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Reports | Thursday October 3, 2019

Making Women Workers Count

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From the lack of gender-sensitive data indicators to gender-biased collection methodologies, there has been a noticeable absence of the most basic reliable data. This has led to the development and implementation of policies and programs that do not account for the various barriers women face and fail to deliver equally beneficial outcomes for men and women.

In its June report, the UN Working Group on the Gender Dimensions of the Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights makes it clear that brands have the responsibility to require and encourage their suppliers to respect the human rights of women in their operations and track the effectiveness of their responses using gender-disaggregated data where relevant. However, most brands do not know what specific gender data to ask for or how to interpret it, and suppliers are unclear about the benefits to them of collecting additional data points, nor do they have the systems and processes in place to do it.

To help both brands and suppliers conduct better and more effective gender-responsive due diligence, BSR is launching the Making Women Workers Count: A Framework for Conducting Gender Responsive Due Diligence in Supply Chains report, funded by the C&A Foundation. This report:

• Provides recommendations along four phases of due diligence.  
• Identifies a set of indicators to be used to measure outcomes for women and men workers as well as methodologies for collecting and analyzing the gender data.
• Introduces the Gender Data and Impact (GDI) tool that suppliers can use to detect gendered gaps in outcomes for workers, design an effective action plan, and track improvements against worker outcomes that are truly gender transformative.

This guidance and the GDI tool are intended for both brands and suppliers who wish to work towards more gender-equal workplaces and would like to understands how gender and outcome data will help them on this journey.

Blog | Wednesday October 2, 2019

Three Takeaways from UNGA Week 2019

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World leaders, CEOs, and NGOs large and small descended on New York last week for the UN General Assembly, UN Climate Action Summit, and Climate Week NYC. After several days of dashing from place to place, navigating streets blocked by the motorcades of presidents and prime ministers, and connecting with other members of the sustainable business tribe, there are reasons for both optimism and pessimism, but mainly greater resolve to act with heightened urgency. I have three big takeaways from the week.

Let’s start with what’s not going in the right direction. While the science on climate impacts continues to paint a grim picture, action from national governments did not match the level of urgency. This week saw the release of yet another report showing that our climate is deteriorating even faster than feared. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s latest report tells us that sea levels are rising even faster than projected, potentially leading to “extreme sea level events” hitting once a year by 2050. This latest warning again tells us that we are beginning to experience feedback loops from warming already in the system, which is generating the wrong kind of momentum. We should need no further evidence that action is needed.

While the science on climate impacts continues to paint a grim picture, action from national governments did not match the level of urgency.

Unfortunately, the national governments gathered at the UN Climate Action Summit did not deliver the goods. Political weakness and just plain bad timing hampered commitments from the UK, EU, and others. The US and Brazil are actively hostile to climate action. And China, therefore, had the political space not to exercise more ambition for now and did not meet expectations that they might make significant new commitments.  

Second, the pressure on business to act is rising. We are living in a time when the basic principles of capitalism and markets are being questioned more seriously than they have been in a long time. There is a broad recognition that while markets have delivered better livelihoods for many, there are significant flaws that are decreasing social mobility in the mature economies of the Global North, exacerbating income inequality in all corners of the world, and reducing protections for workers subject to structural changes due to automation, the shift to a clean energy economy, and changing demographics.

The recent Business Roundtable statement on its purpose echoed across Manhattan all week, encapsulating a sense that the purpose of business needs an overhaul. Even more, the millions of students who took to the streets to demand and inspire climate action have most certainly gotten their message across. This is widely seen as a game changer, and no one believes the vision is only about Greta—it’s bigger than that. When our kids and our fellow employees are taking to the streets, something important is changing.

When our kids and our fellow employees are taking to the streets, something important is changing.

