The issue of women’s access to economic opportunities has attracted renewed international attention this year with the launch in January of the UN High-Level Panel on Women’s Economic Empowerment.
The UK Secretary of State for International Development, Justine Greening is a Panel member and has initiated an extensive UK-based consultation to gather views from across civil society, business and other sectors on how best to promote and support women’s economic empowerment.
As part of this consultation process, Business Fights Poverty and CARE International UK are bringing together businesses and their NGO partners to focus on how business can most effectively support women’s economic empowerment through their value chains and beyond. The online discussions on 19 May 2016 are the first of a series of events organised as part of this Challenge.
Questions for discussion
This online discussion will address the Challenge question: How can business most effectively support women’s economic empowerment, through their value chains and beyond?
Specifically, we would like to explore the following questions:
1. How can business best support women’s economic empowerment working through their value chains?
2. How can companies’ internal policies and practices contribute to greater economic empowerment for women?
3. How can business use external marketing and customer engagement to support women’s economic empowerment?
4. Which actions should companies take (possibly in partnership with governments/donors/civil society) to tackle wider systemic constraints to women’s empowerment, such as access to finance?
We would like to hear from you about the most effective ways in which business can help empower women: is it action in one of the four areas listed here, or perhaps another kind of intervention altogether? Share your experience and examples, tell us what work and where further action is needed.