to serve them. These are not just social failures – they are rights violations. That is the core argument behind the rights-based approach (RBA) to development: that gender inequality is not simply a problem of poverty or cultural habit, but a systemic breach of human rights that demands accountability, legal remedy, and structural change. Understanding this approach – and where it succeeds or falls short – is essential for anyone working toward genuine gender justice.

What is a rights-based approach? 🔗

A rights-based approach (RBA) to development is a framework that integrates international human rights standards into development planning, programming, and policy. Rather than treating women’s empowerment as a means to an economic end – such as boosting productivity or reducing poverty rates – the RBA insists that empowerment is a goal in itself, grounded in the inherent dignity and legal entitlement of every person.

At its core, the RBA identifies two key categories of actors: rights-holders (individuals and communities entitled to rights) and duty-holders (primarily states obligated to fulfill those rights). This distinction is critical. As the UN Division for the Advancement of Women explains, concerns, when conceived of as claims of human rights, become fundamental, immutable and priority claims – elevating them from the realm of State promises premised on good faith to a level of legal entitlement requiring national and international response. In other words, the RBA transforms a woman’s demand for equal pay, safety, or education from a request into a legally enforceable right.

The normative foundation of this approach lies in international human rights instruments. The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), adopted in 1979, is the most comprehensive of these – often described as an international bill of rights for women. CEDAW is based on the principle of “substantive equality,” which goes beyond equality of opportunity and looks at the actual conditions of women’s lives as the true measure of whether equality has been achieved. This matters because formal legal equality – having equal rights on paper – means very little if social, economic, and cultural barriers prevent women from exercising those rights in practice.

The RBA is also inherently holistic. It encourages people-centred and sustainable development approaches to planning and decision making, on the assumption that respect for individual human rights, dignity and gender equality must be the foundation of any civil, political, social action. This means a rights-based development programme cannot address girls’ access to education while ignoring forced marriage, or promote women’s health services while remaining silent on gender-based violence by law enforcement. Everything is connected.

Feminist perspectives on rights-based approaches 🔗

Feminist scholars and activists have engaged deeply with the RBA – both embracing its transformative potential and critiquing its structural limitations. The result is a rich, contested conversation about how rights-based frameworks operate in the real world, especially where state accountability is weak or patriarchal power is entrenched.

Where feminists find common ground with the RBA 🔗

Many feminists, particularly liberal and Western feminist traditions, have broadly supported international human rights frameworks as a basis for gender equality advocacy. Existing international human rights language and institutional arrangements have generally been viewed by Western liberal feminist movements as being capable – with some gender-responsive reforms – of adequately guaranteeing women’s equal human rights. For these advocates, the RBA provides a shared legal language through which women can demand accountability from governments, a tool that carries moral force and international legitimacy.

Feminist scholars have also valued how the RBA has legitimized women’s concerns within policy spaces. In contrast to “smart economics” and “investing in women” messaging that has dominated foreign aid discourse, the rights-based approach to gender equality and development (RBA) is fundamentally a political approach to development – one that insists women’s rights must be enforced regardless of whether they produce measurable economic returns. Feminists have long argued that tying women’s emancipation to market logic ultimately reduces women to instruments of development rather than recognizing them as rights-bearing subjects.

Where feminists critique the RBA 🔗

At the same time, significant feminist critiques challenge the limits of rights-based frameworks, especially when applied in a top-down, state-centric manner. One of the most enduring critiques concerns the public/private divide embedded in international human rights law. The feminist critique of human rights argues that the construction of human rights law is unsatisfactory for women because it reflects a male point of view – particularly through the division of human rights law into public and private spheres, where the private domestic sphere, to which women are often relegated, remains beyond effective state control.

This is far from a theoretical problem. As human rights continue to be perceived in international law as rights enforceable only against the State or its agents, a large area of gender discrimination and gender-based violence will continue to fall outside the area of effective enforcement – since gender-based violence occurs in the family and in the community, perpetrated by non-State actors or private individuals. Domestic violence, marital rape, and familial control over women’s reproductive choices are precisely the harms that most acutely shape women’s lives – yet they fall into the grey zone that state-focused rights frameworks struggle to reach.

Intersectional and postcolonial feminists add another layer of critique. Since the late 1980s, intersectional and postcolonial feminists have critiqued the failure of mainstream liberal feminist approaches to human rights to adequately observe and redress systems of oppression that are simultaneously racist, colonial and patriarchal. A rights framework developed largely in Western institutional contexts may not capture the lived experiences of women in the Global South, or women facing compounded disadvantages based on caste, ethnicity, disability, or sexuality. CEDAW itself has been criticized for an inconsistent approach to intersectionality, as it does not contain specific provisions addressing women’s intersectional identities, promoting a framework that characterizes women as facing only gender discrimination rather than also experiencing racism, classism, and heterosexism.

