P&Gs support for womens empowerment aligns with United Nations Sustainable Development Goal #5 to achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls globally
Mumbai, 13 February 2017 (GPN) : Procter & Gamble has announced a series of measures designed to support a push towards gender equality across the Indian Subcontinent, Middle East and Africa region. The news was made public by Procter & Gamble during a meeting of the United Nations Secretary-Generals High Level Panel on Womens Economic Empowerment (HLP), which was held for the first time in the Middle East region and hosted by the UAE Gender Balance Council.
P&Gs commitment to gender equality is in line with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal #5 to achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls globally. Mohamed Samir, IMEA President for P&G, explained that implementation of this commitment will include four key areas for 2017, which will be undertaken in partnership with UN Women and other female-empowerment organizations.
P&G has been championing the cause of gender equality both inside and outside of P&G, leveraging the strengths of our business and operations, our scale and our advertising voice to address gender bias and enable education for girls and womens economic empowerment, explained Samir.
These four areas include:
P&G will expand its supplier development and sourcing from women-owned business in our supply chains across the world, including the Indian subcontinent, Middle East and Africa.
P&G will continue to reveal gender bias and spark conversations through P&G brand advertising campaigns and encourage the wider advertising industry to do the same.
P&G will extend our programs to keep girls in school in India, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, and Tanzania.
P&G, working with our NGO partners on the ground, will empower women & girls impacted by the Syrian refugee crisis to realize their potential.
Gender Equality is a priority focus area of P&Gs Citizenship activities. P&G has been steadily working to improve gender equality by leveraging its unique strengths. Some of P&Gs achievements globally and in this region include:
Business & Operations
P&G India hires 50% women into entry level management roles and they get promoted into next assignments at the same progression as men
In a first for FMCG industry in India, P&Gs Hyderabad plant was one of the first plants to have 30% women across the workforce. What is unique is that these women employees operate across all shifts and operate manufacturing equipment and are not limited to peripheral tasks. In an unprecedented move, we collaborated with the government and got legal approval to allow women to work across shifts.
P&G was the first Consumer Goods Company with a license to employ women in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) and now employs 15% women managers in KSA across all commercial disciplines including Finance, HR, Sales & Marketing
In the US, P&G has integrated women-owned businesses into our sourcing supply chain. In P&Gs last fiscal year, the company spent 1.1 BN$ with women-owned businesses and importantly the majority of this spend is direct.
Scale
P&G and our Always brand has a 30-year history of providing puberty and hygiene education and is reaching over 17 million girls across the world each year
In India, P&G has been working with young girls in various groups across the country to understand the needs in the areas of Health & Hygiene, Personality Development etc. The companys flagship Mother Daughter Menstrual Hygiene Program has been successfully running across the country since 1995. Today, P&G runs this program with the active support of 20,000 schools educate about 4.5 Million adolescent girls annually and educate them on the importance of menstrual hygiene
Advertising Voice
P&G has been sparking conversations & motivating change in brand advertising campaigns across the world, with an increased focus in the Indian subcontinent, Middle East, and Africa
Notable campaigns from India include Ariel Share The Load which aims at shifting perceptions about the role of men and women in doing household chores and Whisper Like a Girl through which the brand aims to make Like a Girl mean amazing things
