At a time of accelerating change and increasing pressures on rural livelihoods, achieving substantive equality between women and men has never been so imperative. States parties to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) have an obligation to achieve substantive gender equality. This Legal Brief builds on a Legal Paper entitled Achieving de facto gender equality in land, forest and fisheries tenure ? Scaling up the adoption of temporary special measures in national legal frameworks. It identifies ways that government authorities, policymakers, parliamentarians, lawyers and development actors can make use of temporary special measures (TSMs) to accelerate the achievement of substantive gender equality in agrifood systems.