Women and girls represent half of the world’s employment potential. Nonetheless, gender inequality persists globally and hinders social progress. Effectively developing this talent is a key part of ensuring organizational competitiveness in the future. Capturing the gains in diversity of thought and innovation from women’s increased participation in the global workforce will be critical to solving the climate crisis.

There is no internationally agreed definition of the term ‘gender’, however, gender is understood to be a social and cultural construct that assigns different roles, behaviors, norms and traits to men and women in a society. As a social construct, gender varies from society to society and can evolve over time. In most societies, gender is hierarchical and produces political, social and economic inequalities. When gender intersects with other forms of discrimination such as socioeconomic status, ethnicity, religion, disability, age, geographic location, sexual orientation and gender identity , the impacts can compound and lead to intersectional marginalization and discrimination. Because conflict affects people of different gender identities differently, an intersectional approach to peacemaking is needed to respond to different groups’ security and peacebuilding needs.