A/HRC/41/43 (a) Business enterprises should respect women’s human rights and contribute to achieving substantive gender equality as a normative principle, although there may also be a business case for doing so; (b) Business enterprises should integrate a gender equality policy across all departments and throughout operations in discharging their responsibility to respect women’s human rights. This may require building the capacity of personnel and business partners with regard to women’s human rights and gender equality; (c) Business enterprises should rely on, and refer to in their codes, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women and the Convention on the Rights of the Child to avoid the risk of adopting a gender-neutral reading of human rights under the International Bill of Human Rights; (d) Business enterprises should be aware of the intertwined layers of discrimination faced by women because of intersectionality: different women may be affected differently by business activities owing to variables such as age, colour, caste, class, ethnicity, religion, language, literacy, access to economic resources, marital status, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, residence in a rural location, and migration, indigenous or minority status; (e) When business enterprises may adversely affect indigenous women, they should take into account the rights, including to self-determination and of free, prior and informed consent, set out in the Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention, 1989 (No. 169) of the International Labour Organization and in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Guiding principle 13 25. Business enterprises should not cause or contribute to adverse impacts on women’s human rights and should address such impacts when they occur. They should also take adequate measures to prevent or mitigate adverse impacts on women’s human rights that are directly linked to their operations, products or services by their business relationships. 26. Illustrative actions: (a) Business enterprises should avoid undermining women’s human rights at a minimum and promote such rights by adopting, and applying in practice throughout their operations, a gender equality policy; (b) Business enterprises should encourage all their business partners to respect women’s human rights, for example by communicating gender equality expectations and assessing performance on that basis, providing advice, building capacity and offering incentives; (c) Business enterprises should ensure that new technologies such as artificial intelligence and automation do not have disproportionate adverse impacts on women’s human rights. Guiding principle 14 27. All business enterprises, including micro-, small and medium-sized enterprises, should take appropriate steps in line with the Guiding Principles to respect the human rights of women, including those working in the informal economy. 28. Illustrative actions: (a) A gender perspective should be adopted in determining the severity and irremediable character of adverse human rights impacts under the Guiding Principles; (b) Business enterprises should use their leverage over business partners with which they are involved to encourage them to respect women’s human rights; (c) Business enterprises should map workers in the informal economy who are part of their supply chains, identify gender-specific issues and take appropriate steps to address these issues; 19