This article discusses the implications of the adoption of rights-based approaches (RBAs) to development by the UN and its agencies, bilateral development agencies and international development NGOs. While this has allowed human rights language into the world of development programming, sceptical voices argue that the development industry and the state has taken the high-minded concerns of human rights instruments and moulded them to its own purposes and that not much is likely to change in policies and programmes. The article examines this complicated relationship between women, the state and the law.