Business Action Must Incorporate Women and Girls to Achieve Full Impact
Shana Ward Ryzowy, Health Expert
Integrating Gender into Workplace, Community and Advocacy Programs
Productive Workforces and Vibrant Consumer Base Depends on Health of Women and Girls
Specific Business Actions to Keep Women and Girls Healthy
Dr. Neeraj Mistry, Health Expert
Importance of Gender Award for Business Excellence
Healthy Women Healthy Economies
Healthy Women Healthy Economies is a Nike Foundation, FedEx, and David and Lucile Packard Foundation supported GBC initiative that is working to uncover the link between the health and empowerment of women and the stability of economies around the world, and to develop strategies to reduce the burden of HIV/AIDS on women that threatens this economic stability.
Young women have become the new face of AIDS. They now represent over half of the people living with HIV worldwide. They bear more of the economic, social and psychological costs, and are more likely to be the victims of stigma and discrimination. In Africa, young girls aged 15 to 24 are up to three times as likely to be infected as young men. In sub-Saharan Africa, young women are three to six times more likely to be infected than young men.
» View The New Face of AIDS, A Brochure Developed by HWHE
Too often, women lack power in their relationships with men. This power differential manifests itself in rape and abuse, in men having multiple sexual partners outside of marriage and in women’s inability to insist that their sexual partners use condoms.
When women are economically empowered, better educated and have access to health care, research shows that the power differential between men and women shifts, giving women the ability to negotiate their relationships.
Women are the lynchpins of communities and local economies. When businesses work to prevent AIDS among women, there are dramatic global economic benefits.
Pharmaceutical Companies Innovate on Gender and AIDS, Agree to Incorporate Women in HIV Trials
New steps adopted by GBC member companies and international health agencies recently will help to ensure that HIV trials and interventions address the needs of women, exemplifying the positive and innovative role companies can play in addressing the feminization of AIDS.
Following a recent meeting in Geneva, organized by UNAIDS, the Global Coalition on Women and AIDS (GCWA), and the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW) in collaboration with Tibotec, a bio-pharmaceutical subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson that strongly supports addressing the special health needs of women and girls, representatives from Merck, GlaxoSmithKline, and public health leaders agreed that additional research is necessary to measure the effect gender differences have on HIV interventions. Women and girls, who now constitute half of all persons living with HIV, currently are underrepresented in HIV clinical trials for prevention and treatment strategies.
GBC welcomed the new steps, which epitomize the gender-focused principles outlined in GBC’s Business Action Methodology™ (BAM). New elements of the methodology, instituted as part of the Healthy Women Healthy Economies initiative, emphasize leveraging biomedical and pharmaceutical core research skills to address the feminization of HIV/AIDS.
The BAM also outlines other ways in which the sector can help, including in-kind donations of condoms, ARVs and maternal health kits, and the contribution of information, education and communication capacities regarding gender equity and the link to HIV. Further steps will be needed to ensure that prevention and treatment efforts targeting women achieve maximum impact.
Women Deliver: GBC panel addresses HIV and women, UK pledges £100 million
The UK government pledged £100 million towards maternal health while business leaders presented their successful private sector partnerships in addressing AIDS in women at the Women Deliver conference in London last week.
The Global Business Coalition on HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (GBC) hosted a panel on business and the feminization of AIDS at the 2,000 person conference, which was organized by Tibotec, MTV, ExxonMobil, and GSK.
The panel spurred an important conversation among approximately 100 private sector, government, donor, NGO and UN participants on how to leverage private sector resource, expertise, service and products to meet health and development goals.
GAP Inc.’s Senior Director of Social & Community Investment, Dotti Hatcher, presented her company’s ALAFA (Apparel Lesotho Alliance to Fight AIDS) health intervention program for Lesotho’s garment workers and a new program called P.A.C.E. (Personal Advancement & Career Enhancement), for female workers in a number of countries.
Dr. Michael Rabbow, Manager of Emerging Economies for Boehringer Ingelheim spoke to the audience about the VIRAMUNE Donation Programme (VDP) which provides free access to single-dose Viramune® to prevent mother-to-child transmission of the HIV virus during birth.
Representatives from Becton Dickinson, Standard Chartered and Nike Foundation all presented private sector initiatives that their companies had implemented to target health issues among women.
Tibotec—a pharmaceutical company that focuses on HIV and one of the event’s organizers, sponsored a high level reception with UNAIDS to launch a global effort to lead the international clinical research agenda on women and AIDS; the first meeting will be in Geneva in December.
Unprecedented International Summit on Women’s Leadership on HIV/AIDS
The World YWCA International Women’s Summit convened July 4-7 in Nairobi, Kenya as part of the World YWCA Council: Changing Lives, Changing Communities, July 1-11, 2007. The conference brought together over 1500 people from all sectors to discuss the ways female leadership is making a difference on HIV/AIDS and to mobilize women and girls around the world to respond to HIV/AIDS.
The World YWCA has since issued a "Call to Action" which includes ten critical actions for change that are based on existing knowledge and evidence about the life experiences of women and girls around the world, particularly those infected with and affected by HIV and AIDS.
» View more information on the Women’s Summit and the Declaration and Suggested Strategies for Implementation
New Tool to Implement Gender-Based Policies in the Workplace
HWHE has developed a comprehensive tool to guide the business response to the feminization of HIV/AIDS. By building on two successful GBC models - the Business Action Methodology (BAM) and the Best Practice and AIDS Standard (BPAS) - HWHE formulated new guidelines that integrate gender via the components of the corporate response to HIV/AIDS: Workplace, Philanthropy, Core Competency and Advocacy. This unique tool, the first of its kind, will be designed using proven effective gender policies. To implement the program, GBC secured company commitments, where each company agreed to a Monitoring & Evaluation plan documenting lessons learned and best practices.
» Read In Good Company: How Business Fights the Feminization of HIV/AIDS (PDF)
» For more information on other GBC case studies, visit the case studies homepage
Policy Workshop Fights Feminization of HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa
In partnership with Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, GBC held an innovative multi-stakeholder scenario workshop on the feminization of HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa. Facilitated by Scenario Development’s Dr. Patrick Noack and Dr. Maddalena Campioni, the first-of-its-kind workshop convened GBC member companies, Columbia University academics, NGO representatives, government leaders, policy makers, and donors. