UN SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS AND CORPORATE ACCOUNTABILITY: SDG 5 IN MNC WORKPLACE POLICIES AND INDIAN LEGAL ENFORCEMENT

Gender equality occupies a peculiar position in the corporate imagination. Firms recite it in glossy sustainability reports, yet they lived reality inside the workplace frequently tells a different story. The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), adopted in 2015, gave this aspiration a numbered identity: SDG 5, the pledge to "achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls." Multinational corporations (MNCs) have embraced the label with enthusiasm. Whether that enthusiasm translates into accountability is a separate question altogether, and it is the one this article interrogates. The inquiry matters because SDG 5 is not self-executing. It is a political commitment made by states, not a binding obligation on companies. What converts a soft aspiration into enforceable conduct is domestic law. In India, that conversion has occurred through a patchwork of statutes, regulations, and judicial pronouncements. The central argument here is straightforward: SDG 5 supplies the vocabulary of corporate gender responsibility, but Indian legal enforcement supplies the teeth, and the two remain imperfectly aligned.