Third, the good news is that business action is rising. At the UN, Lise Kingo of the UN Global Compact proudly announced that 87 companies have embraced a 1.5°C degree target and that the numbers are growing quickly. This is a commitment that was unthinkable even at the start of 2019 for most companies. There are multiple new commitments to nature-based solutions. Investors—including some of the largest banks in the world—have committed to aligning their investments with a net zero target. Let us not forget that just four years ago, there was serious doubt whether the world would come together at Paris. Today, net zero at or before mid-century has become a baseline commitment—now including Amazon, which dove in with its first major climate commitment the weekend before UNGA kicked off.

What’s more, innovations emerging far from the carpeted hallways of the SDGs or the comfortable UNGA Week receptions high above Manhattan provided signals of even more exciting progress to come. I had the chance to learn about Terraton, a new company considered one of the few sustainability unicorns. Terraton has been making rapid progress to enable farmers to remove one trillion tons of carbon from the atmosphere. This audacious effort from Indigo Ag has the benefit of appearing to be remarkably plausible.

And while there are indeed many exciting efforts being launched, one note of caution. The proliferation of well-intentioned collaborations is also creating gridlock on the scale of UNGA Week traffic in midtown Manhattan. Without a concerted effort to align all these initiatives—and quite possibly see some fade away—we will see duplication and confusion that delivers wasted effort rather than impact. Over the past several days, I picked up a growing sense of frustration on the part of business that this swell of new initiatives is sapping energy, confusing the market, and generally not maximizing impact. There are some efforts—including some in which BSR is involved—to align initiatives, but all of us in the sustainability world should think twice before launching “yet another” effort to do what others may already be doing.

We are about to enter the Decisive Decade of the 2020s, when we will deliver on the SDGs and the promise of Paris…or not. We cannot be blind to the scope and scale of the challenge, and the reality that we are not—yet—on track to deliver on the vision of sustainable prosperity for all. Indeed, our only choice is to redouble efforts. Ambition and urgency are badly needed, and the community of leaders in New York this week sent powerful signals that they are up to the task. Now that we have all left Manhattan, it’s time to deliver the goods.

Blog | Monday September 30, 2019

2019 Climate Action Summit: Businesses Are Pulling Governments toward a Net Zero Economy

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At the 2019 UN Climate Action Summit, the global community expected national leaders to announce new, more ambitious commitments to combat climate change. While the Summit included a handful of positive announcements—Indian Prime Minister Modi announced a new target of 450 gigawatts of non-fossil energy, German Chancellor Merkel launched a EUR 50 billion climate action plan, several countries increased their contributions to climate finance, and 66 countries committed to net zero emissions by 2050—the ambition of these announcements does not match the urgency that climate change demands.

This lack of ambition arrived as the world is demanding action: millions of students and supporters marched last Friday across the world in the Global Climate Strike, and report after report this year—on biodiversity, on land, on climate adaptation, on oceans—has underscored the urgency to act.

Our goals for the next, decisive decade will determine whether we succeed or fail. To fulfill the promise of the Paris Agreement, nations must deliver much stronger climate targets ahead of next year’s pivotal COP26. At the Summit, national leaders failed to change our path towards over 3°C of warming by the end of this century—and yet, climate action from the private sector accelerated.

The Summit underscored that business must forge ahead with building our net zero economy. From the stark gap between national announcements and business action, I heard three messages:

1. To national leaders and governments: Businesses are showing you how to build the net zero economy. Without improved short-term targets and policies, a promise to reach net zero by 2050 is not enough.
2. To businesses: The argument that governments must go first is truly dead. Companies must generate long-term value for their investors, win the war for talented millennials who demand purpose, and attract consumers who demand sustainable products.
3. To businesses: You may already work hard to reduce your operational emissions and manage climate risks. You may already engage your suppliers and make energy-efficient products for your customers. But if you do not actively influence governments to set more ambitious climate policies, it will not be enough.

Indeed, it is in the private sector where we see momentum for climate action growing with increasing urgency. Five years ago, the Science Based Targets initiative did not exist; today, 647 companies are committed to targets in line with the Paris Agreement. RE100 did not exist; today, over 190 companies are committed to sourcing 100 percent renewable electricity. The We Mean Business coalition, co-founded by BSR, did not exist; today, its Take Action platform features over a thousand companies taking climate action. All in the time of a single election cycle.

