UN Women Report Urges Private Sector to Turn Gender Commitments into Concrete Equality
SDG 5: Gender Equality | SDG 8: Decent Work & Economic Growth
Institutions: Ministry of Women & Child Development
The UN Women 2025 report “Unfinished Business: Private Sector and Gender Equality” examines how many corporate gender equality pledges remain unimplemented and offers strategies to shift from intent to action. It documents persistent gaps in representation, pay equity, leadership access, flexible work, and anti-harassment norms across private firms globally. The report highlights how the private sector can act as a catalyst for equality by embedding accountability, data disclosure, inclusive culture, care policies, and men’s engagement.
The analysis includes country case studies, metrics on women in leadership, and examples of firms that have moved beyond lip service to systematic structural reforms. It also details barriers such as patriarchal norms, intersectional discrimination, opaque reporting, and weak legal enforcement.
For India, where women’s labour force participation and leadership presence remain low, the report offers a timely blueprint for private sector regulation, incentives, public–private initiatives, and reporting norms under frameworks like Business Responsibility & Sustainability Reporting (BRSR). It underscores that state policies must push firms from promise to practice in gender equality, especially as India scales ESG, social impact investing, and gender budgeting.
BRSR is SEBI’s mandatory ESG disclosure framework for India’s top 1,000 listed companies. It requires firms to report on environmental, social (including gender equality), and governance practices in a standardised format. It aims to make Indian companies accountable for their ESG performance. Importantly, it includes gender and inclusion indicators, making it a lever to track private sector progress on women’s participation, equal pay, and workplace safety.
Follow the full report here: UN Women – Unfinished Business: Private Sector and Gender Equality, 2025