Photo: UN Women/Ryan Brown
In March 2017 Unilever launched their strategy paper entitled ‘Opportunities for Women: challenging harmful social norms and gender stereotypes to unlock women’s potential'. This report, which Oxfam helped shape, outlines the work Unilever is doing to support women in its workplace, in its supply chain and customer development network, through its brands and, through partnerships and advocacy, in broader society.
The report was launched at a panel discussion co-hosted with UN Women at the Commission on the Status of Women which this year focuses on Women’s Economic Empowerment.
Winnie joined Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka (UN Under-Secretary-General and Executive Director of UN Women), Gwen Hines (Director for International Relations at the Department for International Development) and Alan Jope (President of Personal Care, Unilever) for the event in New York which discussed how to address social norms and stereotypes through the private sector.
More information can be found here: https://www.unilever.com/news/Press-releases/2017/new-report-sets-out-unilevers-ambition-to-tackle-harmful-social-norms-and-stereotypes.html
REMARKS AS PREPARED
Alan – friends at Unilever – I must applaud Unilever’s ambition. We welcome your ‘Opportunities for Women’ paper. We valued the chance to shape it. In the paper we see the intent of the UN High-Level Panel on Women’s Economic Empowerment coming to life.
I’m most heartened because women’s rights organizations and movements have long had to do the heavy lifting to tackle social norms … and now, in your report and elsewhere, we see steps to sharing that ownership. You will only succeed – we will only succeed – by working in partnership and being guided by local women’s rights organizations that have long led change. That’s a first step for business.
And our approach must be two tracked: Social norms are rooted in rigid gender roles and assumptions about responsibilities – like “women should do the care work”, and “men are breadwinners”. But they’re also about the perceptions of the care work itself: like “Care activities aren’t work”, that they’re the “unimportant, insignificant tasks”. Many men in my own country, Uganda, will say “it’s petty work, that’s why we don’t do it”! So we must address both norms about gender roles and about the significance and value of care.
Sometimes, these harmful norms can be perpetuated by businesses, undermining formal laws and constitutional rights which may support gender equality. Businesses should aim to do no harm and also to help bring culture and tradition in line with international human rights norms, so women can thrive. Let me touch on three things business can do:
First is to make changes in your workplaces and supply chains. I will not dwell on this; your report is expansive! You recognise the importance of women’s land rights, closing the gender pay gap and sourcing from more women-owned and women-operated businesses.
Businesses like yours can ensure care services that reduce and redistribute – really, renegotiate – unpaid care work, are available to employees and in supply chains. But to truly disrupt the norms stacked against women we would urge business to support women’s collective voice – and be accountable to them. Even when country laws don’t push you to. And as our study with Unilever’s supply chain in Vietnam showed, a fair deal for suppliers and better wages – we would say living wages – goes hand in hand with supporting women’s voices. Women in poverty wages, with few rights, still provide the world’s majority of cheap labour – like the 75 percent of women in Asia and Africa in insecure, informal employment.
Second is to influence the perceptions of ‘what’s normal’ for men and women to do through your marketing. Advertising is a powerful tool to entrench traditional gender roles, or change them. If we only ever see women using washing powder on television, it reinforces the idea that laundry is women’s work. But traditional ideas about masculinity and femininity can be challenged. There is progress but not enough. Use it to change the terms of debate: speak to men! And to women.
And finally: we urge businesses to use your powerful voice with governments. Use it to address social norms by pushing governments to support policies that recognize the work that women do, account for it in economic policy-making, invest in public services and social infrastructure. Speak too on the need to protect human rights and push for cooperation – not competition – between governments on tax dodging – which denies countries the funds they need to invest in care services – and poverty wages.
For I believe companies with “much greater” ambition like yours can and must connect the work to tackle gender inequality with tackling economic inequality –– and reform an economic model to so it longer thrives on the social norms that disempower women.
Thank you.
ENDS