Just as building a net zero economy requires the whole of government, building a net zero value chain requires every company department.

At the Summit, business action broadened to more industries. Allianz CEO Oliver Bäte announced a Net Zero Asset Alliance, representing US$2.4 trillion in assets. The Getting to Zero Coalition, for which BSR’s Clean Cargo is a knowledge partner, aims to deploy commercially viable zero emission maritime shipping by 2030. Representatives of the steel, aluminum, and cement industries spoke to their contributions to a net zero pathway. Danone CEO Emmanuel Faber launched the One Planet Business for Biodiversity coalition at a time when one million species are under threat of extinction.

Climate action also deepened within companies: 87 companies with a combined market capitalization of US$2.3 trillion committed to setting climate targets across their operations and value chains aligned with limiting warming to 1.5°C and reaching net zero emissions by 2050.

At BSR, we see how deep climate action can go. Sustainability professionals are working with their operations counterparts to decarbonize production, with their procurement counterparts to decarbonize supply chains, with their risk management counterparts to manage climate risks, and with their finance counterparts to set up climate innovation funds. Just as building a net zero economy requires the whole of government, building a net zero value chain requires every company department.

These companies realize that climate mitigation and adaptation will bring tremendous opportunities to them or to their competitors. Today, it is unfortunate that businesses understand this more clearly than national governments do. But businesses can help to close this gap by calling for more ambitious climate policies by COP26 in November 2020.

Blog | Thursday September 26, 2019

How Companies Can Tackle Poverty Through Inclusive Employment Strategies

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Poverty continues to be a global challenge: roughly 735 million people still live on less than US$1.90 per day, the World Bank’s threshold for extreme poverty. A much greater number of individuals and families subsist below national poverty levels. Ending poverty in all forms everywhere is the first goal of the United Nations’ 2030 Sustainable Development agenda, which provides a shared blueprint for peace and prosperity. This goal, however, is not solely for national governments—companies have an enormous opportunity to contribute to ending global poverty through their existing operations.

Quality employment is one of the most effective, lasting ways to reduce poverty. As the provider of nine in 10 jobs worldwide, the private sector can take the lead in the fight against poverty and inequality by actively creating employment and advancement opportunities for those living in poverty—across their direct operations and their supply chains. What’s more, this is an investment that can create business value and build competitive advantage amidst evolving labor markets and increasing customer and stakeholder expectations for the private sector to contribute to sustainable development. While implementing a strategy to employ people living in poverty demands an investment, companies are likely to benefit over the long term from access to a largely untapped talent pool, strong operational outcomes, an enhanced brand reputation, and their ability to demonstrate additional social value to investors.

Today BSR and the Global Impact Sourcing Coalition (GISC) are pleased to launch the Reducing Poverty through Employment Toolkit. The Toolkit serves as a guide for companies on how to get started or how to enhance existing efforts to employ, empower, and improve the advancement prospects of those living in poverty as a part of their direct and indirect workforces.

Employment Strategies to Reduce Poverty

Every company can and should strive to contribute to greater social and economic equality in the communities they operate in and source from. This Toolkit is designed for use by employers at all stages of this journey. Through literature review and drawing on the extensive knowledge and good practices of GISC member companies around the globe, we have identified four key areas in which companies can get started implementing best practices to provide employment opportunities with the potential to create pathways out of poverty:

• Setting the tone for inclusive employment through commitments, communication, and culture. This can include appointing leader from top management to champion efforts, defining and embedding inclusive employment goals and targets within operational plans, and communicating in a way that respects and empowers low-income job seekers.
• Making adaptations across the employee life cycle to better identify, integrate, and empower low-income job seekers. In hiring, this can include identifying roles that require in-demand skills that can be learned on the job and creating a simple job application form; in onboarding it can include front-loading training on corporate norms and expectations and introducing peer mentorship; and in the long-term it can include offering paid, on-the-job training and helping employees develop portable skills.
• Offering quality terms of employment that support sustainable livelihoods. This can include offering full-time, formal employment; enabling predictable scheduling with flexibility; offering stable, frequent pay periods; and paying a living wage.
• Developing employee offerings that enable employment and build resilience. This can include offering life skills training, partnering with local experts to provide wrap-around support services, helping employees manage transportation, and ensuring better access to financial safety nets.

