Corporate Social Responsibility

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Welcome to Wikigender’s Gender and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) page. ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

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GRI and IFC Launch “Embedding Gender in Sustainability Reporting - A Practitioner’s Guide”

On Tuesday, October 27, 2009, IFC and GRI will launch their Gender and Sustainability Reporting Publication at the 2009 CSR Asia Summit in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

The workshop is for CSR Asia participants and practitioners who want to establish themselves as leaders in managing gender issues. It will highlight some of the existing and emerging business drivers for improving practices and reporting on material gender issues. In addition, legal and ethical imperatives for reporting on gender issues will be discussed. Practical steps will be offered on how to embed gender in sustainability reporting.

In particular, workshop leaders from GRI and IFC will focus in depth on 3 areas of top priority as per interest expressed by the participants, and draw on the recently produced Practitioners' Guide that is based on research and multi-stakeholder consultations in Brazil, India, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States.


For more information contact Carmen Niethammer at cniethammer@ifc.org or Katherine Miles at miles@globalreporting.org ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________


This section explores the intersection between gender issues and corporate social responsibility, with a particular focus on companies in emerging markets. It is meant to be a collaborative effort, taking into account the perspectives and experiences of a variety of stakeholders.

On this page you will find:


  • An overview of the topic
  • Definitions of key terms
  • Information on practical approaches that companies can use to improve their gender impact reporting
  • Best practices derived from the experiences of various organizations that are active in this area


It is hoped that this website will contribute to policy dialogue on gender and CSR. By becoming a focal point for the experiences of practitioners, it can also directly empower entrepreneurs to implement appropriate best practices, increase their outreach to women, and optimize the contribution of women in their organizations.


Contents

1. Introduction

What is Corporate Social Responsibility?

According to Wikipedia, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is a concept whereby organizations consider the interests of society by taking responsibility for the impact of their activities on customers, suppliers, employees, shareholders, communities and the environment in all aspects of their operations. This obligation is seen to extend beyond the statutory obligation to comply with legislation and sees organizations voluntarily taking further steps to improve the quality of life for employees and their families as well as for the local community and society at large.”


2. Reporting on Gender

Why Reporting and Gender?

Companies reporting on gender equality was for many years confined to the reporting of policies, along with some program information. Increasingly, there are CSR initiatives that promote gender impact reporting so that companies will improve their understanding of gender in their business and put in place more effective systems to strengthen their business benefits. These initiatives also seek to improve company transparency with regard to gender impacts, enabling stakeholders to better engage with corporates on these issues.

Reporting offers a means to improve monitoring and evaluation efforts, identify opportunities for continuous improvement, and directly access some of these business benefits. For example, gender impact reporting can


  • Aid companies in recruiting, retaining, and motivating female employees, thus optimizing human resource management
  • Strengthen a company’s reputation as a “women-friendly” enterprise and thereby attract consumers and investors that are driven by ethical interests
  • Improve brand-differentiation by targeting women customers or groups concerned with women’s interests
  • Reduce the risk of negative publicity and reputation damage


Three main drivers motivate firms towards addressing, and reporting on, gender equality:

  1. The Market – including consumers, investors, business customers, and labor market pressures
  2. Governments – including regulatory requirements and compliance with equal rights legislation and supplier diversity requirements for government contracts
  3. Civil Society – including those that look to maximize shared benefits to the corporation and community stakeholders, as well as media pressure.


There also is an approach to gender and CSR reporting that views gender equality as a right with business benefits.


What to report on?

There is no concise global framework for gender and CSR reporting in place.

The Global Reporting Initiatives (GRI) Labor Practices and Decent Work core performance indicators, require companies to report:


  1. ‘Total number and rate of employee turnover by age group, gender, and region’.
  2. ‘Composition of governance bodies and breakdown of employees per category according to gender, age group, minority group membership, and other indicators of diversity’
  3. ‘Ratio of basic salary of men to women by employee category’.


An additional indicator suggests reporting:

  • ‘Benefits provided to full-time employees that are not provided to temporary or part-time employees, by major operations’.


However, research by Grosser and Moon, has found that companies rarely report much of this data. Gender impact reporting by leading companies in this field typically includes a mix of gender statistics as they relate to:

  • Gender breakdown of the workforce, and
  • Gender breakdown of management

Fewer companies report any performance information relating to other important gender equality workplace issues such as:

  • Career development, equal pay, employment of women in non-traditional jobs, and flexible work arrangements.

However, leading companies do increasingly report information about how gender equality is managed by the organization, such as where responsibility and accountability on this issue lies within the organization, staff consultation about gender and diversity, and training on these issues (very few companies, however, report information about poor performance, such as litigation relating to gender discrimination).

