Opportunities for women

Empowered women are playing a vital part in creating the prosperous economies in which our business can grow – and increasing their opportunities further will increase ours. Worldwide, women control 64% of consumer spending and are the fastest-growing group of consumers. Equality for women in the global labour force would add up to $28 trillion to the global economy by 2025, according to the McKinsey Global Institute. That’s a very significant opportunity for any business, especially one like ours, given that more than 70% of our consumers are women.

But as the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report 2018 shows, the gap is not closing fast enough. So what is holding equality back?

The UN High-Level Panel on Women’s Economic Empowerment report stated that “changing norms should be at the top of the 2030 Agenda to expand women’s economic opportunities”. Our own research supports the widening evidence that some of the strongest forces behind persistent gender gaps are harmful social norms and stereotypes that limit expectations of what women can or should do. These outdated norms that discriminate against women are all around us, and they are deeply ingrained.

Challenging and changing those norms is therefore a vital part of our strategy. We have a vision of a world in which every woman and girl can create the kind of life she wishes to lead, unconstrained by harmful norms and stereotypes. And a world, too, in which men are also free from the confines of adverse social norms and stereotypes of manhood and masculinity, and in which economies are growing and creating opportunities for men and women alike.

We have a great opportunity to help create this vision of unlocking women’s potential (PDF | 446KB) throughout our extended value chain and in society at large. We start with progressive policies and practices in our own workplace and supply chain operations. Building on this foundation, we collaborate with others to create opportunities for women in our extended supply chain, through our distribution networks, our brands and products. By engaging in partnership, thought leadership and advocacy, we unleash the power of collective action for sustainable, transformational change.

In our 2017 Opportunities for Women report (PDF | 7MB), we outlined how this approach across the value chain aims to:

• build a gender-balanced organisation with a focus on management
• promote safety for women in the communities where we operate
• enhance access to training and skills
• expand opportunities in our retail value chain
• work at a systemic level to challenge outdated gender norms and stereotypes.

Cultivating fair and balanced gender norms and progressive portrayals of women and girls calls for collective action. Stakeholders across sectors need to work together, and business must be part of the solution. We participate in platforms that help us bring insights into Unilever, and share our insights with the wider world. Many of our partnerships are described in the Taking Action pages in this report. Some key platforms which focus on driving change across systems and industries include:

• we have aligned with the UN Secretary-General’s High-Level Panel on Women’s Economic Empowerment and participated in working groups focused on tackling adverse norms and changing business culture
• we are committed to UN Women’s HeForShe movement to drive the advancement of women. Its goal is to achieve gender equality by encouraging men and boys as agents of change and to take action against negative inequalities faced by women and girls
• our TRANSFORM public-private partnership with the UK Department for International Development is a £40 million joint investment. It aims to develop market-based solutions to enable 100 million people in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia to gain access to products and services that have been shown to improve health, livelihoods, the environment or well-being by 2025. A key outcome for TRANSFORM is female empowerment
• we are a member of the Unstereotype Alliance – a UN Women-led initiative in partnership with Unilever and industry leaders including WPP, IPG, Facebook, Google, Mars, Microsoft and J&J, set to banish stereotypical portrayals of gender in advertising and all brand-led content.

Creating opportunities for women is not an isolated goal – in fact, it runs right through the Unilever Sustainable Living Plan and is a core element in many of our transformational sustainability aims.

Examples can be found throughout this report, including how Dove is helping to build self-esteem and body confidence in young people, how we’re enhancing access to training and skills for women in our agricultural supply chain via our Enhancing Livelihoods Fund, and how we’re creating economic opportunities for women to participate in our customer development network through our Shakti and Jaza Duka initiatives, described in Inclusive business.

Empowering women is also a vital component in our brand and strategic activities in areas including Health & hygiene − through initiatives such as Lifebuoy soap handwashing campaigns in neonatal clinics − and Improving nutrition. And it’s a central part of our drive to advance human rights and increase Fairness in the workplace within, and beyond, our business.

While we're confident that our broad range of activities is making a difference, we know that it isn't always easy to quantify − or to demonstrate. In 2018, we began working with our long-standing partner, impact investor Acumen, to co-develop a survey tool that could help measure more of the nuances around the difference our programmes are making.

The result is the Lean Data Gender Toolkit, which draws on the experience of Acumen’s Lean Data unit in collating and interpreting qualitative and quantitative information relevant to socially-oriented ventures. It also reflects technical insights from the International Center for Research on Women. The Lean Data tool focuses on the lived experience of both men and women − granting fresh insights compared to the ‘head-counting’ used by many existing approaches.

We began testing the toolkit in 2018, and look forward to understanding more about our impact as the results are analysed.

By 2020, we will empower 5 million women by advancing opportunities for women in our operations, promoting safety, developing skills and expanding opportunities in our retail value chain.

• We have improved our gender balance, with the proportion of female managers reaching 49%^† in 2018.
• In partnership with others, by 2018 we had enabled 1.85 million^†* women to access initiatives aiming to promote their safety, develop their skills or expand their opportunities.

^†  Independently assured by PwC

^*  Around 490,000 women accessed initiatives under both the Inclusive Business and the Opportunities for Women pillars in 2018

As the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report 2018 shows, progress towards gender equality cannot be taken for granted, and there is no room for complacency despite the gains made within our business, and in society at large, over recent years.

If we are to achieve the world we want by 2030, we must create a gender-equal society. That means more than focusing on the achievement of the UN Sustainable Development Goal 5, the specific target on gender. Gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls must happen across the SDGs to ensure their success.

As well as being holistic, action must be collaborative. We must maintain our own efforts to tackle gender barriers throughout our value chain. But deeply embedded harmful social norms and gender stereotypes will not disappear without collective action from governments, civil society and business.

Unilever, like everyone who wants to see women’s potential enabled and fulfilled, needs to keep finding new approaches. That means new ways of measuring and managing our social impact cost-effectively and at scale − such as our new Lean Data Toolkit, described above. It also means new ways of partnering with others, including government and civil society. In particular, it requires us to harness the collective influence of the wider business community so that we can help change the way the world works for women for the better.

We’ve highlighted three priority areas for accelerating gender equality and women’s empowerment in the private sector. First, we’re calling on business to be gender aware, by ensuring they have the right information and data in place to inform policies. Second, to be gender active, by having the right policies and practices in place that respect women’s rights and empower professional and personal development. And third, to be the new norm, by ensuring that harmful norms are not perpetuated through outdated business practices, while actively promoting more positive portrayals of women along the value chain to challenge stereotypes.

See our Opportunities for Women White Paper (PDF | 4MB) for more detail.