Opening remarks by Swedish Ambassador to the United Nations, H.E. Ms. Anna Karin Eneström, at the webinar: "A rational financial market? Debunking myths about investments, risk and women led businesses" co-hosted by Permanent Mission of Sweden to the UN and UNCDF, 26 April 2021.
Executive Secretary Sinha, distinguished panelist, ladies and gentlemen – it’s with great pleasure that Sweden together with UNCDF have the honor to host today’s event.
The lack of gender equality is not a new phenomenon but today, on April 26 2021 I think it’s important to acknowledge that the past year has increased the gender equality gap by a full generation, according to the Global Gender Gap from the World Economic Forum.
So far, the response to the pandemic has reinforced this development. Out of the over 3 000 recovery actions that have been registered in the UN’s tracker for Global Gender Response, less than half took gender equality into account. The majority of the actions that did, focused on combatting the increased rate of sexual and gender-based violence against women. Eradicating SGBV is at the core to achieving gender equality, but sexual and gender-based violence is to a large extent the symptom of the imbalance of power between men and women, not the root cause.
By contrast few recovery actions have been directed toward the economic empowerment of women, an action that in itself could have preventive effects against sexual and gender-based violence. Connected to this, little focus has been directed at finding ways to redistribute the increased hours of unpaid care work that has fallen on women during the pandemic. One of the possible reasons for this is that necessary perspectives that would have provided a comprehensive approach to recovery measures have been lost. The UN reports that women only represent 24 % of the members of Covid-response task forces around the world. In 26 countries these groups are populated by men only.
Today’s conversation shows the importance of naming the invisible barriers that denies women equal access to investments. The disconnect between the proven capabilities of women-led businesses and available financing opportunities must be laid bare as a central step in our common goal of ensuring women’s economic empowerment.
Since 2016, Sida has coordinated Swedish Investors for Sustainable Development (SISD), a partnership with 20 of the largest financial actors on the Swedish market.
Through this partnership, Swedish investors contribute to a number of Sustainable Development Goals, including Goal 5 to achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls.
As part of their work to promote gender equality, the network recently surveyed Swedish and international investors to better understand how they work with gender equality. They found that while the majority of investors have internal targets and policies for gender equality, significantly fewer require the same for their portfolio companies.
If only one-half of the world’s available talent have a chance to develop and engage in society and the labor market it will have huge bearings on sustainable growth, competitiveness and future- readiness of economies and businesses worldwide. These issues need to be addressed and I am looking forward to hear the perspectives from our distinguished panelists.