Women's Responsive Procurement initiative will lead to the Economic growth of any country.

Gender-responsive procurement (GRP)?is an initiative that is urgently needed. In building a nation where women stand shoulder to shoulder with men, Womennovator believes procurement is also one such niche area where there is a lot of scope for awareness and growth.

Gender-responsive-procurement means expanding benefits to all women in value chains as a means to address gender inequality, moving beyond the "buy from women-owned businesses" approach as a consumer to the “procure from women-owned businesses," which seeks to offer equal opportunities for women's enterprises to access markets. This results in a broader perspective on GRP that prioritizes gender-responsive businesses regardless of ownership, potentially enabling both women and men to gain access to business and employment prospects.??

In April 2018, the World Bank had set the goal?to achieve?$160 million?by 2030 from women-owned enterprises, although they achieved more than double that by 2023, which was $115 million, through process changes, outreach, capacity building, and technology leverage. The share by the end of FY20 was 4.5%, an increase from FY18's (3.7%) and the FY17 baseline's (3.1%).?

In 2018, Womennovator could successfully ensure a 3 percent mandatory procurement policy for women-owned businesses for ministerial and public sector undertakings, but we don't want to stop here.

In our campaign for Womennovator gender-responsive procurement, we are deliberating on the role of corporations in supporting women entrepreneurs. Women entrepreneurs must build up the $3 trillion economy. This initiative is one of its kind, wherein corporates are coming together and talking about gender-responsive procurement & pledging to buy products/services made by women entrepreneurs (which could be around 1% to 3% of their existing procurement), and this, in turn, will help them meet their SDG obligation of “Gender Equality and Women's Empowerment."

All corporations should come forward with easy and achievable targets, where self-help groups (SHGs), and women entrepreneurs can do matchmaking and achieve these targets. What’s also important is to create a market for women and equip them with mentorship, which Womennovator already provides.

Read more at:?https://yourstory.com/herstory/2022/11/womennovator-organises-stakeholder-roundtable-discussion-grp

SEBI (Regulatory Authority) in India introduced a new sustainability-related reporting format for the Business Responsibility and Sustainability Report (“BRSR”). The BRSR shall be mandatory for the top 1000 listed entities (by market capitalization) from 2022-2023, and if corporations start procuring from women-owned businesses and start tracking them, they can surely report it in their BRSR with a quantifiable impact, which is always the biggest challenge. Join our global campaign as a corporation or individual.

Womennovator is a global incubator for women, supporting women entrepreneurs in scaling operations domestically and internationally, creating distribution networks, and empowering women leaders, and professionals to become job creators.