Roadmap for Women’s Economic Empowerment in India

Investing in women’s economic empowerment is intrinsic to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). It sets a direct path towards gender equality, poverty eradication, and inclusive economic growth. Yet despite the important progress that has been made in these areas, large gender gaps in economic opportunities and outcomes still remain across all countries and regions. Therefore, in the context of the 2030 Agenda, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon announced the first-ever High-Level Panel for Women’s Economic Empowerment. The Panel, comprised of influential leaders from various fields of government, business, academia, and civil society, made action-oriented recommendations on how to improve economic outcomes for women in the context of the Global Goals for Sustainable Development, promoting women’s leadership in driving economic growth, and galvanizing political will power.

Post the UN Women’s Executive Director’s consultation with the representatives of various informal sector constituencies in 2019 in India, an Expert Working Group (EWG) on Women’s Economic Empowerment was constituted to develop a National Roadmap to contextualize the recommendations of the Report of the High Level Panel on Women’s Economic Empowerment to the Indian context. Chaired by the Self Employment Women’s Association (SEWA) Bharat and co-chaired by UN Women’s Office for India, the EWG came up with the contextualized recommendations identifying key advocacy and programmatic priorities for strengthening the rights of women workers in the informal sector in India.