For more information and guidance on all these points, we invite you to download the Toolkit here.

This Toolkit is a project of the GISC, a collaboration between leading companies to build more inclusive global supply chains by hiring impact workers—people who were previously long-term unemployed or living in poverty. Last year, GISC launched the Impact Sourcing Challenge, calling on its members to hire 100,000 impact workers by the end of 2020. Member companies have so far pledged to create opportunities for over 30,000 new impact workers. This Toolkit aims to share the experiences and good practices that GISC members and other socially responsible businesses have deployed so that all companies can take steps to create more inclusive work environments.

We challenge all companies to get involved and contribute to this major global effort both through your operations and your supply chains—please contact GISC for information on how to join.

Reports | Thursday September 26, 2019

Reducing Poverty through Employment Toolkit

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Roughly 735 million people continue to live on less than US$1.90 per day, the World Bank’s threshold for extreme poverty. A much greater number of individuals and families subsist below national poverty levels. Ending poverty in all forms everywhere is the first goal of the United Nations’ 2030 Sustainable Development agenda, which provides a shared blueprint for peace and prosperity, and companies have an enormous opportunity to contribute to this agenda through their existing operations.  

Quality employment is one of the most effective, lasting ways to reduce poverty. As the provider of nine in 10 jobs worldwide, the private sector can take a leadership position in fighting poverty and inequality by actively creating employment and advancement opportunities for those living in poverty, across their direct operations and their supply chains. Importantly for companies, this is also an investment that can create business value and build competitive advantage amidst evolving labor markets and increasing customer and stakeholder expectations for the private sector to contribute to sustainable development. 

To help companies act, BSR and the Global Impact Sourcing Coalition (GISC) have developed the Reducing Poverty through Employment Toolkit, which provides a range of good practices, case examples, and resources to guide companies on how to get started or how to enhance existing efforts to employ, empower, and improve the advancement prospects of those living in poverty.  

This Toolkit, developed through literature review and drawing on the extensive knowledge and good practices of global GISC member companies, is intended as a resource for all employers at all stages of their inclusive employment journeys.

Blog | Monday September 23, 2019

New Collaborations for Japanese Companies (Japanese only)

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Blog | Friday September 20, 2019

Responsible Use of Technology

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The increasingly pervasive use of technology in our everyday lives has triggered a spirited debate on how new and disruptive technologies—such as artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, internet of things (IoT), 5G, blockchain, quantum computing, autonomous vehicles, biotechnology, and nanotechnology—should be managed and governed.

To contribute to the evolving dialogue, BSR has partnered with the World Economic Forum (WEF) Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution to publish Responsible Use of Technology and offer a framework for the responsible use of disruptive technologies. This framework is intended to connect the practical steps companies can take to address responsible use issues systematically with the underlying concepts of ethical thinking and international human rights standards.

Over the past few years, a debate has arisen about the relative merits of ethics-based and human rights-based approaches when it comes to the responsible use of disruptive technologies. We believe this is a false choice. In the paper, we begin by making the case that responsible use of disruptive technologies will benefit from both approaches. Ethics and human rights approaches should not be thought of as oppositional but rather as two synergistic approaches for the responsible use of technology: A human rights-based approach provides a universal foundation upon which various ethical frameworks, choices, and judgments can be applied. Over the coming months, by drawing upon lessons learned working with BSR’s member companies, we plan to set out more detail about how this combination can be implemented in practice.

“Ethics and human rights approaches should not be thought of as oppositional but rather as two synergistic approaches for the responsible use of technology—a human rights-based approach provides a universal foundation upon which various ethical frameworks, choices, and judgments can be applied.”

