2025/10/16 by Marie Hulthin · 1 voice
Social Sciences · #Discrimination and Equality Law #Gender Politics and Representation #Human Rights and Development
paper · doi:10.1332/25151088y2025d000000109
openalex publication_date 2025/10/16 · openalex created_date 2025/10/22 · openalex updated_date 2026/05/21
This article examines how United Nations human rights treaty bodies clarify international gender norms, focusing on the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). It conceptualises treaty bodies as norm practitioners and proposes a three-part model of norm clarification: interpretive pronouncements, strategic framing and normative reinforcement. Applying this model to a qualitative content analysis of 185 state-specific recommendations (2018–23), the article shows how CEDAW invokes, shapes and reinforces the norm of intersectionality. Intersectionality is embedded through legal interpretation, tailored framing and repeated references to treaty provisions and soft-law instruments. Regional variation reveals strategies that respond to differing institutional, political and legal environments. The article contributes to scholarship on international law, human rights and feminist global governance by modelling and empirically illustrating the process through which treaty bodies clarify abstract gender norms and render them actionable and politically resonant.