There is also the persistent problem of states ratifying rights instruments but failing to implement them. A “particularistic” or culturally relativist justification is frequently given by states that, at the time of ratification, enter general reservations on particular articles of treaties, resulting in treaty provisions being inapplicable or reinterpreted in a local context – a practice that has been of great concern to the CEDAW Committee. When states can selectively opt out of the very provisions meant to protect women, the legal force of the RBA is significantly diluted.

The role of state vs. non-state actors 🔗

The debate over who is most effective in advancing women’s rights through rights-based frameworks is one of the central tensions in gender and development theory. Both state and non-state actors play distinct, often complementary roles – and neither can achieve gender equality alone.

The state as a duty-holder 🔗

States carry the primary legal obligation under international human rights law. CEDAW legally binds all States Parties to fulfill, protect and respect women’s human rights – meaning states are responsible not just for their own actions but also for eliminating discrimination perpetrated by private individuals and organizations, extending to private life as well as public life. This expansive understanding of state responsibility is what gives the RBA its transformative potential: it does not allow governments to simply pass anti-discrimination laws and call the work done. They must actively dismantle the conditions that produce inequality.

The promotion of gender equality and the empowerment of women are intrinsic to UNDP’s human rights-based approach to development programming, which includes advocating for women’s and girls’ human rights, combating discriminatory practices, and challenging the roles and stereotypes that create inequalities and exclusion. When states are genuinely committed and well-resourced, they can create legal systems, budgets, and institutions that make rights tangible for ordinary women.

However, state capacity and political will are not uniformly available. In contexts where governments are themselves patriarchal, corrupt, or authoritarian, relying solely on the state to enforce women’s rights is at best naïve and at worst dangerous. This is where non-state actors become indispensable.

The irreplaceable role of civil society and NGOs 🔗

Non-governmental organizations and civil society have been instrumental in advancing the rights-based agenda where states have fallen short. Women’s NGOs are best known for the delivery of services to women in need and the organization of policy advocacy and public campaigns in pursuit of the social transformation required to achieve gender equality – and are essential partners of governments in the pursuit of gender equality.

NGOs have been influential in shaping the current global policy framework on women’s empowerment and gender equality, particularly the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, and continue to play an important role in holding international and national leaders accountable for the commitments they made. NGOs bring proximity to the communities they serve, grassroots legitimacy, and the flexibility to challenge harmful norms that formal legal instruments cannot easily reach.

The relationship between state and non-state actors is not purely cooperative, though. The OHCHR notes that the work of women human rights defenders is often seen as threatening the status quo and challenging traditional notions of family and gender roles – leading to stigmatization, ostracism, and hostility by state and non-state actors alike. In restrictive political environments, civil society organizations face legal suppression, harassment, or co-option by governments that prefer managed gender narratives to genuine accountability.

Scholars of aid localization also point out that local NGOs, while closer to communities, are not automatically feminist-aligned. Local organizations can be influenced by patriarchal norms and power structures ingrained within the community and may lack the resources, capacity, or inclination to challenge existing gender dynamics or prioritize the needs of women. The most effective rights-based programming therefore requires critical selection and capacity-building of local partners, not simply a transfer of responsibility from international to local actors.

Rights-based approaches in practice 🔗

Theory is only useful when it translates into real change. Across different regions, rights-based approaches have produced both significant victories and important lessons about what makes them work – or fail.

Rwanda: constitutionalizing gender equality 🔗

Rwanda is widely cited as one of the most striking examples of rights-based gender policy translating into structural change. Rwanda’s new constitution in 2003 introduced a 30 percent gender quota for all elected positions in government, paving the way for significant reforms led by women parliamentarians such as equal access to land ownership and labor laws for equal pay. The results have been remarkable. The percentage of women’s representation in Rwanda’s Chamber of Deputies increased to 63.8 percent following the 2024 legislative elections – the highest in the world – cementing Rwanda’s status as a global leader in women’s representation.

This was not simply a numbers game. Strong political will to mainstream gender into government programs, underpinned by institutional and policy reforms, has been key to Rwanda’s progress – including laws guaranteeing equal rights on land access, gender-responsive budgeting, and anti-discrimination legislation in political parties. Rwanda’s institutionalization of gender-responsive budgeting – making it a legal requirement, not a policy option – has been particularly noted as a best-practice model for enforcing accountability in resource allocation.

