India’s Permanent Mission and UN Women co-host roundtable on women’s empowerment

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United Nations – The Permanent Mission of India and UN Women co-hosted a Ministerial level Roundtable on women’s empowerment at the United Nations headquarters on Wednesday, March 12, 2025, as part of its agenda for the 69^th session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW-69).

The event was attended by experts, scholars, ministerial panelists, India’s consular officials, as well as representatives from the Indian community invited to the event, including Padma Shri recipient Dr. Sudhir Parikh, Chairman of ITV Gold and Parikh Worldwide Media, which publishes News India Times.

The roundtable discussions highlighted two important points of the Sustainable Development Goals, and the agenda of the Pact of the Future — 1. Digital and Financial Inclusion of Women and 2. Financing for Women’s Empowerment-Criticality of Core Resources.

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India’s Permanent Representative to the UN, P. Harish, outlined efforts by the government of India towards financial inclusion of women, and specifically referred to ‘Aadhaar card’, India’s unique ID system and the Unified Payments Interface which has benefited more than 250 million Indian women. India has also established a Women’s Empowerment Working Group during its G20 presidency, Harish said.

A short video depicting the various resources introduced and made available to women in India for digital financial inclusion was played before the speech of Annapurna Devi, Minister for Women and Child Development. Devi spoke about women’s financial and digital inclusion in India through the three women-led initiatives of the government of India: Jan Dhan bank accounts, Aadhaar, and Mobile connectivity, and highlighted the role of digital platforms in tracking the successful implementation of government initiatives.

Executive Director of UN Women, Sima Bahous, who co-chaired the session, recommended participation of both the Public and Private sectors in making financing opportunities available to women, and pointed to the $1.7 trillion financing gap hindering women’s full economic participation.

Earlier at the opening of the CSW-69, Bahous had listed CSW’s call for six priority actions for women’s financial empowerment, which included (1) closing gender gap in technology, (2) providing strong social protection leading to freedom from poverty, (3)  transforming harmful norms and supporting survivors of sexual violence, (4) enforcing equal decision making power for women in politics and beyond, (5) maintaining peace, security and healthcare for all, and (6) climate justice ensuring that progress is not achieved at the cost of the planet.

Panel Moderator, Deputy Executive Director of UN Women Kirsi Madi, said UN Women is working with India and other countries in Asia towards increasing financial inclusion of women, and learning from India’s experience and success at promoting the goal of leaving no woman behind in financial inclusion.

Other panelists also spoke on the need to pursue women’s empowerment through Digital and Financial Inclusion of Women, outlining efforts in their respective countries and emphasizing that those efforts were not enough.

These included Indonesia’s Deputy Minister for Gender Equality, Ministry of Women Empowerment and Child Protection, Amurwani Dwi Lestariningsih; Morocco’s Head of Human Rights Unit Ministry of Health, Fatima Zohra Iraoui; G20 Women Task Force member Nayana Sahasrabuddhe; Qatar’s Minister of Social Development and Family, Buthaina bint Ali Al Jabr Al Nuaimi; Panama’s Secretary General of the Ministry of Women, Mirthia Borissoff and Australia’s Ambassador for Gender Equality, Stephanie Copus Campbell. All of them spoke about using technological resources for digital inclusion.

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