A/HRC/26/39 enhancement of women’s legal literacy, including poor and rural women, is necessary to ensure women’s equal access to judicial remedies. 21. The gender-specific application of emerging international standards of the state obligation to provide mechanisms of accountability for violations of economic and social rights, including courts and quasi-judicial bodies, still requires grounded elaboration. Promising developments exist. With regard to the state obligation of due diligence for human rights violations by corporations, the Guidelines for multinational enterprises of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development apply corporate conduct standards requiring non-discrimination in the selection, promotion and dismissal of women. The extraterritorial obligations of States, articulated in the Maastricht Principles adopted in 2011 by a group of experts in international law and human rights, have been applied by General Recommendation No. 30 of the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women to women’s rights in conflict prevention, conflict and post-conflict situations. 22. National human rights institutions can play an important role in ensuring accountability for violations of women’s rights in economic and social life. However, there is little evidence of this occurring in practice, and no mechanism to review the genderresponsiveness of these institutions is in place. 23. Accountability for States’ fulfilment of women’s economic and social rights is carried out in some countries through gender budgeting and gender-mainstreaming state budgetary allocations. The effectiveness of review and monitoring requires governmental transparency and meaningful access to decision-making processes on national and local budgets. 8. Intersectionality and poverty 24. Although women at all economic levels, in high-, middle- and low-income countries, suffer from discrimination, they have primary responsibility for the provision of care and are victims of violence. Women are not a homogenous group, and their experience varies greatly between regions, countries, socioeconomic classes within countries and their identities as members of minorities, migrants, girl children, older women, or on account of single parenthood, disabilities or sexual identity, among others. 25. A crosscutting issue in women’s life cycles is their vulnerability to poverty, especially when they are from minority communities. As recommended by the ILO and the Report of the Social Protection Floor Advisory Group chaired by Michelle Bachelet, social protection floors are vital tools to reduce women’s poverty and improve women’s level of economic empowerment. C. Macroeconomic policy, economic crisis, austerity measures and the post-2015 agenda5 26. The correlation between income and development and gender equality is well established. Both theory and empirical evidence indicate that empowering women means a more efficient use of a nation’s human capital endowment and that reducing gender inequality enhances productivity and economic growth. 5 This section draws upon the background paper by Mayra Gomez. See also the bibliography list for this section. 7