Economic Policies for Women-Led Development (EPWD) is a network dedicated to advancing Women-led Development. It is a joint initiative of ICRIER, UNDP India and the Gates Foundation. The objective of the network is to enable the positioning of gender as a macro-critical issue, imperative for India’s economic growth.

Under its G20 presidency, India initiated the mainstreaming of gender into economic policy discussions by shifting the focus from “women’s development” to “women-led development”. In this new paradigm, women are not simply seen as beneficiaries but as drivers of growth and development. It is now evident that narrowing gender gaps will be a vital source of economic growth, and addressing gender-related challenges is key to India becoming a $ 30 trillion economy by 2047. Without increasing its Female Labour Force Participation Rate, India will not be able to achieve the sustained growth required to become a developed economy in two decades.

Therefore, we believe that it is necessary to mainstream gender in key economic policies, that have till now been “gender-blind” and did not take into consideration their gender-differentiated outcomes. The EPWD network intends to build on the ideas discussed at the G20 by striving to embed gender in core economic policy discussions by providing a platform for knowledge-sharing, networking, mentoring, capacity building, and advancing proposals to remove barriers to women-led development and for creating an enabling ecosystem for women to realize their full potential.