Legal empowerment of women and girls: progress and challenges

The commission on legal empowerment of the poor (2008) estimated that four billion people on the planet could not use the law to improve their lives and livelihoods. Instead, they saw the law as punitive and therefore to be avoided. Half of these people, women and girls, suffer disproportionately and in specific ways that need special attention. This paper surveys the significant progress that women and girls have made in recent decades with respect to their legal rights but then goes on to identify the great distance still to be covered. Progress has been made, for example, with the right to education with respect to having more girls in school, to living healthier lives and having greater participation in the labourforce. Nevertheless, much more remains to be done in these areas but more so in having more voice and power in the political affairs of their countries, in control over income and assets, in vulnerability to violence at home and in their capacity to deal with shocks and stresses due to natural disasters and conflict. The paper will describe the benefits women were expected to gain from the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discriminations Against Women (CEDAW) and what has happened in practice. Finally, an agenda for action on legal empowerment of women and girls is presented.