The Blueprint for Business Leadership on the SDGs aims to inspire all business — regardless of size, sector or geography — to take leading action in support of the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). It illustrates how the five leadership qualities of Ambition, Collaboration, Accountability, Consistency, and Intentional can be applied to a business' strategy, business model, products, supply chain, partnerships, and operations to raise the bar and create impact at scale. The Blueprint is a tool for any business that is ready to advance its principled approach to SDG action to become a leader. This chapter relates specifically to SDG 5.
The Women's Empowerment Principles Gap Analysis Tool (WEPs Tool) helps companies benchmark their performance against the 7 WEPs Principles. It helps companies discover their contributions to improve gender equality and identifies areas that need improvement. This tool directly helps to advance SDG 5. The WEPS, a joint initiative of UN Global Compact and UN Women, were developed in 2010 to provide a holistic framework to empower women and girls in the workplace, marketplace, and community.
This Comment by Anita Riecher-Rössler explores the connections between goals 5 and goals 3: depression in women; the role of the sex hormones oestradiol and progesterone in anxiety, trauma-related, and stress-related disorders; schizophrenic psychoses in women; and violence against women, and its effects on mental health.
In this Comment, Louise Howard and colleagues review the mental health literature and report that many researchers are not considering or reporting the role of sex and gender within their studies. This “gender neutral” approach, they argue, is in fact gender biased, as it undermines scientific validity and efficiency, and means gender-sensitive treatments and services cannot be designed or delivered. The authors call for greater awareness of this issue by funders and journals, and gender parity in mental health research populations.
In the UK, gender pay gap reporting legislation will require large employers to publish their overall mean and median gender pay gaps from 2018. XpertHR highlights its useful tools including frequently asked questions relating to unequal pay, and legal guidance on the new legislation. The Regulations contribute to advancing SDG 10.4 to adopt policies, wage and social protection policies to progressively achieve greater equality.
Equality before the law is a fundamental principle of modern law, however, examining access to justice for men and women shows that women face certain barriers in accessing justice. This paper details a study in Turkey on the linkages between SDG 5 gender equality and SDG 16 peace, justice and strong institutions.
The Elsevier Foundation is committed to advancing SDG 5 and has developed a 3-year strategic partnership with Portia, an organisation that women and men have the same opportunities for engagement and advancement in science. Building on research drawn from recent Gender Summits, Portia will advance sex-gender sensitive research, innovation, development and deeper understanding through a series of annual SDG reports and the creation of a Gender Summit Consortium.
As part of the UK Government’s Women in Finance Charter, 72 firms have agreed to publish progress on gender equality annually, ahead of gender pay reporting Regulations in 2017. Sixty firms in the UK have committed to having at least 30% of women in senior roles by 2021. Thirteen finance companies are aiming to have complete gender parity in senior roles by 2021. These steps directly align with SDG 10.4 to adopt policies, wage and social protection policies, to progressively achieve greater equality.
The discussion links Principle 5 of the Women’s Empowerment Principles (WEPs), which encourages companies to expand on their business connections with women-owned enterprises, to advance Goal 5
More women are entering the oil and gas and petrochemical sectors – but there’s still a way to go. It’s all part of a wider drive to increase diversity in the workforce. This is important for advancing SDG 5.1 to end all forms of discrimination against all women and girls everywhere and SDG 5.5 to ensure women’s full and effective participation and equal opportunities for leadership at all levels of decision-making in political, economic and public life.
