Source: Stanford Social Innovation Review
Initiatives to develop the economic potential of women are becoming a staple of corporate activity in many parts of the world. But companies often overlook an important set of would-be partners—locally rooted organizations that promote a multi-faceted approach to women's empowerment. Here's a guide to cultivating partnerships that yield lasting value.

In 2006, the Economist proclaimed that women are "the world's most underutilised resource." Since then, a growing body of research has reinforced the idea that the economic empowerment of women can significantly boost productivity, reduce employee turnover, and promote the sustainable development of consumer markets.

A Booz & Company study published in 2012 estimated that raising female employment to male levels could increase GDP by 34 percent in Egypt, by 12 percent in the United Arab Emirates, by 10 percent in South Africa, and by 9 percent in Japan. The UN's Food and Agricultural Organization has projected that giving women the same access as men to resources such as fertilizer and farm equipment could increase their productivity by 20 percent to 30 percent and, in turn, boost agricultural output in developing countries by 2.5 percent to 4 percent. Findings of this kind have spurred an increasing number of global corporations to create programs designed to empower women economically. Through such programs, corporate leaders aim to improve the quality of their supply chains, enhance their access to talent, and increase the productivity of their workforce.

Economic Empowerment is,to be sure, a crucial aspect of any significant push to make women full and equal participants in their communities. Strengthening the economic role of women is also critical to reducing poverty, improving health and education outcomes, and achieving other broad development goals. And the programs created by corporations in recent years to support this kind of empowerment—programs that provide women with skills, mentoring, access to networks and markets, and financial resources—have no doubt had a meaningful impact in many parts of the world.

Yet there is a growing recognition among development experts of the need to link economic empowerment to programs that address women's empowerment in a more fundamental way. "Overcoming gender inequality will not result from specific isolated programs, but from a comprehensive approach that involves multiple sectors and stakeholders," write the authors of "Gender at Work," a report issued in 2014 by the World Bank.6 In a similar vein, a recent report commissioned by the Oak Foundation recommends an "integrated approach" to confronting "the underlying human rights issues that prevent women from realizing their full potential as economic agents." Such an approach, according to the report, requires the development of eight "building blocks"—sources of empowerment that include not only "access to equitable and safe employment," but also "voice in society and policy influence," "access to and control over reproductive health and family formation," and "social protection and childcare."

These insights should prompt corporate leaders to consider a vitally important question: How can they most effectively deploy the millions of dollars that they are spending to broaden opportunities for women? If their goal is to enable sustainable and transformative change in women's lives, they cannot focus exclusively on economic empowerment. Instead, they must adopt approaches that take into account the social, cultural, legal, and political barriers to full gender equality—approaches that have the potential to shift gender norms in ways that extend beyond the world of work and business. One way that they can do so, we believe, is to work with a group of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that corporations often overlook: grassroots women's organizations (GWOs).

The term "grassroots women's organizations" encompasses locally based and (in most cases) women-led NGOs that have a mission to empower women and advance women's rights on multiple fronts. In our use of the term, GWOs are distinct from international NGOs (INGOs)—most of them based in the Global North—that work in fields such as economic development and human rights. Some INGOs have local offices in developing countries and play a critical role in addressing issues of women's empowerment, but they often lack the deep local knowledge and the experience with a wide array of gender issues that characterize GWOs. Most GWOs operate in a single country or in a single region of a country, and their work typically involves one or more of the following activities: education about legal rights and political participation; skills training for economic empowerment; education about, and access to, reproductive and maternal health care; access to collective savings and credit programs; and advocacy with regard to issues such as sexual violence and property rights.

Recognizing the interconnectedness of issues related to gender equality, some corporations are now partnering with GWOs to extend the scope and enhance the impact of their economic empowerment programs. (Although GWOs can vary dramatically in size, those that are suitable partners for corporations tend to be relatively large and relatively well established.) By looking at a sample of successful corporate-GWO collaborations and by considering lessons that have emerged from those collaborations, we intend in this article to chart a path that corporate leaders and their NGO counterparts can follow to develop mutually beneficial partnerships.

Gender Equality and Shared Value
Today, much of the corporate funding for women's empowerment work comes from corporate foundations. As a result, that work tends to reflect a donor-recipient relationship that limits its effectiveness. By contrast, through partnerships with GWOs, companies can move their women's empowerment programs beyond corporate philanthropy and embed those programs in their core business. They can initiate a strategy of "shared value," in other words—a strategy of "creating economic value in a way that also creates value for society by addressing its needs and challenges," as Michael E. Porter and Mark R. Kramer explain in the 2011 article that introduced that concept. In a shared value partnership, each party brings different skills and resources to bear on developing programs that are more powerful than any program that either partner could develop alone.

