India’s ambitious energy transition risks deepening gender gaps unless ESG frameworks like the BRSR are strengthened to capture the realities of women’s work and leadership.
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India’s clean energy transition is among the most ambitious globally, promising millions of jobs and restructured value chains. This moment offers a critical opportunity to embed gender equity into sustainability governance. However, unless Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) frameworks, such as India’s Business Responsibility and Sustainability Reporting (BRSR), do not explicitly focus on gender, they risk perpetuating existing structural inequalities.
A common blind spot in ESG is that companies often treat gender superficially or narrowly, missing critical intersections with social divisions, disability, and geography. In India, women, mainly from marginalised communities, face systemic barriers to formal employment and leadership. Furthermore, unpaid care work, predominantly carried out by women, continues to fall outside the scope of ESG reporting despite its immense social and economic contribution.
Unless Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) frameworks do not explicitly focus on gender, they risk perpetuating existing structural inequalities.
ESG frameworks, such as BRSR and the European Union’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), offer a foundation for institutionalising accountability for social and environmental justice. However, their potential will remain unrealised without deliberate integration of gender equity into risk assessments, disclosure standards, and corporate governance structures.
Introduced in 2021 by the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), the BRSR is a more comprehensive extension of the 2015 Business Responsibility Report. It mandates the top 1,000 listed companies to report non-financial disclosures based on the nine principles of the National Guidelines on Responsible Business Conduct (NGRBC). Its 2023 update, BRSR Core, extends these ESG requirements to corporate supply chains and introduces assured metrics, including indicators on workforce diversity, board representation, equal pay, and other prioritised parameters.
Many companies treat gender diversity and pay parity disclosures as mere compliance exercises rather than opportunities to capture the lived realities of women in India's diverse labour sectors.
While these are essential steps, the framework lacks enforcement mechanisms and does not require data disaggregation by caste, disability, or rural-urban divides, which are vital for intersectional analysis. Moreover, the BRSR currently emphasises quantitative disclosures (for example, the number of women employed and their percentage of board representation), with limited qualitative data on workplace culture, inclusion, or the structural reasons behind wage gaps and leadership disparities. Consequently, many companies treat gender diversity and pay parity disclosures as mere compliance exercises rather than opportunities to capture the lived realities of women in India’s diverse labour sectors.
CSRD mandates disclosures on gender pay gaps, board diversity, work-life balance policies, and incidents of sexual harassment, applying a “double materiality” lens that recognises how gender inequality both influences and is influenced by business practices. This framework aims to move beyond representation by incorporating workplace culture and structural issues into ESG assessments. Meaningful impact, however, requires more than disclosure. The effectiveness of gender accountability within CSRD remains uneven, particularly among smaller firms that may lack the capacity to comply with its technical demands. Without adequate enforcement and cultural alignment within organisations, companies would continue to treat gender metrics as procedural rather than transformative.
Compared to the CSRD, India’s BRSR includes some requirements for disaggregated data, such as workforce diversity and representation of people with disabilities. However, limitations in data quality and consistency still constrain meaningful gender analysis despite steady improvements in ESG reporting. Additionally, gender-related metrics remain underdeveloped, often treated as formalities rather than indicators of substantive change, given the absence of mandatory reporting on gender pay gaps, board diversity, or workplace safety indicators.
India has the institutional capacity and opportunity to pioneer gender responsive ESG governance for the Global South by building on existing strengths and thoughtfully integrating global best practices with local realities.
This scenario creates space to build on the current momentum. International frameworks offer relevant lessons for deepening gender integration. In Sweden, gender equality is embedded in sustainability policy through tools such as the Gender Equality Index and sustainability-linked bonds that incorporate measurable gender targets. For instance, private equity firm EQT AB issued a bond linked to increasing the proportion of women in senior management, aligning financial accountability with diversity outcomes. Canada’s Gender-Based Analysis Plus (GBA+) model incorporates intersectional gender equity across policy and procurement systems, providing a structured approach to disclosures. In South Africa, Barloworld Ltd. issued a gender-linked bond tied to measurable diversity goals, demonstrating how companies can utilise financial instruments to drive accountability.
For India to embed gender equity meaningfully into its ESG framework, future iterations of the BRSR could consider the following:
India’s clean energy expansion is more than an environmental objective. It represents a structural shift that will shape the country’s sustainable economic and social future, promoting a just transition. While India’s ESG frameworks, such as BRSR, currently lag behind standards like the EU’s CSRD in terms of depth and intersectionality, India has the institutional capacity and opportunity to pioneer gender responsive ESG governance for the Global South. By building on existing strengths and thoughtfully integrating global best practices with local realities, India can set a new standard for inclusive and accountable sustainability reporting that supports equitable growth across diverse communities.
Saee Rege is a Research Intern at the Observer Research Foundation.
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