Summary

Since the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 75 years ago, and the adoption of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, 30 years ago, significant progress has been made in advancing the human rights of women and girls. Despite this progress, gender equality remains an unfulfilled promise, demanding renewed commitment and urgent action. In fulfilling its mandate, the Working Group on discrimination against women and girls focuses on addressing gender inequality affecting women and girls, recognizing the discrimination and disparities they face as manifestations of broader systemic patterns of inequality in political, legal, social, economic and cultural life. In the present guidance document, prepared pursuant to Human Rights Council resolutions 15/23, 41/6 and 50/18, the Working Group reflects on decades of jurisprudence, academic scholarship and interpretative work and, most importantly, on the advocacy and successes of women and girls who have boldly asserted and defended their rights alongside and within their communities and organizations.

In the present document, the Working Group reflects on the formal and substantive approaches to equality and the centrality of gender equality in international, regional and national laws, policies and practices and on the transformative pathways to achieving substantive gender equality and ensuring a life with dignity for all women and girls. Substantive gender equality has materialized in different ways historically, enabling diverse States to make meaningful progress towards fully respecting, protecting and fulfilling the rights of women and girls. In the present document, the Working Group recognizes the many contributors to those developments and introduces the CREATE framework, a feminist human rights-based tool to be used across the spectrum of challenges to gender equality. The framework provides a comprehensive and actionable road map for achieving transformative substantive gender equality; each letter in the name – CREATE – represents a pillar of action that States and other stakeholders are called upon to undertake, namely: (a) counter harmful social norms, discrimination, and violence; (b) redress socioeconomic disadvantages; (c) eliminate legal and structural barriers; (d) adopt proactive laws and policies; (e) transform institutionalized patriarchal power structures; and (f) enhance the participation and agency of women and girls.