Towards gender equality

Deloitte is delighted to present the UN GCNI and Deloitte Best Practices Compendium on Gender Equality. 

The compendium comes at a very appropriate time with the Indian Government, UN agencies, industry, notfor-profits and philanthropists expressing their committment to addressing the country’s developmental challenges, specifically addressing gender issues. 

Women and adolescent girls have challenges in areas such as access to education, healthcare, livelihoods, early marriage, violence, safety and security etc. In India only 65.46% women are literate, while school enrollment levels of girls are high, the drop-out rates are significant with only 77.3% enrolled in higher education1. When it comes to safety and security, studies reveal that, 1 in 3 women experience some form of physical or sexual violence in their lifetimes. In addition, under-age marriage is still prevalent with a UNICEF report (2017) highlighting 1 in 4 women married before age 18. In terms of livelihood options, women carry out two and a half times more unpaid household work than men in developing countries. There is also a need to change the discourse for women in the workplace with only 25% employed out of a female population of 48.5%4. Women in India earn 25% lower than men and India ranks 108 out of 144 countries in the benchmarking conducted by World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Index5. These data points provide a compelling narrative for a collaborative and strategic approach towards reaching gender equality goals and targets listed under Sustainable Development Goal 5.