Women’s businesses are key for achieving our Sustainable Development Goals

Global Goals Week is held annually alongside the UN General Assembly. It brings together over 170 partners across civil society, business, academia, and the UN system to accelerate action on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

To mark Global Goals Week 2024, our CEO, Dhivya O’Connor, is shining a light on the contributions women entrepreneurs make to the SDGs, especially Goal 5, gender equality, and how supporting them can fuel progress.

Women and girls are the most affected by lagging progress on the SDGs.

In 2015, world leaders agreed to 17 Global Goals, also known as SDGs, which aim to address the world’s most pressing issues. UN member states committed to working together to achieve these goals by 2030, but nine years later, barely any of them are on track. Goal 5, gender equality, is among the goals that have fallen short.

Global challenges such as conflict, the cost of living, and the climate crisis have held back progress for everyone, but have disproportionately impacted women and girls.

In fact, Equal Measures 2030’s recent report, says that gender equality won’t be achieved until the 22nd century if we continue at the current rate of progress. A girl born today will have to wait until her 97th birthday, which is beyond her expected lifespan, to have equal rights and opportunities. This simply isn’t acceptable.

Women’s entrepreneurship boosts gender equality and creates a ripple effect of impact on the other SDGs.

The lack of progress towards Goal 5 is not just detrimental to women and girls. Gender equality is essential for achieving nearly every other goal, including Goal 8, decent work and economic growth. When women have access to rights and opportunities, they can run thriving businesses that create jobs, fuel local economies and provide vital services in their communities and beyond. Their businesses improve access to affordable and clean energy, promote responsible consumption and production, create peace, justice and strong institutions, boost health and well-being, and so much more.

Every woman entrepreneur I have interacted with since joining the Foundation last year contributes to the Global Goals. 

One of these women was Joy Obuya, who owns Nawiri, a sustainable fashion brand that produces beautiful clothing. In fact, I couldn’t resist buying one of her dresses for myself! 

More importantly though, her designs use durable, long lasting fabrics that can be worn for years, reducing overconsumption and its harmful effects on the environment. She also pays fair wages to all her employees, which helps promote pay equity and fights against poverty in her community.  

That is several of the Global Goals impacted by just one business.

Joy is just one of the 250,000 women we’ve worked with around the world, each of whom represents progress for multiple global goals.

We cannot ignore their contributions any longer. We must acknowledge that to achieve the Global Goals, especially Goal 5, we must make women’s entrepreneurship a priority.

Urgent action is needed to achieve our ambitious targets for gender equality and get our goals back on track.

Goal 5 is underpinned by nine ambitious targets such as ending discrimination against women, valuing unpaid care work, promoting women’s empowerment through technology, and ensuring women’s participation in leadership and decision-making, amongst others. These are all key areas of expertise for the Foundation and are closely aligned with our work.

Together with partners, we support women to build their knowledge, skills, confidence and access to resources through tried-and-tested training, mentoring and networking opportunities. We also conduct research to identify the key barriers that women entrepreneurs face, including gender stereotypes and discrimination, lack of access to digital tools and training, unequal division of unpaid care and domestic labour, and more. This research feeds into our programme design and is used to advocate for policy and practice changes that will make the most difference to women’s businesses and lives.

By supporting women entrepreneurs, we are directly contributing to Goal 5, gender equality, and Goal 8, decent work and economic growth. This indirectly supports the other Global Goals, which are hugely impacted by the businesses of the women we work with.

When it comes to achieving the Global Goals, it’s clear that women entrepreneurs are the key to success. We urge governments, the private sector, civil society, academia and other stakeholders to join us in supporting women’s entrepreneurship, boosting gender equality, and creating a more prosperous world.