Using these approaches, companies can take action to encourage the responsible use of disruptive technologies and mitigate the risk of irresponsible use. However, in the paper, we make the case that this will require the active participation of companies from across the whole technology value chain—not just technology companies, but all industries deploying disruptive technology—as well as governments, civil society, and other stakeholders. The paper lays out the three phases of the technology value chain (design and development, deployment and sale, and use and application) and presents the necessary actions and key questions to address at each phase.

Finally, our paper describes how companies can take action to prevent or mitigate adverse human rights impacts that we have most commonly identified during real-world human rights and ethics due diligence engagements with BSR member companies.

Companies that design, develop, deploy, or sell disruptive technology—the vendors—have at least three main courses of action available to prevent or mitigate adverse human rights impacts. 

1. They can set and implement limits on what customers can or cannot do with disruptive technologies by establishing “acceptable use policies” covering impacts relevant for that technology, such as privacy, surveillance, or discrimination.
2. They can define who they will or won’t sell to by creating whitelists (approved customers) or blacklists (blocked customers).
3. They can reduce the likelihood of product misuse by sharing guidance, training, and best practices with others.

Companies that buy, use, and apply disruptive technology—the customers—also have at least three main courses of action available to prevent or mitigate adverse human rights impacts.

1. They can make proactive attempts to understand the real impacts arising from their use of disruptive technology by undertaking human rights impact assessments for their own use cases.
2. They can make judgment calls and choices about how the disruptive technology will be used to avoid, prevent, or mitigate impacts by acting upon the findings of the assessments.
3. They can be deliberate in communicating their lessons learned about product misuse and abuse back to the vendor.

There are also courses of action to prevent or mitigate adverse human rights impacts that exist across the entire value chain.

• Companies can engage in proactive transparency to increase collective awareness of how a technology works with the aim of informing better decisions by others, such as users, governments, and partners.
• Companies can advocate for standards, policies, laws, and regulations from governments at all levels that define how technology should or should not be used.
• Companies can engage with a diverse range of stakeholders and deploy strategic foresight and futures methodologies (such as scenario planning) to anticipate adverse impacts that might otherwise go unnoticed.

It is noteworthy that all these suggested measures have their shortcomings. A vendor may establish acceptable use policies—on data privacy, for example—but not have the insight necessary to enforce them effectively. There may be circumstances where society doesn’t want companies to be deeply engaged with deciding who they do and don’t sell products to, such as communications infrastructure that enables freedom of expression. And there may be situations when transparency heightens the risks faced by vulnerable groups. These shortcomings emphasize the importance of taking system-wide approaches to the responsible use of disruptive technology and not relying on the actions of a single company or government alone to affect change.

WEF plans to use this paper and the dialogue it creates to inform the creation of implementation tools for organizations to advance responsible technology practices. This might include a responsible use decision framework, resources to improve the integration of both ethical and human rights-based approaches across roles and business functions, and playbooks for each stage of the technology product lifecycle. BSR will be an active participant in this work, and we welcome expressions of interest from BSR member companies seeking to learn more.

Blog | Thursday September 19, 2019

Climate Week 2019: Going from Climate Risk to Resilience through Collective Action

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The UN Secretary General’s Global Climate Action Summit is now just days away, and the world is anxiously awaiting new updated commitments from countries and other stakeholders that will help us meet the global goal of keeping global warming under 1.5°C. Against this context, the Global Commission on Adaptation launched its flagship report last week.

The report makes clear the stark reality of the global climate crisis and the irrefutable impacts on the planet, people, and the economy. Alternatively, enormous opportunity exists—but this hinges on how we choose to collectively develop solutions as a society. How governments plan and implement adaptation policies, how businesses choose to manage climate risk with robust resilience solutions across their entire value chains, and how we, as individuals, make choices in our lives will be the difference between success and failure to respond to the expected climate impacts already locked into the system.

