What is gender-responsive legislation? Using international law to establish benchmarks for labour, reproductive health and tax laws that work for women

ABSTRACT For decades, the world has seen legal, policy and practical interventions to advance women’s rights. Yet there is no country in the world where women and men are equal. In pursuit of such equality, this article promotes the relatively obvious and simple strategy of embedding international women’s rights norms into domestic legislation. While acknowledging the limitations of the binary approach to the rights of men and women as reinforced by the CEDAW Convention, the article draws from international law to offer standards for domestic legislation in three areas: reproductive health, labour law and taxation. Across those areas, concrete benchmarks for gender-responsive legislation are provided, as well as examples of what constitutes neutral, blind and regressive provisions. While acknowledging the limits of the law in disrupting the political and economic structures of society, this article offers a framework that can enable legislators and legal systems to utilise international law to deliver domestic laws that work for women.