Welcome to USC.
The United Nations headquarters here in New York will host the 70th annual Commission on the Status of Women.
It arrives at a critical inflection point for global gender equality and also economic policy.
Women still hold just 64% of the legal rights granted to men worldwide.
The systemic legal inequality carries a massive economic cost with emerging threats.
Like the explosion of unregulated AI generated deep fakes largely targeting women, the focus of this year's gathering is on securing access to justice and enforcing accountability.
Well joining me live here at the New York Stock Exchange today is Kirsi Madi, Deputy Executive Director of UN Women.
Kirsi, thank you so much for joining me.
Thank you so much for having me.
You and I are here on the trading floor of the New York Stock Exchange.
So tell me why gender equality is so important when it comes to capital markets.
Thank you so much, Remi, for having me and asking the question, because critically, gender equality is really about creation of long-term value.
It's really about sustainable finance.
So.
Gender equality and women's rights is not just a human right.
It's not just the right thing to do, but it's simply smart business.
Yes, and talking about smart business, what are some actionable, measurable actions that can actually be taken here?
Great.
For that, let me just give you an example.
This is quite some surprising data.
Of all the women who are running and owning startups compared to the men-run startups, women actually generate more than double the revenue.
At the same time, only 2% of the venture capital is channeled to women, so we have a huge untapped potential.
So if there is more investment in women run enterprises and women-run companies, we really could be generating much greater profits.
So this is where we are calling on stock exchanges, market regulators, and investors to really see gender equality as a key business strategy.
And as you mentioned, when we look at the data and actually look at the statistics and see what it means for impact on the bottom line, I think that tells you a lot.
So everyone talks about a gender responsive capital market.
What does that actually look like in practice?
So the gender responsive capital market would really look at first of all data so that companies are disclosing that they are collecting and they are disclosing gender data.
They are looking at their workforce.
They are looking at women in leadership.
They are looking also differences in the pay between men and women.
They look at workplace policies that support both men and women, but similarly we need to also be looking at action by investors so that investors really would be looking at opportunities for longer term value creation, sustainable financing, which automatically means investing in women and gender equality.
And speaking of which, I do want to get your perspective on gender lens investing here.
So what else needs to happen in addition to this?
It's really critically important that we are not seeing gender lens investing as necessarily only separate financial assets and products.
But it's really mainstreamed so that gender equality becomes a part of the business strategy for companies that it's seen as a critical element for good performance and smart investment.
Having said that, for example, we have worked with UN Women, for example with Luxembourg Stock Exchange to create a gender tag, and these gender tags have been very helpful because it has allowed the investors easily identify those bonds which support women and women run businesses.
And while we're talking about global stock exchanges, we know that International Women's this year falls on March 8th, which is a Sunday, but what is your message for viewers out there about what needs to happen?
What really needs to happen is to remember that we all benefit when everybody in the society and everybody in the economy and markets is having equal opportunity and is able to contribute.
We are so happy we have more than 100 stock exchanges participating and joining us this year in the 2026 ring the bell for gender equality.
It's a really, really important collective movement for us to come together.
And we've been very happy to work also with the UN Sustainable Stock Exchanges Initiative to really collect the data and share the data and to build the capacity and improve all of our understanding, because investing in gender equality and investing in women's businesses is really smart economic choice and it's good for everybody in the society.
Yeah, and finally, Kirsi, before I let you go, you speak to many stakeholders as well as leaders of major publicly traded corporations, not just in the US but also around the globe.
So what are you actually hearing on the ground and what does that actually mean for the future of leadership for women?
So we are working for example with over 12,000 companies globally through what we call women's empowerment principles.
What it means that companies are committing themselves to look at the gender data and improve their workforce composition, the workforce policies, make sure that they are breaching the pay gap that I mentioned earlier also.
At the same time they are looking at their supply chain.
They are looking at the impact on the market and on the community.
Now why are we working with the companies?
It's because it's not just the commitment, but it is also how that commitment and how that ambition, which is important, is also translated.
Into real measurable results and impact.
So I think these are the critical elements where we really can be shaping and making a very concrete difference for the investors, for the stakeholders, shareholders, staff, and leadership.
And perhaps lastly also to mention we just launched a wonderful global supply chain coalition really with the aim to make sure that gender responsive procurement would really become a global business norm.
So there's a lot of good progress happening.
But we need everybody's hands on the deck and really making sure that we move towards an inclusive market.
Well, I appreciate your time, Kirsi.
Thank you so much for joining us here at the New York Stock Exchange today and thank you so much for sharing your insights and perspective.
Thank you so much for having us.
My pleasure.
OK, that is.
