Corporate Citizenship has launched an exciting new research paper today: ‘Women Mean Business – Empowerment in Developing Markets’ in collaboration with the International Centre for Corporate Social Responsibility (ICCSR).
The latest of our publications centres around the three core business benefits to be achieved by global companies investing in women in developing markets: generating wider economic opportunities, higher productivity and increased sales. In discussing these benefits, it brings to the fore successful business initiatives in this area and highlights the importance of partnerships in achieving this.
In the last decade we have seen progress among global businesses investing in women, with a range of successful initiatives resulting in higher productivity and increased sales. Through Project Shakti, a partnership that began in India with a view to promoting women entrepreneurs, Unilever managed to double the number of rural households reached, gaining access to new market segments in hard-to-reach areas. Lonmin, the world’s third largest primary platinum producer, has made a firm commitment to increasing the number of female employees at its mines with the launch of their ‘Women in Mining’ programme. The outcome has seen an increase of 52% since the project began in 2007; Lonmin gaining the best employees from a larger pool of workers.
These are impressive results, but just the beginning of the story. There is also evidence that investing in women could be highly beneficial for communities and economic development on a larger scale. The World Bank, for example, tells us that providing girls with one more year of schooling can increase their wages up by 20%. In comparative studies, findings suggest that women tend to reinvest 90% of their income into the family, while the equivalent number for men is 30-40%. In addition, the microfinance industry has discovered that in many developing countries, women tend to have the best credit ratings, defaulting on loans far less often than men.
Whilst these are interesting and useful observations, I am loathe to dwell too much on comparative figures such as these. I could talk about women and our superiority (!) until the cows come home but that is not what this paper is about. To put it crudely, women make up half the world’s population. That means the potential for half of our workforce, half of our agricultural producers and entrepreneurial brains. And yet companies are still excluding them and failing to address their needs. Now why would they want to do that?