Let’s start with the big picture. Across the globe, women shoulder the majority of unpaid care work and make up most of the world’s working poor. In low- and middle-income countries, they’re far more likely to be trapped in informal, vulnerable jobs, the very jobs that keep our food systems, waste streams, and textile economies running.
Yet, despite powering these essential industries, many women remain locked out of the opportunities that could transform their lives and boost economies. Only one in five holds a leadership position.
And still, their contribution is immense. Women grow our food, make our clothes, manage our homes, and drive informal recycling systems. But too often, they do so without the tools, training, finance, or decision-making power they deserve. Their work goes undervalued, their voices unheard, and their potential overlooked.
This isn’t just unjust, it’s a missed opportunity.
That’s why at Enviu, gender inclusion isn’t a side project. It’s embedded in everything we do to drive systemic change.
In this post, we will take a closer look at:
- Why we focus on gender inclusion
- The challenges and potential gains within each domain
- How we embed a gender lens in practice
So grab your gender lens and dive in with us!
Why we focus on gender inclusion
The answer is easy, and twofold. At Enviu, we believe that:
- Without inclusion, impact is only half the story.
- And exclusion isn’t just unjust, it’s also a missed opportunity.
Our ventures are in place to tackle systemic challenges, but these challenges don’t burden everyone equally. Around the world, women and girls continue to face structural barriers that limit their economic participation, safety, and opportunities for leadership.
And here’s the real missed opportunity: this exclusion holds back entire economies. Closing gender gaps unlocks gains in productivity, innovation, resilience, and long-term prosperity. That’s why gender inclusion isn’t an add-on to our work. It’s a lens that’s deeply embedded in our model, shaping everything we do.
Because when women have equal access to resources, leadership, and opportunity, entire communities thrive. And when those outcomes are baked into business models from day one, the impact becomes scalable, systemic, and lasting.
This focus on inclusion is also a core part of our human-centered design approach: co-creating solutions with the very people most affected by systemic challenges, ensuring they are not just beneficiaries, but active shapers of the change.
So what do we do to create gender inclusion?
The case for gender-inclusive innovation
Each domain we work in has its own challenges as well as potential gains when it comes to fostering gender inclusion:
Agrifood
The Barriers
In East Africa’s agricultural sector, there is substantial evidence of gender inequality. Especially when it comes to access to assets such as land, technology, information, extension services, training, financial and marketing services, livestock, and other farm inputs.
To illustrate:
- Female farmers often have greater difficulty in obtaining e.g. fertilizers and water, particularly in African and Asian countries.
- Women generally do not own the land they work on. Instead, they often farm on land owned by their husband or other male family members.
- When women DO have access to land, they face restrictions on their rights to lease or sell it.
In a nutshell, the result of restricted access to land and farm inputs is lower productivity on land farmed by women, reflected by lower yields. It has also been shown that if given similar opportunities and access to the same resources, women are as productive as male farmers.
Therefore, in addition to the humanitarian argument, there’s a strong economic argument: Gender gaps in agricultural earnings are detrimental, considering the important contribution of agriculture to national GDP.
The Opportunities
According to the African Development Bank Group,
“Closing the gender gap in agriculture could increase yields by up to 19%, boost GDP, and lift households out of poverty”
These productivity gains would raise monthly consumption per adult and help households with female-managed farms climb out of poverty.
Beyond the economic case, addressing gender bias in agriculture is crucial to sustaining growth, strengthening food security, and building more resilient communities.
Take our venture Shambani Pro, for example. By setting up micro-factories right at the first mile, in the villages where these female farmers live and work, we transform what was once waste (post-harvest food loss) into a sustainable business. Here, second-grade or surplus mangoes are dried and turned into products that fetch up to six times more value on the market. But more importantly, these factories are designed to be run by the community itself with women at the center of ownership and operations.
In our pilot phase, we envision two factories owned by groups of female farmers. These women – will be co-owners of an asset that generates revenue, creates stable jobs, and builds long-term security. Inside these micro-factories, women take full ownership of the production process, using accessible and practical technology to maintain quality standards and engage with bulk buyers. Through this work, they gain valuable skills, strengthen their decision-making power, and lead across the value chain; turning an opportunity into a space they can independently manage, adapt, and thrive in.
For many, it’s the first time they’ve earned a steady income close to home. The work is safer, more stable, and allows them to stay rooted in their communities instead of seeking insecure work elsewhere. Beyond individual earnings, the profits from the factories are shared among the farmers and employees themselves, ensuring the financial benefits stay in the hands of the women who power them.
And the impact doesn’t stop at wages. When women have reliable work and a share in the profits, they gain more agency in their households and communities. They can keep their children in school. They can reinvest in their farms.
