16 September | 11:30-12:00 ICT

Breaking Barriers: Gender Equality in Business for Nature

Organized by:

Women4Biodiversity

Background

This side event will address the urgency to center gender justice in business operations that impact biodiversity, land, and the environment. In biodiversity-rich contexts across Asia and the Pacific, extractive industries, agribusiness, and infrastructure projects often operate at the expense of women’s rights, undermining land tenure, livelihoods, and safety. It will spotlight how environmental degradation and gender injustice are deeply interlinked, and how the fight for climate change and biodiversity loss must go hand-in-hand with women’s social, economic and

political empowerment.

Despite growing attention to gender equality in the business and human rights (BHR) agenda, women remain disproportionately affected by business-related harms, facing wage discrimination, unsafe working conditions, land dispossession, and violence when defending their territories. Women are not only impacted; they are also on the frontlines of resistance and solutions, organizing for decent work, leading agroecological practices, and defending environmental and Indigenous rights.

This session will explore how companies and states must go beyond policy commitments to address structural discrimination and ensure accountability for environmental and gender-related harms. Through an intersectional lens, it will highlight the transformative power of feminist leadership, community-led monitoring, and gender-responsive due diligence.

Business and human rights (BHR) must include a gender lens because women, girls, and LGBTI+ individuals disproportionately experience and are less likely to benefit from business activities due to structural discrimination, gendered impacts, and power imbalances. Incorporating gender into BHR frameworks like the Gender Dimensions of the United Nations Guiding Principles (UNGPs), implementing gender-responsive due diligence, and involving women's voices are crucial for achieving gender justice and protecting human rights.

By amplifying the voices and experiences of women, especially from Indigenous and rural communities, the session will advance practical proposals to embed gender justice into responsible business conduct, legal frameworks, and environmental governance, showing the highlights and interlinkages between the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework the BHR frameworks, and other relevant MEA agreements.

Key Themes and Focus Areas related:

Inclusion, Protection, and Participation: the event will highlight the central role of rights holders in shaping the BHR agenda, and the importance of the meaningful participation and leadership of vulnerable and historically marginalized groups, such as Indigenous Peoples, local communities, women, and youth. It will provide space to discuss how gender-based inequalities manifest across biodiversity and environmental business sectors, and why inclusive governance and remedy mechanisms are essential to ensure justice. Discussions will address systemic labor rights violations, gender discrimination in land and resource access, attacks against environmental and women human rights defenders, and youth-led advocacy in environmental governance and corporate accountability.

Key Objectives

Explore business-related harms affecting women in biodiversity and environmental contexts, including land dispossession, attacks on women environmental defenders, and discrimination in natural resource value chains.
Promote policy coherence between the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, BHR frameworks, and other relevant MEA ́s agreements.
Advance intersectional gender justice as a non-negotiable principle in BHR.

Guiding Questions

How do business operations in biodiversity-rich areas impact women differently, and what structural factors drive these gendered harms?
What good practices exist for integrating gender-responsive and intersectional approaches into human rights and environmental due diligence?
In what ways can the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (KMGBF) and Business and Human Rights (BHR) frameworks be better aligned to address both environmental and gender justice goals?
What mechanisms or tools can strengthen accountability and protection for women human rights defenders in environmental and biodiversity-related sectors?

Format

This session will follow a Case in Point / Field Notes format, designed to examine real experience with practical solutions. The side event will begin with a short framing on gender justice in biodiversity and environmental business and linking the discussion to the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework and Business and Human Rights frameworks.
Then a case study on how business operations have impacted biodiversity and women’s rights in their territory will be share, highlighting the challenges and the strategies developed. The case study will serve as a starting point to analyze the various systemic challenges and barriers affecting women, as well as the regulatory frameworks that can be applied and their connection to international policies. The audience will be encouraged to participate actively.

Session Partners