Opportunities for women
We want to help create a world in which every woman and girl can create the kind of life she wishes to lead, unconstrained by harmful norms and stereotypes. We believe a world where women are economically empowered will be a fairer, happier and more prosperous place to live – and that our business will flourish in it.
Changing the norms & closing the gender gap
At the current rate of progress, women will have to wait 100 years to close the gender gap with men – a wait that, despite advances over the last decade, actually got longer in 2017. The annual World Economic Forum Global Gender Gap Report, published in November 2017, found the gap between men and women across health, education, politics and the workplace widening for the first time since records began in 2006.
This wait is unacceptable – for current and future generations of women and girls, and for the societies and economies of which they and our business are a part.
We want our business to be a leading force in closing that gap, and to challenge and change the harmful norms and stereotypes that are a barrier to women’s economic empowerment – and the norms and stereotypes of masculinity that confine men too.
Empowering women can transform the world
Empowering women will transform individual lives, and it will also transform societies. It’s essential to the United Nations 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda and its Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Empowering women and girls is the focus of SDG 5, Achieving Gender Equality. But, like the need to work in partnership (SDG 17), women’s empowerment is a red thread that stitches all the SDGs together. In particular, it underpins those that aim to improve access to skills and employment and the resulting economic empowerment this brings.
Our business, too, will be transformed: women are 70% of our consumer base, 50% of the talent pool from whom we recruit our workforce, and play critical roles in our supply chain and in enabling us to reach consumers with our products. By creating and supporting opportunities for women in society and the economy, we have the possibility to grow our markets, brands and business.