Textiles
India generates 7.8 million tonnes of textile waste annually (8.5% of the global total) driven by fast fashion and rising consumption. In cities like Bengaluru, over 75% of this waste ends up landfilled or incinerated, releasing harmful microplastics and greenhouse gases, particularly from polyester, which is growing in volume and remains difficult to recycle.
The Barrier
Within this waste system, women form the invisible backbone: sorting textile waste in harsh, underpaid, and unprotected informal jobs. Though essential, their roles remain undervalued and disconnected from climate innovation. As synthetic materials dominate, sorting becomes more technical, and women workers are often excluded from skilling, technology, and formal recognition.
In fact, as the work becomes more formal and skilled, female participation drop significantly:
The Opportunities
So where is the untapped potential? When women are trained, equipped, and included in the growing textile circular economy, the impact multiplies. Beyond closing the gender gap, empowering women in textiles is simply smart economics. Leveraging the knowledge and skills waste pickers have along with technological advancements and human centered design, we can build solutions for better material recovery and redesigned products.
When women gain formal employment in a formal waste management value chain, like for the textiles, the benefits extend far beyond their own livelihoods. For example, women typically reinvest up to 90% of their income back into their households, improving education, nutrition, and strengthening community resilience.
But it’s not just women’s livelihoods (and their communities) that are positively affected. Their employment and training also have the potential to create new revenue streams.
Take Enviu Textiles, for example.
Through ventures The Good Felt and Second Spin, Enviu Textiles is tackling both challenges: piloting circular solutions to textile waste while providing better working conditions for women waste workers and sorters. With our partners, we formalize roles, provide better income avenues, and build dignity in labor.
Our core partners are also the informal waste-picker community. Their work includes collecting, segregating, and managing waste from mixed streams under unsafe, unhygienic, and harsh conditions without contracts, protections, or pathways to improve their livelihoods. Despite their critical role in the urban waste ecosystem, they lack better income avenues, safety, fair wages, and access to upward mobility.
Our interventions address this gap. We create income opportunities via trusted waste management partners that offer training, safer environments, and structured opportunities to grow with the sector.
Waste management companies – in particular – also benefit from this model. Textile waste, which was an untapped stream, now helps generate income by collecting, sorting and segregating it. By channeling this textile waste, they gain new revenue streams and higher margins through service agreements and feedstock sales to our ventures.
Zero Waste
Women have always been at the heart of informal and community-based circular economies. Within Enviu Zero Waste, and through our venture Alner’s pioneering reuse system, we have seen this firsthand. In fact, the majority of the 1700+ reuse hubs and community partners we work with are women-led.
These women are not only gatekeepers of daily household consumption, but they are also innovators in building hyperlocal circular systems. From running warungs (micro-retailers) that facilitate refill models, to leading waste bank networks that anchor reuse hubs, women are already doing the work.
But there’s a caveat: they’re often operating within systems that aren’t designed to support them.
The Barriers
Women are at the heart of informal and community-based circular economies, yet they often face barriers that don’t reflect the value they bring. Many run reuse hubs without formal support, lacking access to capital, tools, or business services that could help them grow.
And despite carrying out much of this work voluntarily, they take on operational responsibilities while being left out of strategic decisions, decisions their firsthand experience could inform.
On top of that, the demands of unpaid care work limit their time and energy for leadership or innovation. Even technology and infrastructure, from digital tools to physical facilities, are often not designed with their needs in mind. And yet, these women continue to lead, innovate, and sustain hyperlocal circular systems, showing remarkable resilience and creativity every step of the way.
The Opportunities
What we’ve learned at Enviu and through our venture Alner is that when reuse systems are intentionally designed to include and empower women, the whole ecosystem becomes stronger. Women-led hubs bring a huge advantage in community trust and adoption. Our pilot cities show that initiatives led by women are often the most successful at shifting consumer behavior toward reuse, thanks to their deep relationships and influence in their neighborhoods.
We’ve also learned that investing in capacity-building also pays off. This includes training women in reuse logistics, digital tools, and entrepreneurial models as this boosts economic resilience not just for the women themselves, but for their communities as well.
When women are visible in policy conversations, their perspectives help drive more equitable and culturally grounded waste reduction strategies. And by creating formal pathways for waste bank leaders or refill warung operators, we’ve been able to scale adoption and impact much faster.
These experiences show that empowering women isn’t just the right thing to do, it’s one of the clearest opportunities to strengthen the zero waste movement.
How Enviu embeds a gender lens across the board
1. We apply the 2x Criteria
The 2X Criteria provide a globally recognized framework to identify and support investments that open up real opportunities for women as leaders, as employees, as entrepreneurs, and as customers. It’s a common language that helps investors, companies, and changemakers around the world work together to advance gender inclusion in a measurable way.
By applying this standard, we ensure our ventures actively contribute to economic participation and access for women. Not just ticking boxes, but creating systems where women thrive.