This has helped some companies generate investment, better position themselves in the market place, and improve relationships with communities.


A broader understanding of gender and CSR extends to other business dimensions and impacts to consider, such as

  • Gender impacts of products and services
  • Innovative approaches to product development using gender information
  • Gender issues in supply chain labor practices
  • Gender issues as part of company community and human rights impacts
  • Community development and philanthropy efforts that build on input from women and respond to gender-specific needs in the community


Current challenges in CSR reporting on gender

  • While some corporations value being seen as gender-reporting champions and seek to disclose information on key gender indicators, others are more reluctant to report on gender impacts due to possible negative perceptions of their performance.
  • Many enterprises, particularly smaller businesses, don’t have the capacity or confidence to report on gender performance, in some cases due to a lack of specific guidance for their region, sector, or the nature of their business.
  • Linked to the drivers motivating companies to report on gender, the disclosed information is often not systematic or comparable across companies within a country/region or industry.
  • When legislation mandates gender equality, this is not necessarily accompanied by requirements for standardized reporting on performance and public disclosure of this information.

3. IFC and GRI Project on Gender and Sustainability Reporting

The Global Reporting Initiative and IFC, a member of the World Bank Group, have collaborated on a gender and sustainability reporting. The aim of this research and consultation project is to help private enterprises worldwide create new opportunities for women, adopt best practices in sustainability reporting, and improve their bottom lines.


The result of this project is a publication entitled “Embedding Gender in Sustainability Reporting, A Practitioners’ Guide”, intended for companies that want to establish themselves as leaders in managing gender issues. It demonstrates the value of creating business opportunities through promoting gender equality, provide guidance on improving gender management through sustainability reporting, and help improve the quality and scope of gender reporting. New categories for reporting suggested in the publication include "Gender Equality in the Workplace", "Gender Equality, Organizational Governance, and Values", “Gender Equality in the supply chain”, “Gender Equality in the community”, “Gender Equality and consumers” and “Gender Equality and Investment”.


IFC and GRI are grateful for the support of the governments of Iceland, Germany (BMZ and GTZ) and Switzerland , the sponsors of this project.

An Icelandic consultant team participated in the project from Bifrost University's Research Centre of Labour Law and Equal Rights.


Multi-stakeholder Workshops

The project consisted of multi-stakeholder consultative workshops in London, Johannesburg, Sao Paulo, New Delhi, and Washington, DC, to explore linkages between sustainability reporting and gender, and provided input for the publication “Embedding Gender in Sustainability Reporting - A Practitioner's Guide” - to be launched on October 27, 2009, at the 2009 CSR Asia Summit.

During these workshops current gender and sustainability reporting practices, future expectations and possible indicators for measuring performance around gender were discussed.

The following questions were explored: what should organizations be doing on gender issues in terms of women as employees but also women entrepreneurs within the supply chain, women as consumers and members of the local community? What are participants’ expectations and priorities for organizations action on gender? Are current practices meeting these expectations? If not, why not? And what specific actions can be addressed through sustainability reporting?


Advisory Group

A multi-stakeholder geographically diverse advisory group with representation from various business sectors and civil society organizations was identified to oversee the development of the Gender and Sustainability Reporting Resource Document.

The Advisory Group provided guidance, facilitated communication and promoted collaboration on gender and reporting activities for this project. Members of the group will be consulted on relevant content and will have opportunities to review drafts of the resource document.


Practitioners’ Network

For individuals who wanted to be kept up to date about the project, GRI managed a practitioners’ network on gender and reporting. Individuals who joined the network received regular communications about the project and had the opportunity to provide input to the project and share their own research and publications on gender with one another.

Contact GRI at miles@globalreporting.org to join the network.


"Voices" of Gender and Sustainability Reporting Website

Hear first-hand what multi-stakeholder workshop participants have said about gender and sustainability reporting by visiting IFC's Gender and Sustainability Reporting Website.

4. Organizations and Initiatives

Organizations


Initiatives

5. Further Reading

6. Bibliography “Embedding Gender in Sustainability Reporting - A Practitioner's Guide”

  • Adler, Roy D. (2001, November). “Women in the Executive Suite Correlate to High Profits.” Harvard Business Review, p. 30.
  • Auger, Pat, Paul Burke, Timothy M. Devinney, and Jordan J. Louviere. 2003. “What Will Consumers Pay for Social Product Features?” Journal of Business Ethics 42 (February): 281–304.
  • Banyard, K., and Lewis, R.:2009, Corporate Sexism: The Sex Industry’s Infiltration of the modern workplace. London: The Fawcett Society.
  • Blake, Ross. 2006. “Employee Retention: What Employee Turnover Really Costs your Company.” July 24. Article.
  • Cunningham, Jane, and Roberts, Philippa. 2006. Inside Her Pretty Little Head. London: Cyan Communications.
  • Desző, Cristian L., and Ross, David Gaddis. 2008. Half the Impact: Women’s Impact on Corporate Performance. Research: 'Girl Power': Female Participation in Top Management and Firm Performance.
  • de Vries, Jennifer, Claire Webb, and Joan Eveline. 2006. “Mentoring for Gender Equality and Organizational Change.” Employee Relations 28 (6): 573–78.
  • Dovey, Kathryn. 2009. Putting Gender on the Business and Human Rights Agenda Scoping Paper: June 2009.
  • Eurostat. 2006. Labour Force Survey. Eurostat .
  • Farha, Leilani and Thompson, Karina, 2002. Violence: The Impact of Forced Evictions on Women in Palestine, India and Nigeria Women and Housing Rights Programme, Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions (COHRE), April 2002.
  • Ferrary, Michael. 2009. “Why Women Shine in Downturn.” Financial Times, March 2.
  • FLO (Fairtrade Labelling Organizations International). 2007. “FLO Training Manual 2.0: Introduction into the Generic Fairtrade Standards for Hired Labour (Without Environmental Part).”
  • GRI (Global Reporting Initiative). 2008. Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) Sustainability Reporting: How Valuable Is the Journey? Amsterdam: GRI (Global Reporting Initiative).
  • Huse, M. 2007. Boards, Governance and Value Creation: The Human Side of Corporate Governance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • IFC. 2009a. Community Investment Strategies. internal draft, May 6–7.
  • ———. 2009b. “Project-level Grievance Mechanisms for affected Communities—Guidance on Affected Community Grievance Management for Projects and Companies.” Good Practice Note draft, March. Environment and Social Development Department.
  • Kilgour, Maureen. 2007. “The UN Global Compact and Substantive Equality for Women: Revealing a ‘Well Hidden’ Mandate.” Third World Quarterly 28 (4): 751–73.
  • Kramer, Vicki W., Alison M. Konrad, and Sumru Erkut. 2006. “Critical Mass on Corporate Boards: Why Three or More Women Enhance Governance”.
  • O’Connell, Philip J., and Helen Russell. 2005. “Equality at Work? Workplace Equality Policies, Flexible Working Arrangements and the Quality of Work.” Research Publication, Economic and Social Research Institute, Dublin.
  • OECD. 2001. Women Entrepreneurs in SMEs: Realizing the Benefits of Globalization and the Knowledge-Based Economy. Paper presented at Second Conference on Women Entrepreneurs in SMEs, Paris, November 29-30.
  • OECD. 2008. Babies and Bosses, Reconciling Work and Family Life: A Synthesis of Findings for OECD Countries. Paris: OECD.
  • ———. 2009. Informal Normal? Towards More and Better Jobs in Developing Countries. OECD Development Centre.
  • Orser, Barbara and Julie R. Weeks. 2009. Procurement Strategies to Support Women-Owned Enterprises. Prepared on behalf of WE Connect Canada through a grant from the Status of Women Canada, March.
  • Porter, Michael E., and Mark R. Kramer. 2003. “The Competitive Advantage of Corporate Philanthropy.” Harvard Business Review on Corporate Social Responsibility.
  • Reeves, H., and S. Baden. 2000. Gender and Development: Concepts and Definitions. BRIDGE Report no. 55, University of Sussex, Institute of Development Studies.
  • Rucci, A. J., Kirn, S. P., and Quinn, R.T. 1998. “The Employee-Customer-Profit Chain at Sears.” Harvard Business Review, Vol. 76, No. 1 January 1998.
  • Silverstein, Michael and Sayre, Kate. 2009. “The Female Economy.” Harvard Business Review: September 2009, Pages 46-53.
  • Singh, Val and Susan Vinnicombe. 2006. “Balance in the Boardroom: Report on Women Directors in Top 50 Companies in Jordan.” Cranfield University School of Management, Centre for Women Business Leaders, for the Center of Arab Women for Training and Research (CAWTAR).
  • UNICEF (United Nations Children’s Fund). 2007. State of the World’s Children Report. New York: UNICEF.
  • UN Secretary-General. 2006. In-depth Study on Violence against Women. New York: United Nations.
  • ______. 2004. Gender and Development in the Middle East and North Africa: Women in the Public Sphere. Washington, DC: World Bank.
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