The UN Guiding Principles on business and human rights (UNGPs) make a key contribution to the implementation of human rights guar-antees through their definition of the concept of human rights due diligence (HRDD), which directs companies to ‘identify, prevent, miti-gate and account for’ their adverse human rights impact.1The UNGPs’ discussion of business and state responsibilities to prevent and redress gender-based discrimination is, however, very limited.2 This is despite the fact that there is a well-developed body of international human rights law containing guarantees of substantive gender equality for people within all areas of econom-ic, social, cultural and political life. The international human rights framework has predominantly concentrated on the obligations of states to protect against and remedy human rights violations by companies and other non-state actors. In contrast, most initiatives that aim to engage directly with businesses on issues of gender equality are voluntary in nature and tend to focus on discrimination with-in the workplace rather than on the broader socioeconomic, legal and political context within which companies operate and over which they exercise a certain degree of influence.