2. Gender training workshops
As part of our commitment to being diverse by nature and fostering inclusive entrepreneurship, Enviu has held internal gender training workshops. These sessions, such as the one on ‘Breaking Barriers’ led by Kalyani Krishna, an Environmental Engineer with a focus on impact investing, business, and gender inclusion, are designed to deepen our collective awareness of gender dynamics.
They help our team recognize systemic barriers, challenge unconscious bias, and implement practical strategies to create a more inclusive and equitable work environment. By equipping our team with these tools, we ensure that gender inclusion is not just a principle we stand for, but a practice we live by, within our ventures and across our entire organization.
Breaking Barriers workshop by Kalyani Krishna for Enviu Global
Anna Boessneck, Venture Builder at Enviu shared:
“It’s funny. We all like to think we’ve got biases figured out, but the truth is, they still show up in ways we don’t always see. What I really appreciated about these sessions was how practical and real they were. Instead of just talking about the problem, we rolled up our sleeves and worked on strategies, and you could feel the whole group getting curious, engaged, and thinking differently. It also made me super aware of where we do have the power to act… and where we still need to get creative to work around the barriers that exist.”
Learn more about how we tackle gender bias in venture building here.
3. We include women in our issue analysis and validation work
When we conduct issue analyses or validation work, we work closely with women who have a large participation in workforce be it farmers, waste pickers or warung owners so they are not left out while building the systems. This helps us avoid gaps or blind spots in our research and ensures our solutions are designed for everyone especially women leading to more inclusive, effective models.
4. ESG and Inclusivity policies are deeply rooted within our ventures
In addition to Enviu, our ventures also follow gender-sensitive policies, such as those covering ESG and inclusivity. SokoFresh is a great example of how this approach has strengthened the business and built greater resilience.
Excerpt from Gender Equality: the most talked about, yet most underfunded SDG:
In the video below (featured by Value for Women Ltd.), SokoFresh’s CEO Denis Karema sheds light on why SokoFresh chose to explore gender inclusion within their business.
Source: Value for Women Ltd.
Source: Value for Women Ltd.
With women making up 43% of the global agricultural workforce, SokoFresh (an Enviu Agrifood venture) initially focused on understanding how to attract and retain more women on its team. This exploration resulted in a significant increase in its female workforce. Today, SokoFresh counts over 97 female field agents, all working under safe and supportive conditions.
Denis emphasizes that this growing representation isn’t just a matter of fairness; it directly strengthens the company’s competitiveness by fostering a more dynamic workplace culture and a greater diversity of perspectives. In his view, gender inclusion is not only the ethical thing to do, it’s a smart business decision.
5. We gather gender disaggregated impact data
We recognize the importance of understanding how our work affects different genders. Gathering gender-disaggregated impact data allows us to see who benefits from our initiatives, identify potential disparities, and ensure that our programs create equitable outcomes.
To support this, we introduced a global impact framework this year, developed in collaboration with Metabolic, to structure our impact measurement efforts for both reporting and learning purposes. Our impact measurement efforts are twofold: they serve as a tool for accountability, showing funders the catalytic effects of their support, AND as a guide for continuous learning, helping us refine strategies and scale our impact more effectively.
Collecting gender-disaggregated data is a central part of this framework. It helps us make informed decisions that empower women while strengthening entire communities.
For example, in our Zero Waste and Agrifood domains, we track the number of female microentrepreneurs and farmers we empower. The data shows that we reach more women than men; women who often drive household decision-making and carefully manage financial planning. This demonstrates that by empowering women, we are also uplifting families and communities at large, keeping us on track with our gender inclusion goals.
6. We highlight women in our storytelling
We make it a priority to shine a spotlight on the women at the heart of our work.
In our storytelling, their experiences, leadership, and impact take center stage, showing how they drive change and shape the future.
Take Anita, one of the micro-entrepreneurs working with our venture, Alner. Her dedication to reducing waste in her community not only transformed local practices but also inspired others to take action. By highlighting women like Anita, we celebrate their resilience and vision, making their voices an integral part of the story of sustainable impact.
Empowering women isn’t just the right thing to do, its smart economics
As you can see, at Enviu, gender inclusion isn’t an add-on, it’s a lens that shapes everything we do. Across our domains, we’ve seen firsthand that when women have access to leadership, resources, and decision-making power, communities thrive and impact scales.
That’s why we want to spread the word: empowering women isn’t just the right thing to do, it’s smart economics, stronger ecosystems, and sustainable change. By embedding gender inclusion into our ventures, training, and investment decisions, we turn untapped potential into lasting solutions.
How are you advancing gender inclusion in your work?
Now that we’ve laid out our strategy on the table, we’re curious: what strategies have worked for you? What bold approaches would you recommend for creating truly inclusive ventures?
Let’s share, challenge, and inspire each other.
