Procter & Gamble pledges for gender equality through new measures

P&G will expand its supplier development and sourcing from women-owned business in supply chains across the world, including the Indian subcontinent, Middle East and Africa

BestMediaInfo Bureau | Mumbai | February 13, 2017

Procter & Gamble has announced a series of measures to support a push towards gender equality across the Indian subcontinent, Middle East and Africa regions. The global consumer products company said that it will continue to reveal gender bias and spark conversations through brand advertising campaigns and encourage the wider advertising industry to do the same.

The news was made public by the company during a meeting of the United Nations Secretary-General's high-level panel on Women's Economic Empowerment ('HLP'), which was held for the first time in the Middle East and hosted by the UAE Gender Balance Council.

P&G's 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 organisations.

“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 women's economic empowerment,” said Samir.

P&G will expand its supplier development and sourcing from women-owned business in supply chains across the world, including the Indian subcontinent, Middle East and Africa. It will also extend programmes to keep girls in school in India, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa and Tanzania. It is working with NGO partners on the ground, will empower women and girls impacted by the Syrian refugee crisis to realise their potential.

Gender equality is a priority focus area of P&G's citizenship activities. It has been steadily working to improve gender equality by leveraging its unique strengths.

Some of its achievements globally and in this region include:

In alignment with the gender equality goal of the company, P&G India hires 50 per cent women into entry level management roles and they get promoted into next assignments at the same progression as men.

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 and hygiene, personality development, etc. The company's flagship Mother Daughter Menstrual Hygiene Program has been successfully running across the country since 1995. Today, P&G runs this programme 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.

P&G has been sparking conversations and motivating change in brand advertising campaigns across the world, with an increased focus in the Indian subcontinent, Middle East and Africa. Notable campaigns 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.

In a first for the FMCG industry in India, P&G's Hyderabad plant was one of the first plants to have 30 per cent 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, they 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 licence to employ women in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) and now employs 15 per cent women managers in KSA across all commercial disciplines including finance, HR, sales and marketing. Also, in the US, P&G has integrated women-owned businesses into its sourcing supply chain.  In P&G's last fiscal year, the company spent $1.1 billion with women-owned businesses and importantly the majority of this spend is direct.

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