Interweave Consulting, a pioneer in building inclusive workplaces in India has been partnering with UN Women, the United Nations entity for Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment to enable corporates implement UN’s Women’sEmpowerment Principles (WEPs) in India. Established by UN Women and UN Global Compact in 2010, the WEPs provides a value chain approach to women’s empowerment through a set of 7 principles offering practical guidance to businesses on promoting gender equality. Each principle addresses an area of the value chain across workplace, marketplace and community. This effort is being funded by the European Union under the regional WeEmpower Asia Programme.
As a part of this regional initiative, Interweave Consulting will now provide technical support to corporates to implement these principles ranging from establishing high-level leadership commitment for gender equality to fair work practices that include equal access to opportunities, development, pay, health and safety including enterprise development, supply chain and marketing practices that empower women; promoting equality through community initiatives and advocacy and measuring publicity report on progress to achieve gender equality.
Empowering women and building inclusive workplaces has been our passion since 2007 and our work through WEPs is bound to enlarge the impact of our work. By embracing the WEPs, businesses have an opportunity to join a global movement supporting the goal of gender parity at the highest level while also being able to access best in class tools and resources including opportunities to learn from the best and brightest from around the world. The global insights and resources that the WEPs brings to the table, will not only benefit businesses but will equally have a domino effect in the society.said spokesperson at Interweave Consulting.
Besides the highly visible support of UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG 5) on a global stage, a signatory company also stands to gain access to tools, training programs, industry dialogues and other resources specifically curated for this initiative. The WEPs Gap Analysis Tool that identifies gender gaps in current policies and practices has an accompanying Action Planning Tool developed by UN Women with suggested actions for continuous improvement. It enables companies to build a customised roadmap to make workplaces, marketplaces and community interventions more inclusive with specific goals and targets and ways to measure progress over time.
All of this will be available to WEPs signatory companies as a part of UN Women’s effort at mobilising business action for promoting gender equality and women’s empowerment and contributing to ‘Sustainable Development Goals’. This focused support for organisations will be available till early 2022.