To date, corporations have tended to pursue shared value strategies in the context of environmental sustainability. But some companies, such as Unilever, have begun to see the empowerment of women as an equally important element of a sustainable business model. When Unilever launched its Sustainable Living Plan in 2010, the initial focus of the initiative was on reducing the environmental impact of its operations. But starting in 2014, the company added several targets related to increasing opportunities for women to the plan. That shift built partly on the model of Project Shakti, an initiative of Hindustan Unilever that engages women in the company's sales force in rural India.
The World Bank, in its report "Gender at Work," has also recognized the value of applying a shared value model to private sector efforts to empower women. "Given emerging evidence on the business case, the pursuit of gender equality by private sector firms is increasingly understood as a win-win for women, companies, and their communities. The payoffs imply that companies' involvement in this agenda is about more than philanthropy or corporate social responsibility," the authors of the report argue. "When companies help train, prepare, and support vulnerable women and men to thrive in the world of work, they foster a kind of economic value that can promote both company success and social progress simultaneously."

Company leaders, meanwhile, are learning that GWOs offer many advantages as partners in shared value initiatives.
Trusted community members | GWOs have developed broad and deep networks in the communities where they operate and a high degree of trust among members of those communities.
Strategic, culturally grounded players | GWOs understand the cultural, social, political, and religious obstacles to creating change, and in many cases they have been working for years on strategies to lower those barriers.
Experienced navigators | GWOs have extensive experience in steering their way through local and national politics and in securing the support of those who wield power.
Ancillary program providers | GWOs have a deep appreciation of the multi-faceted issues that can affect the ability of women and girls to become full participants in society, and they often offer programs that address those issues—programs that cover skills development, violence prevention, education about legal rights, and access to maternal and reproductive health care, among other topics.
Cost-efficient partners | GWOs are highly efficient service providers, especially in comparison with most American and European INGOs. They operate within the cost structure of their home country, and they often effectively use local volunteers to supplement the work of paid staff members.
Multinational Companies and Local Partners
By partnering with GWOs in programs designed to create shared value, corporations increase the likelihood that their programs will be not only financially and operationally sustainable, but also transformative for women. Through their work with GWO partners, corporate leaders are learning the value of listening to women in the communities where they operate. Inspired by what they hear, moreover, many of them are moving to expand their women's empowerment programs in ways that go beyond an exclusive focus on economic issues. As the following examples illustrate, such corporate-GWO partnerships can take a wide range of forms.

Nestlé in the Ivory Coast | The Nestlé Cocoa Plan, launched in 2009, is part of an effort by Nestlé to create shared value in its cocoa supply chain. The goal of the plan is to improve the lives of cocoa farmers while also improving the quality of Nestlé's products. In 2010, for example, the company began working with COPAZ, a women-run cocoa cooperative in the Ivory Coast that has about 600 members. Agathe Vanier, the head of COPAZ, had led a campaign to demonstrate that the inclusion of women in cocoa farming could have a positive impact on their families and on the country as a whole. (Vanier is also the head of the Association of Female Coffee-Cocoa Producers of Sud-Bandama, an organization in the Ivory Coast that works to end traditions that limit women's access to land.) The advocacy and the efficiency of COPAZ impressed Nestlé executives, who undertook a partnership that involves providing the cooperative with high-yield, disease-tolerant cocoa seedlings and a truck to facilitate cocoa deliveries, along with technical assistance and financial advice.
In early 2014, Nestlé announced that it would expand its investment in women's empowerment in the Ivory Coast. That move came in response to a survey by the Fair Labor Association of issues that affect Ivory Coast women who work in Nestlé's cocoa supply chain. As part of this new effort, the company intends to pursue an impressive range of activities. These activities include training on gender issues at all cooperatives that take part in the Nestlé Cocoa Plan, promoting local women's associations that are affiliated with the Nestlé supply chain, registering the wives of male cocoa farmers as members of cocoa cooperatives, and helping women to produce more food crops both for their families and for sale.

Abbott Laboratories in Afghanistan | Since 2005, the health-care company Abbott Laboratories and the Abbott Fund have worked in partnership with two organizations—the Afghan Institute of Learning (AIL), a GWO founded in 1995 by Sakena Yacoobi, and Direct Relief, a US-based nonprofit that delivers medical assistance globally—to support the delivery of education and health services to women and children in Afghanistan. Over that period, Abbott has contributed nearly $5 million worth of medicine and nutritional products to AIL, and the Abbott Fund has awarded more than $1.3 million in cash grants to the organization.