Yet Rwanda also illustrates the gap that can persist between formal rights and lived realities. Some researchers have raised the question of whether the significant legal, political and economic gains women have made have had any significant impact on traditional gender relations that historically subordinated women in Rwanda – noting that the transformative potential of strong, target-driven gender policies can be jeopardised by a focus on quantitative targets and limited scope for grassroots participation. In other words, constitutional quotas do not automatically change the social norms women navigate at the household and community level.

CEDAW and the cities for CEDAW movement 🔗

At the international level, CEDAW remains one of the most powerful rights-based instruments for gender equality. In countries that have ratified the treaty, CEDAW has proved invaluable in opposing the effects of discrimination, which include violence, poverty, and lack of legal protections, along with the denial of inheritance, property rights, and access to credit.

Where national governments have been slow to act, sub-national actors have stepped in. The Cities for CEDAW movement, launched in the United States, demonstrates how local governments can operationalize rights-based frameworks even without federal ratification. This movement seeks US cities to pass ordinances obligating them to abide by CEDAW principles, emphasizing that women’s rights are universal and binding rather than negotiable policy options – promoting broader cultural shifts toward equal access to and equity in health care, employment, economic development, and educational opportunities. San Francisco’s CEDAW ordinance, for instance, led to citywide changes including new telecommuting policies and expanded paid parental leave, demonstrating that rights-based tools can be adapted to local contexts with concrete results.

Southeast Asia: ratification and implementation gaps 🔗

In Southeast Asia, the ratification of CEDAW by all governments in the region has created a formal rights-based framework, but implementation gaps remain significant. While existing laws have been amended on domestic violence, sexual harassment, and anti-trafficking across many Southeast Asian governments, clarity is still lacking in many countries on the role of CEDAW in advancing women’s human rights – with many laws falling short of their objectives because of poor enforcement, limited capacity, and weak accountability. The Philippines is a case in point: it ratified CEDAW without reservation in 1981 and enacted comprehensive women’s rights legislation, yet women continue to face discrimination in contradiction with CEDAW principles, with women’s rights activists facing physical assault while protesting gender-based violence.

These cases collectively point to a crucial insight: the effectiveness of rights-based approaches depends not just on the quality of laws, but on the political environment, enforcement mechanisms, available resources, and the strength of civil society. Experience has shown that addressing gender equality and women’s empowerment requires strategic interventions at all levels of programming and policy making – from international treaty bodies to national legislatures to community-level advocacy organizations.

The human rights education dimension 🔗

One often overlooked element of effective rights-based work is education. Rights mean little to women who do not know they have them. A rights-based approach requires the development of human rights action plans and strategies covering all areas of national development, with human rights education and gender-sensitization at all levels as a critical dimension. This includes not just educating women about their legal entitlements, but sensitizing judges, police, health workers, and community leaders about their obligations to uphold those rights. Without this human infrastructure, even the strongest rights-based laws remain largely inaccessible to the women they are designed to protect.

Where does the rights-based approach go from here? 🔗

The rights-based approach to gender and development has come a long way from its origins in early UN human rights frameworks. Today, it informs the work of UNFPA, UNDP, UN Women, and hundreds of civil society organizations worldwide. Significant progress has been recorded globally, with 99 positive legal reforms implemented between 2019 and 2024 to remove discriminatory laws and establish gender equality frameworks. And yet, the promise of a world in which every woman and girl enjoys full gender equality, and where all legal, social, and economic barriers to their empowerment have been removed, remains unfulfilled.

The RBA’s greatest strength is that it refuses to treat women’s inequality as inevitable or culturally fixed. It insists that someone is accountable – a state, an institution, a system – and that accountability can and must be enforced. Its greatest vulnerability is the gap between codified rights and lived realities, a gap that widens when states have weak capacity, limited political will, or actively hostile agendas. Bridging that gap requires not just stronger laws but more participatory processes, better-resourced civil society, and a genuine commitment to hearing the voices of the women who are most marginalized within any given context. The RBA, at its best, is not a top-down mandate but a framework for accountability – one that is activated by people demanding what they are already owed.

What do you think? When states fail to enforce women’s rights, who should be held accountable – and through what mechanisms? And do you think international frameworks like CEDAW can ever be made culturally inclusive enough to protect all women equally, regardless of context?

References

1. https://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/cedaw/
2. https://www.ohchr.org/en/women/women-human-rights-defenders