What does investing in women mean?

The word "investment" may sound, at first, distant when it comes to gender equality and women's empowerment. What does "investing in women" mean to you? To reduce women's poverty? To fund women-owned businesses? To provide quality STEM education for girls? To gain flexible working options for mothers?

It's not just such tangible progress that investment can bring about. The impact of enhanced economic empowerment for women extends far beyond the benefits women can get for themselves to achieve gender equality, but helps build stronger families and communities and ultimately transpire social change by participating in decision-making processes and leading transformation and innovation.

However, the reality is more than grim, as women remain far behind their male counterparts in many ways. More alarmingly, progress seems to have stalled. According to data in the years 2020 and 2021, only four percent of bilateral official development assistance went to programs centered around gender equality and women's empowerment, falling from 5 percent years before. Women's rights organizations defying gender stereotypes only receive 0.1 percent of all global development expenditure.

In achieving gender equality, an additional 360 billion U.S. dollars is needed annually, just to end poverty, end hunger and promote participation of women. These are merely three areas of sustainable development goals (SDGs), so if we look at gender targets stated in all SDGs, the deficit is much bigger.

"At our current speed, full legal equality for women is some 300 years away," said Secretary-General of the United Nations (UN) António Guterres.

Accelerating investment is one of the two institutions, the other one being political ambition, in getting a step closer to gender equality. To further understand why we should invest in women and girls and what we should do in this regard, Smriti Aryal, UN Women's Country Representative in China, could bring some insight.

"Globally, one in 10 women, that is 10.3 percent of women, live in extreme poverty. In fragile, conflict context, women are 7.7 times more likely than men to live in extreme poverty, facing hygiene and food insecurity, increased risk of sexual and gender-based violence. If the current trend continues, 360 million women and girls will be living in poverty by 2030," she said, adding that progress must be 26 times faster to achieve the poverty eradication goal by 2030.

According to a gender-responsive budgeting survey by the UN late last year, only 26 percent of 105 countries surveyed have comprehensive systems in place to track and make public fund allocations for gender equality. Without robust systems and governance, countries are unable to allocate resources to ensure public financing to be grounded in addressing the inequalities that exist, said Aryal while addressing a symposium on investing in women for gender-equal future in Beijing, cohosted by UN Women China, the Center for China and Globalization and China's Global Development Promotion Center under the China International Development Cooperation Agency.

Moreover, the fact that women hold a paltry 15 percent of executive roles in the financial industry makes it harder to make informed decisions when it comes to financing women and girls.

On what we can do to help address these systemic barriers for the female population, Aryal pointed out several areas where we can take actions. The first is to strengthen financing institutions to relieve poverty for women and girls with proven solutions, including institutionalization of gender-responsive budgeting to public spending, debt relief to free public financing, progressive taxation for public investment needed to eradicate women's poverty.

She underlines the importance of recognizing care as a global public good and investing in the care economy. "A critical enabler for all of us is to have a robust gender data eco-system to truly understand the multi-dimensional nature of poverty and to be able to inform evidence-based policy and programming actions," she explained.

Furthermore, investing in women leadership is crucial to the formulation of proper policy development strategies. Currently, there's a financing gap of 1.7 trillion U.S. dollars for women-led micro-, small- and medium-sized enterprises.

"In the era of digital and green transitions, it's crucial to ensure green and climate financing, digital financing and fintech are accessible and equitable for every woman and every girl," Aryal said, stressing the urgent need to renew commitments and embrace innovative approaches to financially including women and girls through market-based solutions and strengthen accountability to deliver for women and girls.