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Empowering Earth: Why the Women’s Empowerment Principles (WEPs) Are Essential for a Just and Sustainable Future
- 27 minutes ago
- 6 min read
On Earth Day and beyond, integrating gender equity into climate strategies is no longer optional. The Women’s Empowerment Principles offer a clear roadmap to align people, planet, and purpose.
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Summary
This Earth Day, The SustainabilityX® Magazine highlights the urgent need to embed gender equity into climate action by embracing the Women’s Empowerment Principles (WEPs). As the world accelerates toward a green economy, applying WEPs ensures that women are not only included but empowered in sustainability leadership, workforce equity, and environmental decision-making. From fair pay and safe working conditions to inclusive community partnerships and transparent ESG reporting, WEPs provide a powerful framework to align people and planet through justice. Because true sustainability isn’t just about lowering emissions—it’s about raising voices.
Every Earth Day, we are called to reflect on the urgent challenges facing our planet—rising temperatures, environmental degradation, biodiversity loss, and a widening gap in climate justice. But as businesses, governments, and communities renew their sustainability pledges, one powerful solution is still too often overlooked: gender equity.
In a world shaped by intersecting crises, from climate change to inequality, the path to a livable future must be both green and just. And that’s exactly what the Women’s Empowerment Principles (WEPs) aim to deliver.
Developed by UN Women and the UN Global Compact, the seven WEPs serve as a holistic framework for organizations to promote gender equality in the workplace, marketplace, and community. Yet beyond diversity metrics, the WEPs are increasingly being recognized as a cornerstone of sustainable development and climate action.
This Earth Day, as we rethink how we protect our planet, it's time to center the people—especially the women—who are essential to its survival.
Why Gender Equity is Crucial to Sustainability
Gender equity isn’t a side issue—it’s a climate strategy.
Women, particularly in the Global South and marginalized communities, are disproportionately affected by environmental hazards. They are more likely to be impacted by food insecurity, water scarcity, and displacement, yet are often excluded from climate decision-making and resource access.
At the same time, women are leaders in sustainability across every sector. From reforestation to renewable energy, eco-entrepreneurship to circular design, women are driving some of the most innovative and community-rooted climate solutions.
According to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), countries with higher levels of gender equality also demonstrate stronger environmental performance and reduced emissions. And a Project Drawdown report identified educating women and girls as one of the most effective solutions to tackle climate change.
The takeaway? A sustainable planet needs empowered women—not just in theory, but in practice.
Breaking Down the WEPs: Earth Day Through a Gender Lens
Here’s how each of the seven WEPs can be directly applied to drive real environmental impact:
WEP 1: High-Level Corporate Leadership
Leadership sets the tone. Companies that publicly commit to gender-inclusive climate goals—such as appointing women sustainability officers or embedding equity into ESG strategies—signal that sustainability includes everyone.
WEP 2: Treat All Women and Men Fairly at Work
A just transition to a green economy must guarantee equal pay, non-discrimination, and safety for women in green jobs—from renewable energy to sustainable construction to regenerative agriculture.
WEP 3: Employee Health, Well-being and Safety
Climate change heightens risks to workplace health, especially for frontline and informal sector workers. Ensuring women’s physical and psychological safety in environmental sectors is a vital Earth Month commitment.
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WEP 4: Education and Training for Career Advancement
Earth Day can be a platform to launch training programs that build women’s leadership in climate policy, STEM, and green entrepreneurship. Without equal access to skills, the green economy cannot be inclusive.
WEP 5: Enterprise Development, Supply Chain and Marketing
Are your Earth Month campaigns supporting women-owned, climate-smart businesses? Companies should prioritize diverse vendors and ethical supply chains that uplift women and communities.
WEP 6: Community Initiatives and Advocacy
This is where many Earth Day events start—and where they can go deeper. Partner with local women’s organizations, support eco-literacy programs for girls, or fund grassroots adaptation projects.
WEP 7: Transparency and Accountability
True Earth Day leadership involves measurable impact. Include gender-disaggregated climate data in sustainability reports, and show how equity is being embedded into environmental goals.
From Compliance to Culture: Changing the Sustainability Narrative
Many organizations focus their Earth Month efforts on compliance—meeting climate targets, reporting emissions, or reducing waste. While important, these efforts fall short without addressing who is impacted, who is included, and who decides.
The WEPs provide a way to connect sustainability to culture—transforming climate action from a siloed goal to an organization-wide commitment to justice and inclusion.
When we apply WEPs, we start asking deeper questions:
Are women at the table when we design climate strategies?
Are we closing the gender gap in access to green jobs and capital?
Are our sustainability programs responsive to the needs of all genders, especially in vulnerable communities?
Earth Day should be about asking—and acting on—these questions.
Earth Day as a Launchpad for Lasting Change
It’s not too late to reimagine your Earth Month strategy through the WEPs lens. Here’s how organizations can start:
Audit your Earth Day initiatives for equity gaps
Co-create campaigns with women leaders and local groups
Publish stories of women in sustainability across internal and external platforms
Make a public WEPs commitment and share your progress
Use Earth Day as a launchpad for long-term change—not just one-off events
The climate movement doesn’t need another campaign. It needs a culture shift—one that recognizes that sustainability without equity is neither effective nor enduring.
A Just Transition is a Gendered Transition
On this Earth Day, let’s expand our vision of what it means to care for the planet.
Let’s celebrate not just the beauty of nature, but the courage of the women protecting it. Let’s honour not just the science, but the justice behind climate solutions. And let’s remember that the best climate frameworks don’t separate people from the planet—they connect them.
The Women’s Empowerment Principles are more than a checklist. They’re a blueprint for the future we’re all fighting for.
A greener world. A fairer world. A world where everyone rises.
About The SustainabilityX® Magazine
The SustainabilityX® Magazine is an award-winning, digital, female-founded, and female-led non-profit initiative bringing the environment and economy together for a sustainable future through dialogue, and now transforming the environment and economy for a sustainable future through the power of women's leadership. Founded on May 8, 2016, and inspired by the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals by Canada's Top 30 Under 30 in Sustainability Leadership awardee, Supriya Verma, the digital media initiative focuses on approaching the world's most pressing challenges with a holistic, integrated, systems-based perspective as opposed to the traditional and ineffective siloed approach with a single lens on interdisciplinary topics like climate and energy. This initiative ultimately seeks to explore how to effectively bring the environment and economy together through intellectual, insightful dialogue and thought-provoking discussion amongst individuals across sectors taking an interdisciplinary and integrated approach to untangling the intricate web of sustainability while championing women's leadership in sustainability.
The SustainabilityX® Magazine is built upon the four foundational pillars of sustainability: Environmental Stewardship, which emphasizes the importance of improving environmental health; Economic Prosperity, which promotes sustainable economic growth that transcends traditional capitalist models; Social Inclusion, which focuses on equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) for BIPOC, LGBTQ, and other marginalized or vulnerable communities; and Just Governance, which highlights responsible leadership, the equal application of the rule of law, and the creation of fair systems for all.
As we expand our mission to align with the Women's Empowerment Principles (WEPs), we continue to explore the diverse and interconnected factors that influence sustainability. By recognizing how these elements interact across local, national, and international levels, we aim to accelerate progress toward sustainability goals. In essence, this aligns with The SustainabilityX® Magazine's vision of integrating environmental and economic progress for a more just, inclusive, and sustainable future through thoughtful dialogue.
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