How Can Business Address Gender Equality Challenges Through Business Aware Practices?
This year, the first SDG Gender Index, produced by Equal Measures 2030, found that 2.8bn women and girls are living in countries that are ‘failing’ or ‘barely passing’ on gender equality, and no country is on track to achieve full gender equality by 2030. Even the higher-scoring countries were unable to make significant progress on […]
Advancing Gender Equality Across the Value Chain: Engaging Men as Allies
Following international movements such as UN Women’s #HeforShe campaign, there is growing awareness of the need to engage men as allies for gender equality. What is less clear is what this might mean in practice for businesses in their efforts to advance gender equality. Business Fights Poverty has launched a Challenge, supported by AB InBev […]
Time to Unstereotype? How Brands Are Reimagining Gender Norms Beyond the Screen
“These images are part of our past … but the world has evolved, and so has Skol. This doesn’t represent us anymore.” Now that’s something refreshing. Skol’s reimagined campaign employs female artists to tear down and reinterpret their typically sexist branding in a truly literal sense. We’ve seen for so long a familiar dialogue running […]
The Next Big Revolution: Off-Grid Solar Powering Mobile Phones
In 2011 I was in Uganda, in a village without power, near the border of Congo. There, I was surprised to see many locals with mobile phones, as there was no way they could charge them in the village at that time. There was mobile coverage though! Then I learned that they walked to the […]
Focus on Dirty Legacy Sectors to Achieve Sustainable Development Goals
This type of progress has, understandably, been most evident among companies for which the required changes are relatively “easy,” such as those from the pharmaceutical, water, and food sectors. By contrast, little progress has been made by sectors contributing substantially to poor health and climate change, including companies that profit from tobacco, coal, palm oil, […]
Empowering Women in Toy Factories: Insights from Pilots in India
Ethical Toy Program and BSR collaborated on a women’s empowerment program that was piloted in three toy factories in India with a total population of 824 workers—including 198 women. The program, funded by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands, consisted of in-factory trainings on gender awareness, health, communications, and prevention of gender-based violence delivered to ‘Core […]
Rising to the Challenge: Donors Must Change their Funding Systems to Ensure that Businesses Achieve Social Impact
The current funding system threatens potentially life-changing innovations The world is hungry for new innovations that solve some of our biggest global challenges, such as food insecurity, financial illiteracy or a lack of healthcare and education. Social entrepreneurs in emerging markets are some of the biggest innovators in providing services and products for the world’s […]
How Companies Can Tackle Gender Based Violence
Gender-based violence affects employees physical and mental health and well-being, leading to stress, anxiety, loss of self-esteem and motivation. Often women are forced to leave their jobs. It contributes to the gender pay gap and seriously affects women’s opportunities for advancement and career progression. Women usually bear the brunt of gender-based violence, although others are […]
A Man’s Place: How Men Can Tackle Everyday Workplace Sexism
Women find it more difficult than men to progress into leadership positions. There is a fall-off in the proportion of women represented in management as the roles get more senior. Much evidence shows that unintentional gender bias is to blame. The spotlight has recently shifted away from ‘fixing the women’ to succeed in the workplace […]
How Technology Can Help Tackle Modern Slavery Through Worker Engagement
Modern slavery in supply chains: a global challenge Over 40 million people are in modern slavery. It is a crime affecting all countries, yet it is often hidden and difficult to measure. In a new Business Fights Poverty Challenge, we are setting out to explore how technology can help tackle modern slavery through worker engagement. […]
Banking The Unbanked
‘Dreams are too expensive – We cannot afford to dream’ Khalida Bibi, a female home-based worker, expressed her despair during one of our customer surveys to assess the needs of lower- and middle-income individuals in rural Pakistan. Khalida is a 45-year-old, mother of three who runs a small home-based embroidery business, which provides an inconsistent […]
The Role Banks Can Play in Advancing Gender Equality
BFP: Credit Suisse is this year’s host of Business Fights Poverty’s flagship event at UNGA in New York – could you tell us a little more about why a bank like Credit Suisse supports these kinds of initiatives? PD: At Credit Suisse, we believe that it is in the interest of both our organization and […]
Inviting Men to Make a Difference: the #HeForShe movement
The case for gender equality is clear with estimates that £28 trillion could be added to the global economy if women participated equally. Yet according to recent reports, no country is expected to achieve full gender equality by 2030. Our ongoing Business Fights Poverty Challenge with AB InBev, CARE and Stanford University’s VMWare Women’s Leadership […]
How Can We Save Purpose from Purpose-Wash?
The common ground between the critics and champions of purpose is the desire for authenticity. Our Challenge on Purpose asks how we can move beyond rhetoric to embed purpose meaningfully and consistently across business. We initially identified Five Pillars to build authentic purpose within organisations and sought the opinions of the Business Fights Poverty network […]
The New ILO Violence and Harassment Convention: Signalling a Shift in Norms and Expectations
The International Labour Organisation (ILO) celebrated its 100th anniversary this year. In June, representatives from governments, unions and employers’ organisations gathered in Geneva at the annual International Labour Conference to commemorate a century of tripartite engagement at this, the oldest of the United Nations agencies. For those of us working on gender-based violence, sexual harassment […]
Romero: The Ambivalence of the Sacred
The business people saw a real possibility for their sector to positively impact peace through economic development and the capability of crossing boundaries to get people to work together. However, many (most) of them reacted with a degree of horror that the folks from religion would be there: “They’re the ones that cause intolerance, torture […]
Purpose Precedes Clarity; Clarity Precedes Success
Following my experiences of Business Fights Poverty Oxford 2019, I explore the link between purpose, clarity, and success, and share learnings about how companies around the world can embed purpose authentically. In my opinion, Business Fights Poverty 2019 was an event of paramount importance to the world of business. This year, BFP put forth the […]
How Should Business Encourage Family-Friendly Workplaces?
Family friendly workplace policies, such as paid parental leave, breastfeeding breaks and support for affordable childcare, play a fundamental role in ensuring children get the best start possible in life. But are businesses doing all they can to support parents manage a changing work-family balance? A new study recently published by UNICEF shows that some […]
How Male Mentors Can Develop Women at Work
The workforce includes more women — especially in traditionally male professions — and business leaders are changing workplace environments to be more flexible, collaborative and caring in a calculated effort to attract and retain the best talent, both male and female. Organizations that don’t adapt to this battle for talent risk marginalizing or excluding 50 […]
As One: A Different Chapter in Table Tennis Diplomacy
In 1972, U.S. President Richard Nixon accepted an invitation from China to send an American table tennis team to play some exhibition matches. Several incidents encouraging the interaction between the countries and their teams had occurred prior to 1972, including in 1971 when a U.S. player, who missed the team bus, rode the Chinese bus. […]