Girls and women are among the most vulnerable and underserved groups in Asia. While they are the most impacted communities by climate-related disasters, pandemic, wars, and any other turbulences, the deep-rooted gender bias and discrimination often hinders them to gain support and opportunity to build their livelihoods. The recent pandemic has exacerbated this gender inequality, during which millions of women lost their employment and struggled to get their jobs back.
With women and girls being strong drivers of economic growth in South Asia and Southeast Asia through their small medium entrepreneurship, more must be done to reduce this inequality. Furthermore, globally up to USD $160.2 trillion economic costs are caused by gender inequality. So much loss of potential by not doing anything to address gender inequality.
We must stop this loss and claim the potential 12% increase of economic growth in Asia Pacific by advancing gender equality. To achieve this, an orchestratic capital movement is needed to support initiatives and solutions to drive women’s economic empowerment.
AVPN is calling philanthropic leaders, corporates, and foundations to join forces and collaborate to advance gender equality in Asia Pacific through the Asia Gender Equality Fund. Through this fund, AVPN aims to raise and deploy up to USD $25 million to improve economic outcomes for girls and women in Asia.
