A/HRC/35/29 legal, political, religious, social and cultural institutions. While this obligation applies to all aspects of life, patriarchal gender stereotypes are often firmly entrenched in laws and social norms governing family, and often reinforced by religious authorities. 52. Good practices in cultural and family life require a guarantee of women’s right to equality in autonomy and self-determination and the legal and social recognition of women as agents of cultural change. Legal and cultural norms that subjugate women to male control must be actively challenged and eradicated. States must endeavour to repeal all discriminatory provisions in the law, particularly those governing marriage and divorce, child-rearing, inheritance, freedom of movement, access to capital, credit and incomegenerating activities. In addition to the elimination of direct discrimination, good practices in this area require that States take active measures to support substantive equality through the law and long-term awareness-raising initiatives directed towards the eradication of patriarchal stereotypes and attitudes. Challenging discrimination: gender sensitive education for cultural change 53. The following case study originated in Eastern Europe, in a State that had undertaken a lengthy legislative and institutional reform process since gaining independence in 1991. In a predominantly patriarchal context, attempts to introduce and support legal and policy frameworks for gender equality had faced significant opposition. Subsequent to a review in 2009 by the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, the Government adopted a gender policy concept paper and strategic action plan for the period 2011-2015, including provisions for gender sensitization of teachers and educational curriculum. 54. In 2013, Parliament passed a law on the equal rights and equal opportunities of women and men. The law reiterated the constitutional guarantee of gender equality, defined gender discrimination and contained provisions against direct and indirect discrimination. However, the law generated a great deal of social controversy and backlash because of the perception that it represented an attack on “family values”. Women’s civil society organizations became targets of harassment and protests erupted, with demonstrators calling the law “national treason”. 55. The Government had achieved little progress in implementing the gender policy strategic action plan, owing in part to the public backlash and lack of resource allocation. A civil society organization from the women’s rights movement secured funds to launch a three-year project on gender sensitive education to address a social and cultural environment characterized by profound resistance to the concept of gender equality. 56. That civil society organization navigated the challenging context by building strategic partnerships with experts and Government. Together with educational experts, they developed a theoretical and practical educational guidebook entitled “Women and Men: Different but Equal”, which was subsequently approved for use by the Ministry of Education and Science. It supported the incorporation of gender curricula into mandatory courses, such as social studies, and included discussion of gender, reproductive rights and violence prevention. 57. In order to institutionalize gender-sensitive teacher training, advocates from civil society organizations convened meetings with government ministries, other such organizations, educators and experts to develop a training module on gender equality and gender violence in partnership with the National Institute of Education, the authority in charge of teacher training. Despite some school directors’ resistance, thousands of social science teachers were trained and the Institute is committed to institutionalizing the training. 58. According to evaluations, despite its short duration, the project’s focus on education is a promising practice for a number of reasons. First, what started as a civil society organization initiative attracted the institutional support of the National Institute of Education and the Ministry of Education and Science in the dissemination of the educational guidebook in schools, the development of the teacher training module and the roll-out of training sessions. In addition, the undertaking created a political space for civil 11