A/HRC/41/43 (d) States should consider offering incentives to business enterprises that demonstrate leadership in taking measurable steps to achieve substantive gender equality throughout their operations; (e) States should require business enterprises domiciled in their territory and/or jurisdiction to respect the rights of women human rights defenders and whistle-blowers throughout their operations. Guiding principle 3 5. States should assess and address the direct and indirect discriminatory effects of existing laws and policies on women’s human rights. They should take account of the gender framework and guidance for the Guiding Principles in providing guidance to business enterprises on how to respect human rights throughout their operations. 6. Illustrative actions: (a) States should employ gender equality as a cross-cutting theme in drafting, revising and assessing all laws and regulations that have a bearing on promoting and ensuring business respect for human rights; (b) States should take proactive measures to ensure meaningful participation of women and women’s organizations in developing or updating laws and policies; (c) States should consider and address the differentiated impact of various laws on women, for example how laws on consumer safety, corporations, labour, human rights, environment, advertising, entertainment, investment, banking, finance, taxation and anticompetition affect women; (d) State policies, including those concerning implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals, should be gender-transformative. For example, policies related to poverty, health, housing, education, sanitation, decent work, land and climate change should address the root causes of discrimination against women. Guiding principle 4 7. States should ensure that State-owned or State-controlled business enterprises and State agencies not only lead by example in achieving substantive gender equality but also use their leverage to require their business partners to do the same. 8. Illustrative actions: (a) States should require educational institutions receiving financial support or recognition to raise awareness about substantive gender equality and to build capacity of the relevant stakeholders to achieve this goal; (b) State should require all State-owned or State-controlled business enterprises to follow the gender framework and guidance in conducting human rights due diligence and in collecting sex-disaggregated data; (c) States should require agencies dealing with development aid, export credit, pensions and sovereign investment funds to integrate gender equality policies in their mandates; (d) States should require all State-owned or State-controlled business enterprises to appoint a certain percentage of women to their boards and annually disclose data on progress made in achieving gender parity in employment; (e) States should require all State-owned or State-controlled business enterprises to take effective measures to protect the sexual and reproductive health and rights of women; (f) State should require their agencies, as well as State-owned or State-controlled business enterprises, to have policies and mechanisms to address sexual harassment, gender-based violence, pregnancy- and maternity/paternity-based discrimination and the gender pay gap; 15