Empowering women and achieving gender equality – the goals of the Women’s Empowerment Principles - requires intentional actions and deliberate policies. The WEPs are based on concrete business practices and have inspired companies around the world to tailor existing policies and programmes – or establish needed new ones – to realize women’s empowerment.
What follows is a sampling of good practices gathered from online searches or submitted by UN Global Compact participants in response to our call to share actions and initiatives that their companies are undertaking to empower and advance women.
The actions and policies adopted by these companies demonstrate the abundance of ways that business can contribute to the advancement of women’s empowerment around the world. The examples hail from companies representing a broad range of sectors and regions, demonstrating the universal relevance and practicality of women’s empowerment and gender equality. These working examples have not necessarily been reviewed by the companies concerned and may be subject to further editing. Nor have they been through any vetting process. They are intended to raise awareness of the many ways in which business can promote gender equality in the workplace, marketplace and community. We hope that they will inspire other businesses to take action to empower women and that this collection of good practices by companies around the world will continue to grow.
The launch of the Sustainable Development Goals in September 2015 provides a tremendous opportunity for business to scale up action to advance gender equality and address some of the world's greatest challenges. The WEPs provide an established platform for companies to deepen and accelerate action.
