UK in India: Pledge for Progress

On 5 November, the ‘UK in India’ network and over 100 partners launched the ‘Pledge for Progress’ campaign, a joint commitment to promote gender equality and take practical steps to tackle gender challenges. The ‘Pledge for Progress’ initiative aims to empower organisations and individuals to break down gender norms and together build a gender-equal society, through five key commitments:

1. Lead: using our platforms to amplify the voices of women leaders, within our organisations and beyond.
2. Represent: seeking gender diverse representation when hosting and participating in panels and roundtables.
3. Embed: striving to include gender analysis in the design, implementation and evaluation of our activities.
4. Include: making our organisations great places for people of all genders to work and ensuring our internal policies fulfil that aim.
5. Mobilise: working as a collective of gender equality champions, and developing and sharing best practice to together implement this pledge.

This cross-sectoral collective of 114 organisations spanning business, education, arts and civil society have pledged to tackle gender inequality and be the change to encourage further action.

Background

Pledge for Progress forms part of wider work by ‘UK in India’ on gender equality. The UK in India network works with state governments, law enforcement agencies, education authorities and businesses in India to empower women as leaders and trail-blazers, build better and more economic opportunities for women, and promote girls’ education and positive gender roles in schools. The UK and India are working together to help ensure women and girls can reach their full potential.

Examples of some of the ongoing collaborative programmes include:

• Working with the Ministry of Rural Development to strengthen resilience to the impacts of climate change and promote livelihood security among women in rural communities, as part of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme.
• Working with adolescent girls from socio-economically marginalised communities to develop their English, digital and leadership skills.
• Financial inclusion programmes focusing on financial and digital literacy, which have given 12 million Indian women access to credit to build livelihoods. Projects have helped set up or scale 10,000 women-owned micro-businesses, created 6,000 jobs, and supported over 270 micro-entrepreneurs.

If you would like to get involved, contact Diana.Joseph@fcdo.gov.uk.

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