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June 29, 2004
Calvert Group Launches Code for Corporations to Profit by Promoting Gender Equality
by William Baue
Calvert links equality for women to sustainable development, making the ethical and business cases
for implementing its corporate code of conduct for empowering women.
SocialFunds.com --
The noted medical anthropologist and infectious disease specialist Paul Farmer once asked a Haitian
woman how to stop the spread of HIV.
"Give women jobs," she answered.
In other
words, empowering women economically helps solve the problems created by women's poverty, or what
United Nations (UN) Secretary-General Kofi Annan calls the "feminization of poverty."
 The Calvert Group, the largest family of socially responsible
investment (SRI) mutual funds in the US with $9.9 billion in assets under management, is extending
this same logic to the corporate realm in launching the Calvert Women's Principles.
Unveiled last week at UN Headquarters in New York City in collaboration with the UN Development
Fund for Women (UNIFEM), the principles are a
set of guidelines for corporations to promote women's economic empowerment.
"The Calvert
Women's Principles constitute the first global code of conduct for corporations focused exclusively
on empowering, advancing, and investing in women worldwide," said Barbara Krumsiek, president and
CEO of Calvert.
Why focus on corporations to address this social issue? Two interrelated
reasons.
First, corporate structures currently institutionalize and exacerbate gender
inequities. To support this assertion, Calvert points out that women occupy less than three
percent of the top executive posts in the largest corporations worldwide, while on the other end of
the ladder there is a 90 percent chance that a woman put together your palm pilot. Reforming
corporate structures can transform women from being victims of entrenched gender bias and
discrimination to being actors who help bring about their own economic and social empowerment.
While this reason is clearly compelling for social justice advocates, it is the second reason
that will likely convince capitalists: Calvert asserts that reversing corporate gender inequality
is good business.
"There is a strong business case and a strong economic case for gender
equality," said Ms. Krumsiek. "As a result of gender inequities, women remain--to some degree in
all parts of the globe--an untapped economic resource and an under-utilized economic asset."
"The Calvert Women's Principles recognize that women are economic actors and productive assets,
and that empowering women is a key to sustainable development around the globe," she added.
Corporate failure to promote gender equality represents not only a missed opportunity but also
a significant risk, exposing themselves to potential liabilities such as lawsuits over sex
discrimination. For example, two days before the launching of the Calvert Women's Principles, a
judge granted class-action status to a suit alleging that Wal-Mart (ticker: WMT) systematically underpays
women. The decision extends the case's scope from six to 1.6 million women working for the
discount retailer since December 1998, making it the largest employment-discrimination action ever.
Implementing the Calvert Women's Principles would help avoid such costly risks. The
principles make specific recommendations in seven broad categories, including disclosure,
implementation, and monitoring; community engagement; management and governance; education and
training; and supply chain. For example, the employment and income category calls on companies to
"establish pay equity policies that pay comparable wages and benefits, including retirement
security benefits, to men and women for comparable work." The health, safety, and violence section
asks companies to "ensure that women's health and safety, including reproductive health, are
protected" and to "prohibit discrimination against women with health problems, including
individuals with AIDS/HIV-positive status."
"The Calvert Women's Principles will provide a
concrete set of indicators for tracking the progress of gender justice in the corporate community,"
said Noeleen Heyzer, executive director of UNIFEM.
In addition to providing benchmarks for
both corporations and shareowners, the principles also present auditing and verification guidelines
for monitoring compliance. Calvert intends to issue ratings of companies based in part on their
commitment to the principles, to integrate the Principles into its own social and environmental
screening criteria, and to pursue shareowner action with companies around the principles.
©
SRI World Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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