Climate change is a material risk to business across operations, supply chains, and in communities vital to the fundamental existence and continuity of a business. And while the list of impacts and resulting climate risk to business grows as the amount and intensity of climate-related events rises, the opportunity to address these risks through robust climate resilience solutions also increases.

The Global Commission on Adaptation’s report highlights the tremendous opportunity that comes with adapting to climate change. They estimate that investing nearly US$1.8 trillion in adaptation could result in net benefits of four times that amount: US$8 trillion. This provides a clear opportunity for business to benefit financially, to protect business continuity, and to increase the resilience of vital communities around the world.

Investing nearly US$1.8 trillion in adaptation could result in net benefits of four times that amount: US$8 trillion.

Business can do this by first acting within their own value chain through the assessment and management of climate risks and also by enabling and influencing other partners through collective action to address the system-side problems society faces today. To make it easy, we’ve seen an influx of ways to categorize and report on corporate climate risk: the recommendations from the Task Force for Climate-related Financial Disclosures provide companies a simple and clear categorization of the acute and chronic physical and transition risks to climate change as well as a methodology to communicate and disclose those risks.

Recognizing the challenge climate risk poses to their collective value chains, companies like Mars Incorporated, The Coca-Cola Company, PepsiCo, Anheuser-Busch InBev, Target, and Santam Limited have collaborated with BSR to establish the Value Chain Risk to Resilience platform. Formally launched in July 2019, the platform aims to build climate resilience for communities, farmers, and workers along value chains and through the following outcomes:

• Risk Assessment: Scalable best practice methodology for climate risk assessment
• Resilience Metrics: Shared metrics to measure impact of climate resilience-related interventions, improved tools and collateral for communicating impact of resilience-building efforts
• Business Integration: Consolidated framework for assessing governance of climate risks; identification of existing and/or recommended tools, such as the TCFD, for integrating climate into risk registers and ERM processes
• Programmatic Work: Scale up of an innovative pilot intervention via shared resources of the group, at least one designed collaborative on-the-ground effort that uses the shared metrics of this platform to build resilience for a particular community or commodity

On the cusp of the UN Secretary General’s Climate Summit, BSR is partnering with the Global Resilience Partnership, a group of organizations, companies, and other stakeholders working to drive resilience programs and work across the globe, to convene an entire day dedicated to climate resilience on “Building a Resilient Future” on Sunday, September 22, in New York.  

The event will feature high-level speakers across constituencies, including corporate perspectives on climate risk and resilience from companies such as Mars Incorporated. For more information and to register for the event, please see the complete program here.

While reducing emissions and keeping global warming to safe levels—under 1.5°C—remain the priority, we must also manage the unavoidable climate impacts affecting the world, including business. No one actor—government, business, and global citizen alike—can do this alone. We must align to protect valuable economies, ecosystems, and communities imperative to our society’s existence, and business as humanity’s natural solution provider can lead and benefit. 

Blog | Wednesday September 18, 2019

Climate Week 2019: Time for Bold Commitments—and Action

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Climate Week 2019 comes at a time of both great distress and great promise. This is our great challenge and our great opportunity.

As we approach Climate Week, which kicks off with the UN Secretary General’s Climate Action Summit, it is clear that more action is needed. Globally, emissions continue to rise, despite Paris Agreement pledges. The impacts of a changing climate are coming faster than median predictions would have us believe, evidenced by stronger storms, increased flooding, and year-round wildfire seasons. Political will in many of the leading—and heaviest-emitting—economies is flagging, with the United States interfering with joint action. And there is already debate over whether a recession—if it comes—will again dampen public interest in climate action. Unfortunately, next week’s Summit is unlikely to match the urgency that Secretary General António Guterres is rightly and diligently fighting for.

It is essential that we recognize that, despite the serious efforts made since 2015, we are not yet pointed in the right direction or making sufficient progress. 

There are also, to be sure, many reasons to be optimistic. Public calls for action are intensifying. Bottom-up activism from company employees, students, and the general public is growing steadily. In the United States, the Democratic presidential contenders are in an unprecedented competition to generate the most ambitious climate plans. Around the world, nations, regions, and cities accounting for nearly one-sixth of global GDP have committed to net zero emissions targets.

