22 Shamistha Selvaratnam: Setting benchmarks for gender equality

The past year has been brutal for women and gender equality - it has severely set back progress made in the last decade. And it is acknowledged that Governments and the private sector will have to work twice as hard to reverse the trend. My guest this week Shamistha Selvaratnam speaks about the need for transformative change to achieve gender equality. She stressed on the need for companies to really shift their approach from avoiding gender-related impacts and disclosing what is necessary to meet legislative requirements to proactively addressing inequalities." Shamistha is the Gender Lead at the World Benchmarking Alliance (WBA) an organisation established to measure and rank the 2,000 most influential companies globally on their contributions to the UN Sustainable Development Goals. These keystone companies spread across 74 countries with combined revenues of $43 trillion have a critical role to play in whether the SDGs are accomplished or not. In this episode she speaks about her background; the work of the WBA; using data for insights and not as an endpoint; why companies need to stop focusing on only preventing harm to women to taking actions that have positive impact on women...... Listen to the full episode here 👇🏾 https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-elephant-in-the-room/id1540074396 Follow the show on iTunes, Spotify, Google Podcasts