“At UNGC we know that gender equality across company operations and supply chains is crucial for building stronger and more resilient economies and advancing sustainable development.”Sanda Ojiambo
Assistant Secretary-General and Chief Executive Officer, United Nations Global Compact (high-level CGE event, New York, 24 September 2024)
[A2.1, A2.3] Companies should perform gender pay gap audits at least every five years and take ongoing actions to eliminate these gaps (in accordance with the Women’s Empowerment Principles Gender Gap Analysis Tool) by ensuring equal pay for work of equal value among employees.
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Persistent gender pay disparities remain a defining challenge for achieving gender equality in the workplace. Across industries, including agrifood systems, women continue to earn less than men for the same work, limiting their economic security, career progression and long-term financial resilience. The gender pay gap is not only a matter of unequal salaries but also a reflection of structural barriers such as occupational segregation, unequal access to education and leadership opportunities, and the burden of unpaid care work. Without clear accountability mechanisms and sustained corporate action, wage inequalities persist, slowing progress towards more inclusive economies and agrifood systems.
Wage inequalities negatively impact the productivity, efficiency and potential of agrifood value chains and systems. By contrast, ensuring equal pay and fair wages enables women engaged in agrifood systems to gain financial security and to invest in their businesses, education and families, improving growth and economic outcomes across societies and agrifood value chains. Closing the wage gap is thus a driver of gender equality in the workplace and across agrifood value chains. Without achieving this, broader efforts to achieve economic and workplace equality remain incomplete, and agrifood systems fail to reach their full economic and social potential.
The United Nations Global Compact (UNGC) advocates for responsible business practices that place gender equality at the centre of corporate strategies. Through tools and mechanisms such as its Women’s Empowerment Principles and the Gender Gap Analysis Tool, UNGC provides a framework for companies to identify, measure and address gender pay gaps within their organizations. These efforts ensure that companies go beyond compliance by taking proactive, ongoing steps to eliminate pay disparities and institutionalize fair compensation policies.
Through the CGE initiative, UNGC is scaling up efforts to ensure that companies conduct gender pay gap audits at least every five years and take corrective actions to achieve equal pay for work of equal value. This approach strengthens corporate accountability and transparency, ensuring that gender equality commitments translate into real financial equity for women in the workforce.
Through this initiative and increased commitment, UNGC will drive tangible, data-backed actions that ensure that wage equality is a business imperative rather than an aspiration.
Required citation:
FAO. 2025. Commit to Grow Equality: investing in the future of women in agrifood systems – Progress report 2025. Rome. https://doi.org/10.4060/cd4123en
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