Even more crucially, changes are reshaping the “real economy” as well. The end of the internal combustion engine in passenger vehicles is within sight—China and others are electrifying public transport—and investors are taking an increasingly aggressive approach to fostering a clean energy system.

Over the coming week, I will be looking for signs that the building blocks of decisive action are being put in place. A concerted effort that includes government action, business commitments, innovation, and financing is needed. New York will be awash in events, and the list of new commitments will be long. We must celebrate that, but we cannot stop there. It is essential that we recognize that, despite the serious efforts made since 2015, we are not yet pointed in the right direction or making sufficient progress. 

That’s why it’s so important that more governments join the U.K., France, California, and others with net zero by 2050 targets, along with tangible plans to achieve them. Business needs to align emissions reductions plans with a 1.5°C objective rather than a 2°C goal, a shift that more and more companies are embracing. To make this goal a reality, it is crucial that businesses ensure that their trade associations are acting consistently with the objectives of the Paris Agreement. Shell and BHP, amongst others, have taken this step in 2019, and more should follow. Financial flows are also essential. Investments also should be aligned with the need to support both the economies that are most vulnerable to a changing climate and the valuable commercial opportunities that will help us to build the clean energy economy. And we need to see wider uptake of the recommendations of the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD), which will ensure that business strategy and reporting are also in line with climate ambition.

And while the UN General Assembly is possibly the ultimate expression of top-down leadership, some of the great hope and energy will come from ordinary citizens.

We know that heightened urgency is badly needed. And while the UN General Assembly is possibly the ultimate expression of top-down leadership, some of the great hope and energy will come from ordinary citizens. The fact that 16-year-old Greta Thunberg has become the most talked-about name when heads of state gather from around the world is both astonishing and thrilling. She has inspired millions to call for action, and this may provide what Al Gore calls the ultimate renewable energy: the will to shift to a clean economy that works for all.

As for BSR, we will push forward on several fronts, including climate resilience commitments, heightened commitments to clean transport, including an emerging sustainable air freight initiative, and calls for companies to align their lobbying efforts with their climate commitments. We will also be joining our partners in the We Mean Business coalition to build momentum for companies to embrace a truly Paris-compliant objective of limiting warming to 1.5°C and achieving net zero no later than mid-century. And our teams across the world will be participating in the climate strike taking place on Friday.

Climate Week this year is designed to create momentum to build towards a successful outcome at COP26 in Scotland next year, the intended five-year interval to assess progress toward the Paris Agreement. Given the trajectory we are on, the very concept of Climate Week is a misnomer. We are – or should be – living through Climate Era. Let us hope that the gathering in New York next week takes that to heart, makes bold new commitments over the next few days, and then gets to work to make those commitments a reality.

Blog | Thursday September 5, 2019

Empowering Women in Toy Factories: Insights from Our Pilot in India

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If you are buying a toy for your child, niece, or nephew, it was most likely made by a woman in China or India. Indeed, women make up over 60 percent of the global toy manufacturing workforce and are critical to its success. However, low-income women working at toy factories can face gender discrimination, harassment, and poor health conditions.

BSR and the Ethical Toy Program (ETP) collaborated on a women’s empowerment program that was piloted in three toy factories in India with a total population of 824 workers—including 198 women. The program, funded by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands, consisted of in-factory trainings on gender awareness, health, communications, and prevention of gender-based violence delivered to ‘Core Groups’ comprised of managers, HR staff, and frontline workers.  Core Group members were also in charge of driving actions for gender equality and disseminating the learnings to the entire workforce.

