Gender Equality Untethered?: CEDAW’s Contribution to Intersectionality

This chapter examines how the CEDAW Committee has adopted intersectionality at the normative level, yet it inconsistently applies intersectional analysis in practice. The CEDAW Convention aims to eliminate discrimination against women and achieve formal equality and to commit to substantive equality by requiring states to address social and cultural patterns that contribute to women's subordination. The Committee has adopted a multidimensional understanding of substantive equality and has increasingly recognized intersectional discrimination in its General Recommendations, such as General Recommendation 28 on core obligations. However, applying intersectionality to specific claims remains challenging, for example in two areas of the Committee's jurisprudence: domestic violence and non-refoulement. In domestic violence cases, the Committee often fails to explore how factors like disability, nationality and motherhood transform victims' experiences of violence. Despite the systemic nature of gender-based violence in countries of origin, non-refoulement claims not to be returned to those countries where the violence occurred are mostly declared inadmissible. Structural intersectional analysis helps uncover patterns of group disadvantage and injustice, yet the Committee tends to view multiple identities as compounding victims' vulnerabilities rather than transforming their experiences of discrimination. Two exceptions in the non-refoulement jurisprudence, R.S.A.A. v. Denmark and A. v. Denmark, demonstrate that attending to individuals' positioning can influence admissibility decisions. While the Committee makes intersectionality a normative priority, implementing consistent intersectional analysis in practice remains a challenge. Achieving CEDAW's transformative equality vision requires a rigorous intersectional approach that recognizes women's diversity and the complex ways in which discrimination is experienced. 

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