CEDAW Article 3: Requires states to take active steps toward women's advancement

What it does

Article 1 defines discrimination. Article 2 obligates states to eliminate it. Article 3 does something different from both. It obligates states to actively build toward women's equality, not just remove what stands in the way of it.

What it states

States Parties shall take in all fields, in particular in the political, social, economic and cultural fields, all appropriate measures, including legislation, to ensure the full development and advancement of women, for the purpose of guaranteeing them the exercise and enjoyment of human rights and fundamental freedoms on a basis of equality with men.

It's the only one of the three articles that never uses the word discrimination. It's written entirely in the language of building measures, development and advancement, rather than the language of harm.

The vehicle article

Because Article 3 is broad and open-ended rather than specific, it functions differently than the rest of the Convention. The CEDAW Committee doesn't usually lean on it alone. It's typically invoked alongside other articles, to ground obligations on issues that don't have their own dedicated clause: violence against women, the pressure on states to withdraw reservations, the requirement to build effective national machinery for women's advancement. When something new comes up that CEDAW's drafters in 1979 didn't anticipate, Article 3 is often the article that stretches to cover it. It functions as the entry point for new protections, not just a summary of the old ones.

No reservations

Unlike Article 2 or Article 16, Article 3 draws almost no reservations from any state party. States object to specific, enforceable commitments like a repeal duty, a custody rule, an inheritance formula. It's much harder to object to "take appropriate measures to ensure women's advancement," because the obligation doesn't require a state to give up anything concrete, only to keep doing something. It's the article every country can agree to, precisely because it's the hardest one to hold anyone to.