From the pilots, we gained several insights into what it takes to develop successful programs to advance women in the workplace:

• Partner with an organization that has a deep understanding of the local context and can build trust with the factory. We worked with Kshitij, an Indian NGO with knowledge of the local gender norms, to deliver the program. At the beginning of the pilot, factories were skeptical of the relevance of a women’s empowerment program for their business. However, Kshitij’s extensive experience with workplace-based interventions and a clear communication of the business and social benefits of the program ensured the factories’ buy-in.
• Consult beneficiaries before program design to tailor it to their needs and encourage program ownership by having beneficiaries define their own priorities. Interviews with workers informed program design and, at the beginning of the pilot, members of the Core Groups completed a questionnaire to assess the factory’s strengths and gaps on gender equity and equality. To encourage honest answers, sharing the results was optional. Guided by their assessment score, Core Groups defined the issues to tackle through an action plan.
• Ensure meaningful engagement with men to achieve sustainable gender norm transformation. The Core Groups comprised of both women and men that engaged on critical reflections around gender norms that reinforce patriarchy and inequality. As they begun to understand what they could gain by shifting these harmful norms, they became eager to share their learnings with their peers and their families.

As India is an emerging sourcing destination, the largest toy factories in the country employ only a few hundred workers, compared to factories located in established toy manufacturing centers such as China which can employ many thousands of workers. The factories that participated in the pilot were family-owned and were new to women’s empowerment and social sustainability standards. Despite the experience being different for each of the factories, we saw common changes across the whole pilot. These outcomes are encouraging for factories and buyers who want to invest in women even at the beginning of their journey.

One outcome we saw across the three factories was an increased understanding of and commitment to gender equality and worker well-being among factory management, supervisors, and workers through the provision of in-factory training. This translated into all three factories creating or strengthening policies to prevent sexual harassment, in compliance with India’s POSH Act, reinforcing their grievance mechanisms, and increasing awareness of these amongst workers.

These outcomes are encouraging for factories and buyers who want to invest in women even at the beginning of their journey.

The pilot also resulted in greater awareness on menstrual hygiene and increased use of sanitary napkins. Prior the training, it was common for women workers to use cloth during menstrual cycles. By realizing that period poverty was exposing women to serious infections, the factories decided to provide subsidized sanitary napkins to the workers. That, coupled with the efforts to debunk the taboo of menstruation, increased the reported usage of sanitary napkins among women by a factor of eight and, more surprisingly, led to men advocating for their use to the women in their family.

Though the trainings were conducted in the workplace, the program helped improve workers’  communication and relationships both at work and at home. Before the trainings, women would hesitate to approach their male coworkers. The focus on assertive communications and tackling deep-rooted gender stereotypes led to better interactions between workers and supervisors of the opposite sex. It also led to greater confidence, as explained by one woman frontline worker that was part of the Core Group, “I spread awareness on health and hygiene among my peers at work and home. This process has given me immense confidence, I now plan to study again to realize my dream of becoming a teacher.” 

In addition, before the intervention, participants rated their relationships at home with an average of three, on a scale from zero to 10, with 10 being the highest. After program completion, the average rating was nine. Some men attributed the improvement to their engagement in household work. “Before I never helped my wife with household chores,” one worker explained. “Now, instead of blaming her, I cook breakfast if she is busy. I have become more considerate towards her.”

The program made all participants aware of the existing services to prevent violence against women at work and in their community. 

Lastly, the feedback we received showed that the program helped to decrease acceptance of violence against women and increase awareness on how to address violence. Prior to the program, participants rated their understanding of sexual harassment with an average of three out of 10, and they reported no awareness of available services to approach in case of violence. After program completion, the average rating had risen to eight. The program made all participants aware of the existing services to prevent violence against women at work and in their community. Even more, some participants also re-evaluated their abusive behavior. One male worker noted, “The trainings made me realize how insensitive I was. Now, instead of insisting, I wait for my wife’s consent when it comes to intimacy. Respect and communication are very important in a relationship.”

Factory owners, managers, and workers that were once skeptical about the intervention are now championing women’s empowerment in the workplace—and also within the wider toy industry in India and their own communities. Looking ahead, BSR and ETP will explore opportunities to scale the program in China to reach thousands more women, as well as using the learnings of this pilot to inform BSR’s initiatives on women’s empowerment, such as the HERproject.