Fortune 500 and Women & Girls: Time for innovation

Women and girls make up more than half the world’s population and they are on the front lines of poverty, climate change, food insecurity, lack of healthcare, and global economic crises — often more deeply impacted than men and boys . But it is time to stop seeing women just as victims, let us see their strength, tap their power. More and more Fortune 500 companies share that view.

Women are an untapped source of strength and innovation. Empowering women is part of the solution in addressing 21st century global challenges such as poverty, inequality, and violence. And it is a win-win as gender equality also underpins business performance and success.

For UN WOMEN strategic partners among Fortune 500 companies, this perspective is a key driver, and our collaboration is often multi-faceted:

We work with corporate CEOS and their Diversity & Inclusion teams to promote best practices for gender equality in the world of work, from the shop floors to the executive boards, and all across the value chain. We promote the Women's Empowerment Principles (WEPs) developed with the UN Global Compact. With our guidance and tool kits, we have seen some companies make great progress. Among our He for She Impact Champions and other strategic partners, for example AccorHotels, Tupperware Brands, and P&G have achieved board parity or are almost there.  Barclays, PwC, Tupperware, SAP and Unilever have achieved parity in new hires. But let us face it, there is a long way to go: women currently hold a paltry 5% of CEO positions at S&P 500 companies, and 6% of Fortune 500 CEO roles.

Collective action on diversity from the business community is imperative: we need to find accelerating strategies to ensuring equal pay for equal work, equal parental leave, board and senior management parity. I trust that soon, measuring the gender gap and publicly reporting progress will be a requirement for investors, since diversity drives better financial performance!

We work with CEOs and their Chief Procurement Officers to drive the gender agenda in the supply chain: we work with pioneers like P&G to accelerate women entrepreneurs’ access to corporate supply chains. We worked with corporate partners to develop knowledge products such as the “Corporate Guide to Gender-Responsive Procurement” developed in partnership with Citi.

We work with CEOs and their Chief Marketing Officers in addressing bias and stereotypes in advertising. We are driving amazing collective action with the business community: with the Unstereotype Alliance, launched at the Cannes Lions this year, we are set to drive change through $500bn of advertising spent every year, leveraging that buying power and media space to advance the progressive portrayal of women and roll back the stereotypes. (1)

We work with CEOs and their Chief Marketing Officers as well in promoting gender equality through cause related marketing to their audiences. And we tap their reach to promote our campaigns designed to them inspire to action on a range of concerns vital to women and the SDGs. UN Women’s campaigns include the “HeForShe” campaign, the “Orange the World in 16 Days” campaign, “Planet 50-50 by 2030: Step It Up for Gender Equality” campaign, and the “#StopTheRobbery” campaign to raise awareness of the gender pay gap.

We work with CEOs and their Chief Technology Officers and their Chief Strategy Officers to explore ways to leverage technology to leapfrog access to education, finance, and markets, for women and girls.  Last week we launched the Global Innovation Coalition for Change (GICC) to leverage the full potential of innovation, technology and multi-stakeholder partnerships to bring about such transformative change for women and girls worldwide. UN Women’s aims to build market awareness, investment and industry wide action for innovations that advance women; working with industry partners to take a gender responsive approach to the innovation cycle; promoting women as innovators; and directly developing innovations and technology that can accelerate the impact of UN Women’s operations to meet the needs of women and girls.

We work with CEOs and their Chief People Officers on gender responsive employee engagement and employee giving. Given the importance of employee engagement to an organization’s productivity, absenteeism, turnover and the quality of work and health, we work with our corporate partners to strengthen the avenues through which their employees can engage with a cause close to their heart. UN Women encourages and promotes secondment and skilled volunteering to our teams and programs where there is a match of skills and requirements. We also encourage partnerships on employee giving and matching gift programmes.

Why would Fortune 500 companies engage with UN WOMEN?   In the short term: talents, markets, performance. In addition, the broader strategic picture often expressed to me is that in the 21st century, women will be the global economic engine. Let us invest in women and girls and we will see economic, social, cultural, and political benefits.

First, because that half of the world population has been untapped: under-educated, under-represented, under-served, but also its potential ignored, its talent pipeline excluded. Second, because experience and research shows that investing in gender equality is good for business, economies and development.  In brief, provide a level playing field for women and you will see a more sustainable planet.

 Join us!

Joelle Tanguy, Director Strategic Partnership Division, UN WOMEN, [email protected]

(1) I take this chance to thank all the founding members of the Unstereotype Alliance including advertisers (Unilever, P&G, AT&T, Johnson& Johnson, Cannes Lions, Diageo), digital media partners (Facebook, Google, Microsoft), advertising agencies consortia (IPG, WPP, Publicis, Omnicom), and associations (IPA, WFA, ANA) as well as industry champions such as Madonna Badger (#WomenNotObjects) and Shelley Zalis (TFQ).