Those contributions have helped AIL to achieve a big impact. To date, the organization has provided health education to nearly 1.5 million Afghans and quality medical services to nearly 1.5 million patients; it has also offered in-depth workshops on women's health to more than 8,000 people. One AIL program, for example, trains Afghan women to become midwives and health-care providers for infants and children. Katherine Pickus, divisional vice president for global citizenship and policy at Abbott, notes the broad benefits to women and communities that have resulted from that program: "What we found within a year of their completion of training is that each and every midwife had a job and was making money for her family, investing that money in their girls' education, and really developing a cycle of empowerment."

Coca-Cola in the Philippines | In 2010, Coca-Cola launched 5by20, an effort to support the economic empowerment of 5 million women entrepreneurs who are part of the company's global value chain. The Sari-Sari Store Training and Access to Resources program (STAR) in the Philippines, implemented as part of this initiative, is a multiyear partnership between Coca-Cola Philippines; Coca-Cola FEMSA, its local bottling partner; and the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA), a Philippine government agency. Also involved in the program are women's NGOs, microfinance institutions, and local government entities—more than 20 partners in all.

Filipino women have a strong presence in the small-scale retail outlets, known as sari-sari stores, that make up one of Coca-Cola's main sales channels in that country. In recognition of that presence, the STAR program offers three years of support to women who operate such outlets. Local NGO partners provide much of that support, and it has three basic components: training in both business skills and life skills, access to resources such as microfinance and merchandising, and peer mentoring to help the women develop skills and build confidence. Those NGO partners include GWOs such as the Negros Women for Tomorrow Foundation, a women-led organization that delivers microfinance and insurance products, along with health and education services, to its predominantly female clients.

According to Coca-Cola, the STAR program reached more than 15,000 Filipino women in its first three years of implementation. The company benefits from the program as well. In a report on the 5by20 initiative issued by the Corporate Social Responsibility Initiative at the Harvard Kennedy School, the report's authors note the value that corporations like Coca-Cola receive from this kind of partnership: "NGOs can offer market insight, advisory services, and capacity-building for women entrepreneurs and other underserved segments."

Kate Spade & Company in Rwanda | In early 2014, Kate Spade & Company announced "on purpose," a initiative in which the company is partnering with a group of 150 artisans—most of them women—in Masoro, Rwanda. The aim of the initiative is to support the development of a women-led business that will become a profitable supplier to the company's apparel and accessory brands. The initiative centers on training the artisans in how to import raw materials and in how to create, pack, ship, and invoice for finished products. But the effort extends beyond business issues. In response to focus groups with the artisans, the company plans to offer English language training, along with programs in reproductive health and nutrition. Another participant in the partnership is a local NGO that is training a local woman to counsel people in Masoro who may suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. (The legacy of the Rwandan genocide of the 1990s continues to affect many residents.) "We have a fundamental belief that women are agents of change in their communities," says Craig Leavitt, CEO of Kate Spade & Company.

To evaluate the impact of this initiative on the Masoro artisans and their village, Kate Spade & Company is collaborating with the Akilah Institute for Women, a college with campuses in Rwanda and Burundi. Ten Akilah students, selected on the basis of both academic performance and financial need, are conducting a community impact survey in Masoro. Employing these young Rwandan women facilitates data collection for the company and also helps them improve their fieldwork skills. In addition, the company is paying the women's school fees for one year. "Our work in Masoro is not about us," Leavitt says. "It's about creating a new model that we strongly believe is transportable around the world."

Avon Products in Brazil | Avon Products and its foundation have long been active in addressing two issues of particular interest to the women who make up most of its customer base and most of its sales force: women's health and domestic violence. A recent partnership between Avon and Fundo ELAS, a Brazilian women's fund, illustrates the use of corporate-GWO collaboration to confront the second of those issues. (Avon became aware of ELAS, and its experience in working with Brazilian GWOs on projects related to domestic violence prevention, through UN Women.) In the partnership, ELAS runs a competitive process for selecting projects designed by GWOs, and Avon then finances those projects. To date, the partners have awarded grants to 31 GWOs.

The selection process has favored a wide variety of innovative approaches to the problem of domestic violence. One project aims to create income-generating opportunities for women by professionalizing activities (raising poultry, for example) that they already perform. As a supplement to this economic empowerment work, the project also includes workshops on how to reduce gender violence. Another project integrates information on domestic violence into programs that use soccer (football) as a vehicle for promoting social change. A third project funds a rock festival—organized entirely by women—that highlights themes related to women's rights and domestic violence prevention.

Through ELAS, Avon is also helping to fund capacity building at grantee organizations. Last year, for example, ELAS organized a National Dialogue on Domestic Violence, a three-day meeting that convened representatives from each of the 31 GWO grantees that Avon has funded. The meeting focused on communication training and institutional development, and it featured wide-ranging conversations with journalists, experts on violence prevention, and leaders from donor organizations. At the end of the meeting, the grantees jointly developed a strategy to use during 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence, a global campaign that took place in late 2014.