CEDAW/C/GC/36 IV. Scope of the general recommendation: the tripartite human rights framework 13. Education that empowers girls and women equips them with capacities to claim and exercise broader socioeconomic, cultural and political rights, on an equal basis with boys and men in their societies. To achieve gender equality all aspects of the education system, laws and policies, educational content, pedagogies and learning environments should be gender sensitive, responsive to the needs of girls and women and transformative for all. 14. The present general recommendation is grounded in a human rights framework for education, which is focused on three dimensions. The first is the right of access to education; the second, rights within education; and the third, the instrumentalization of education for the enjoyment of all human rights through education. The tripartite framework largely reflects the rights set out by the Special Rapporteur on the right to education in the framework on governmental obligations on school accessibility, availability, acceptability and adaptability 8 and referred to below. 15. The right of access to education involves participation and is reflected in the extent to which girls and boys and women and men are equally represented and the extent to which there is adequate infrastructure at the various levels to accommodate the respective age cohorts. Attendance, retention in school and transition from one level to another are indicators of the degree to which the right of access to education is respected. 16. Rights within education extend beyond numerical equality and are aimed at promoting substantive gender equality in education. They concern equality of treatment and opportunity, as well as the nature of gender relations between female and male students and teachers in educational settings. The equality dimension is particularly important, given that society shapes and reproduces gender-based inequalities through social institutions, and educational institutions are critical players in that regard. Instead of challenging entrenched discriminatory gender norms and practices, in many societies, gender stereotypes are reinforced through schooling and it maintains the gender order of society, expressed through the reproduction of the female/male and subordination/domination hierarchies and the reproductive/ productive and private/public dichotomies. 17. Rights through education define the ways in which schooling shapes rights and gender equality in aspects of life outside the sphere of education. The absence of such a right is particularly evident when education, which should be transformational, fails to significantly advance the position of women in the social, cultural, political and economic fields, thereby denying their full enjoyment of rights in those arenas. A central concern is whether certification carries the same value and social currency for women as for men. Global trends show that, in many instances, even where the educational attainment of males is lower than that of females, males occupy better positions in those arenas. 18. The present general recommendation is aimed at ensuring that regional disparities and within-country inequalities based on the multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination that prevent girls and women from enjoying rights to, within and through education are addressed and ultimately eliminated. The present general recommendation expands upon article 10 of the Convention and links it with all other articles and the relevant existing general recommendations to establish the correlation __________________ 8 4/23 See E/CN.4/1999/49. 17-19774