Girls face numerous challenges in exercising their right to education. Attendance for girls in secondary and tertiary schools is significantly behind boys. Girls are routinely and often violently prevented from getting to school. However, a focus on access is not sufficient. If a right to education is to be an empowering and multiplier right, it is crucial to examine how the content, structure and delivery of education can perpetuate and reinforce gender inequalities. International human rights law has under-utilised potential for contributing to the realisation of gender equality in education. The Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), the prominent legal instrument on women's human rights, includes provisions that ensure rights within and through education. While this chapter focuses on a specific component of education, sex education, it should be placed in context and understood as part of the larger challenge of ensuring that a right to education promotes gender equality.

Sex education is required by all people, including boys and men, and specifically for disabled persons and sexual minorities. Many of the obstacles that limit sex education apply equally to boys, men and disadvantaged groups; however, there is a subset of obstacles that uniquely engage the gender relations between men and women. The UN Committee on Economic Social and Cultural Rights notes that ‘due to women's reproductive capacities’, it is essential that girls and women have the information on sexuality and reproduction to make meaningful decisions about their lives. Thus it is imperative to take an asymmetric approach and analyse the connection between sex education and the equality of women and girls. It is argued that the delivery of human rights-based sex education is a positive obligation on the state to fulfil girl's right to equal education and gender equality under CEDAW.

The first section of this chapter analyses the current challenges girls face in accessing human rights-based sex education. Sex education sharply brings into focus the discriminatory gender norms that influence and undermine a girl's right to education and the accountability challenges that are becoming increasingly pervasive throughout all of education. The second section uncovers the relationship between sex education and the state's positive obligation to achieve a right to education.