Increasing women’s economic role is important for India says UN Women Executive Director Michelle Bachelet

New Delhi - “We know that increasing women’s economic role is important for India and it’s good for women and good for business,” said Michelle Bachelet, United Nations Under Secretary- General and Executive Director of UN Women at an interaction with leaders from Business, Science and Civil Society jointly organized by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and UN Women.

Ms Bachelet congratulated CII for being a key actor in India’s rapidly growing economy and said that the world would continue to look to India to take the lead in achieving the goals of economic growth and sustainable development. She said that “it was about engaging the productive capacity, creativity and talent of half the population and maximizing their role and rights as formal sector workers in agriculture, manufacturing and service sectors as well as increasing their purchasing power as consumers”.

In a focused speech, Ms Bachelet urged industry to reflect on the problems of jobless growth. “In India, 79% of rural women work in agriculture. Yet more than 90% of them are in the informal sector, with little organisation, almost no social protection, and negligible land ownership (only 9%),” she said.

Ms Bachelet emphasized that the most important partnership the UN has with the private sector is the UN Global Compact Women’s Empowerment Principles. These are a set of 7 principles offering practical guidance on concrete actions that businesses can take to empower women. Globally, 400 CEOs have publicly declared their commitment to these principles.

Smt Praneet Kaur, Minister of State, Ministry of External Affairs , Government of India thanked CII for this important initiative and said that she deeply appreciated its leadership in promoting women’s empowerment in the private sector.

Pointing out that India was not just the largest, but also the one of the most representative democracies in the world, the Minister elaborated on important Government initiatives such as reservation of seats for women at the Panchayat level which has lead to the development of a vibrant grass roots democracy at the village level, and is an important step in enabling women to have political power. She also said that there was a focus on gender specific schemes in the 5 year plans. Gender budgeting laws were going to be integral to the development agenda.

Tracing CII’s journey from a focus on competitiveness and profitability to encompass a more broad based agenda that included CSR, Affirmative Action, Health and Education, Backward Region Development, Skills Training to help create a new paradigm of equitable, sustainable growth, Mr Subodh Bhargava, Past President, CII and Chairperson, Tata Communications Ltd., shared CII initiatives to both empower women at the workplace, as also marginalized women at community level in rural and underprivileged urban areas. In this context, he mentioned that CII would be privileged to join hands with UN women to take the critically important agenda of women’s empowerment forward.

There was lively participation from Government representatives, thought leaders, civil society organizations, representatives from academia, the scientific community and leading corporates at the meet. Recent studies regarding the “Broken pipeline”, Government statistics, and anecdotal evidence, all pointed to women being very poorly represented in the organized sector, and almost negligible at senior levels. Various strategies to resolve these problems, worldwide, and in specific organizations were mentioned.

There was a consensus that these issues needed to be addressed with urgency so that women, who comprised fifty percent of the population could live a life of equality and empowerment.

UN Women is the UN organization dedicated to gender equality and the empowerment of women. A global champion for women and girls, UN Women was established in South Asia to accelerate progress on meeting their rights worldwide.