Why gender equity matters in the world of Social Value and ESG
March 8th is International Women’s Day – A Day on which we can collectively “Imagine a gender equal world. A world free of bias, stereotypes, and discrimination. A world that's diverse, equitable, and inclusive. A world where difference is valued and celebrated.”
The theme for IWD2022 is #BreakTheBias, and is an opportunity to celebrate women's achievement, raise awareness against bias and take action for equality. Social Value International supported the theme of IWD2022, by showcasing the work of inspirational women from across the social value movement and highlighting how the social value movement (and the women within it) are helping to break the bias and tackle gender inequality alongside other social justice issues. You can here the perspectives from these inspiring women here.
As many readers will know, women’s equality and empowerment is one of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals, but what isn’t always clear is that Goal 5: Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls is also integral to all dimensions of inclusive and sustainable development- in short, achievement of all the SDGs depends on the achievement of Goal 5.
What is SVI doing
Throughout the month of March, Social Value International, alongside our networks and partners, are hosting a series of discussions exploring how we can achieve inclusive and sustainable development by working collaboratively to evolve the current ESG agenda. It is therefore vital, due to the central importance of gender equality and empowerment of women and girls in the achievement of this goal, that discussions regarding the future of ESG, mainstreaming social value, impact management and achievement of the SDGs not only apply a gender lens, but ensure that gender equity is understood and actioned as a central component to the proposed solutions. This is just one of the reasons we are ensuring that all SVI panels throughout Beyond ESG Month will have a gender balance.
What is the situation re gender equity & representation
But before we can propose solutions, it is important to know where we are at right now and much like many other issues across the spectrum of social and economic development, the COVID-19 pandemic has caused havoc and set back progress made on gender equality. The World Economic Forum’s 2021 Global Gender Gap Report, which benchmarks the evolution of gender-based gaps across a range of key indicators including education, economic and political empowerment, has declared that the expected time it will take to close the gender gap has grown from 99 to 135 years. Across the world, vaccine inequality, armed conflicts, oppressive political regimes, natural disasters, the climate crisis and spiraling inflation have all coincided with the global pandemic and continuously cause disproportionate harm to women and girls.
The role of women in our movement
Throughout the pandemic, where we know women have suffered worse than men, we have also seen a huge increase in ESG investments, reporting and disclosures; a mainstreaming of social value accounting principles; an increased global awareness of the importance of the SDGs; build back better movements and open discourse around the desperate need to overhaul our unequal economic systems. But why is this important to gender you might ask? If left unchecked these issues will continue to cause significant and unequal added burdens to women and girls, but in this blog what I want to focus on is not how these issues are deepening inequalities, but how it is women themselves who are championing the solutions to overcome these challenges and what this means for the future of our collective movement to change the way in which decisions are made to ensure positive impact for all.
The role of women in driving forward the ESG agenda cannot be overlooked. A report by Credit Suisse in September 2021 found that women are more likely than men to be appointed to head of sustainability roles, and of the 600 companies in their data set who stated that they have a dedicated sustainability officer in the senior management team (from a total of 3,000), 45% of all such positions were currently filled by women. The same can be said for the social value movement. Across our networks, women hold leadership positions and for decades have been the driving force in the mainstreaming of social value accounting (do keep an eye on our social media throughout the week of IWD2022 where we will be showcasing some of these inspirational women).
Representation, and leadership, of women in these roles and in this movement is so important. Not only because positive social value and ESG performances by their very nature demand diversity, but because for a workplace, a business or a movement to be effective, gender diversity is vital- not just because it's a laudable goal but also because it quite simply, makes bottom-line business sense for a whole host of reasons and I am therefore encouraged by the fact that this area is proving such fertile ground for female representation.
Is gender representation meaningful?
But whilst on paper this is an achievement and shows significant progress, I do feel we must question the reasons behind this – is the growth of women leaders in sustainability roles down to the pioneering work and recognition of exceptional women within this space, or are we still confining women to what is seen as the ”softer side of business”? Women in leadership positions should be celebrated, but unless the leadership positions women hold are considered as important and are valued in the same way as other leadership roles then not only are we reinforcing the unequal structures of gender disparity, we are also risking the very achievement of the sustainable development movement – as we noted before, gender equity is the foundation for the achievement of the SDGs, and so unless we ensure gender equity and equal recognition of the importance of the work carried out by women, we risk undermining the movement towards sustainability itself.
If we look outside ESG, and to a sector that is known to cause significant damage to sustainable development – the oil and gas sector – we see a consistent failure to boost the number of women in leadership positions, with women making up less than 1/5 of leadership positions in the industry worldwide. To me this highlights that whilst the amazing representation and leadership of women in ESG, social value and sustainability is something to be celebrated we need to go much further if we are to truly achieve our collective goal of sustainable development, which can only be achieved through the equality of women and girls. As a movement, it is not only our responsibility to ensure that women continue to play key leadership roles in our area, but that we advocate for, and put pressure on all sectors to ensure that gender equality is achieved – for without this, we are ultimately set up to fail in our achievement of sustainable development.
Measurement of gender can be more meaningful
One of the ways we can do this, is by evolving the ESG agenda further. Investors are increasingly incorporating assessments of companies’ gender diversity and equity to determine how they might respond to ESG risks and opportunities, but the challenge here is that ESG risk and opportunity, generally, focuses on single materiality i.e., the impact gender equity and representation will have on business performance and the financial bottom-line. Yet if ESG were to evolve to include double materiality, not only would the impact of gender representation on a company's bottom line be recorded and disclosed, but the impact that such gender representation and female leadership has on the women leaders themselves, on colleagues, friends, young girls and on sustainability as a whole could be measured and managed. To conclude, it is through understanding and valuing the importance of gender representation and equity in all aspects, that we can begin to understand and manage the critical importance of women in leadership positions that encourage and advocate for sustainable development, and how this is so important to the very achievement of sustainability itself. Having more women leading and influencing the social value movement is a key way to achieve this.