As the engine for jobs, innovation and investment, business has a critical role to play in advancing gender equality and empowering women to reach their full potential and has proven crucial to innovation, productivity and market growth.
To guide business on empowering women and advancing gender equality in the workplace, marketplace and community, the UN Global Compact and UN Women developed the Women’s Empowerment Principles (WEPs), launched in 2010. The Seven Principles offer a holistic framework based on real-life practices for business to advance gender equality and women’s empowerment. Beyond positive impacts for a company’s direct operations, implementing the WEPs contributes to a range of targets under the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). To date, over 1,800 CEOs from around the world have signed the CEO Statement of Support and have committed to continuous leadership and improvement on gender equality and women’s empowerment.
With the achievement of a critical mass of WEPs signatories, it became crucial to provide further guidance on what WEPs implementation looks like in practice. Rooted in good practices from around the world and real-life experience, the Women’s Empowerment Principles Gap Analysis Tool (WEPs Tool) was developed to provide businesses with a free, user-friendly and confidential self-assessment of their performance on women’s empowerment and gender equality. It was launched in March 2017 after consultations with over 190 companies and provides insights and data on the extent to which businesses are integrating gender into their policies, programs, metrics and reporting.
