30 years after Beijing, Commit to Grow Equality urges action for women in agrifood systems

As the global community marked the 30th anniversary of the adoption of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, FAO launched the first progress report for its Commit to Grow Equality (CGE) initiative at a dynamic event in New York, encouraging stakeholders to take concrete action to accelerate gender equality and women’s empowerment in agrifood systems.

The event was aimed at building awareness about the importance of women's empowerment in agrifood systems and highlighting the relevance of the CGE initiative for potential new partners. During the event, African fellowship institute AWARD spontaneously joined the initiative as its 20th partner to a round of applause from the audience.

Entirely digital and interactive, the CGE progress report comes one year after the initiative was introduced by FAO. The report offers an overview of the CGE initiative and insight into some of the commitments made by partners to advance gender equality and women's empowerment in agrifood systems.

Through the CGE Commitments Matrix, stakeholders can select from a number of evidence-based commitments to align with, organized by theme and grounded in findings from FAO’s report on The status of women in agrifood systems. The initiative provides a platform to create synergies between like-minded actors, raise the visibility of partners’ work, generate momentum for gender equality and women’s empowerment in agrifood systems through large scale investments and policies, and track progress against commitments made.

Putting women at the center

The launch event was organized by FAO and hosted by the Rockefeller Foundation in New York on the sidelines of the 69th session of the Commission on the Status of Women in March 2025.

It was moderated by Amandla Ooko-Ombaka, a partner at McKinsey & Company’s Seattle office, who pointed to her firm’s research on women in the workplace which suggests that a lack of gender equality may be costing the global economy USD 28 trillion.

Keynote speaker Jyoti Macwan, General Secretary for the Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) from India, noted that poor women workers from the informal economy play vital roles across all stages of food systems. However, systemic challenges such as lack of formal recognition, organization and registration hinder their access to assets and opportunities.

“When we are talking about a truly just and equitable agrifood system transformation, there is a need to adopt a human-centered approach, one that puts the interest of the women workers in the food system at its heart,” she said.

She underscored the importance of building women-owned decentralized supply chains that generate local employment opportunities, of upskilling young women workers through needs-based approaches, and of building women’s resilience to climate shocks through awareness-raising and mitigation measures.

Innovative solutions for equality

Macwan also highlighted the need for innovative financing solutions – a point that resonated strongly with the subsequent panel conversation between representatives of the United Republic of Tanzania, UN Women and the AlphaMundi Foundation.

Beng’I Issa, Executive Secretary at the National Economic Empowerment Council of Tanzania, covered examples of strategies that have proven successful to empower women in her country, such as agricultural cooperatives and tailored insurance policies. In discussing the persistent wage gap between women and men, Sarah Hendriks, Director for the Policy, Programme and Intergovernmental Division at UN Women, encouraged stakeholders to join in the uptake of the Voluntary Guidelines on Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment. Finally, Patricia Chin-Sweeney, Senior Advisor at the AlphaMundi Foundation, emphasized blended finance solutions providing impact-linked loans to women, sharing examples from Africa.

Presenting France’s first international strategic framework for its feminist foreign policy, the French Ambassador for Gender Equality, H.E. Delphine O, spoke ahead of the Nutrition for Growth Summit 2025 about her country’s commitment to closing the gender nutrition gap.

During closing remarks, Sathyamurthy Mayilswamy, CEO and Managing Director for the Americas at ofi – Olam Food Ingredients, urged partners to join the CGE initiative: “Empowering women goes beyond the Sustainable Development Goal on gender equality. It can have a snowballing effect on the broader scope of sustainability, development and environmental issues.”

“However, impact will not be possible without the support of our customers, NGOs and government agencies. We welcome others to join us – together, we can deliver real change,” Mr Mayilswamy concluded.

Progress report 2025

The CGE progress report 2025 provides an overview of the thematic areas under which current partners have made a total of 109 commitments. These include promoting systemic change for gender equality and women’s empowerment, comprising a total of 29 commitments; closing the productivity gap (23 commitments); and enhancing women’s leadership (20 commitments).

Each of the thematic areas pages offers recent data and evidence for their relevance and provides a series of partner highlights showcasing examples of individual commitments.

The report also lists the newest partners who joined the initiative in 2025: the African Women Agribusiness Network, the AlphaMundi Foundation, France, the International Dairy Federation, Rise Up and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

Their commitments are featured in the report and include, for instance, expanding access to funding for women agripreneurs (AlphaMundi Foundation), building a new cohort of local leaders on gender equality and agrifood policy (Rise Up) and conducting a systematic gender review by the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (United Kingdom).

Watch the event here (passcode: CGE@NYC2025)

Browse the report online here

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