Women’s Empowerment Principles (WEPs) are a framework based on practical business practices to help advance gender equality and promote women’s empowerment. The 2018 Women’s Empowerment Principles Global Trends Report analyses data submitted by businesses using the Women’s Empowerment Principles Tool. The report indicates that Gender Equality still needs improvement in the marketplace and community sectors despite increased efforts in leadership and workplace categories.

The report shows that while companies may have programmes and policies that cater for gender equality, there is still a necessity for fully integrated implementation. The report suggests that to impact logically empower women and achieve gender equality, gender considerations should be applied in areas, such as the marketplace, where there are significant opportunities for leadership through improved performance. Companies can invest in women’s empowerment and gender equality by improving conditions for women workers in their value chains, challenging restrictive gender stereotypes and procuring from women-owned businesses; such actions would promote positive images of women in the marketplace.

The report recommends that businesses should offer paid paternity leave and confidential grievance resolution or non-retaliation mechanisms to ensure a violence-free environment. By enforcing these mechanisms, women’s health, safety and their freedom from violence can be guaranteed. The report further recommends that companies should set procurement and percentage spend targets with a focus on women-owned businesses, include gender equality standards in supply chain management tools, assess differential impacts on men and women during assessments and implement community leadership and engagement that ensures equal participation of men and women.

The findings from the report suggest that companies should increase their commitments to programmes and enhance their performance across all categories of workplace, marketplace and community to achieve a higher score on the WEPs Tool. The WEPs Tool as a free, user-friendly and confidential online platform helps companies adopt a holistic approach to gender equality and implement the WEPs, thus enabling companies to identify areas needing support and resources by providing a concise and clear format with links to related resources.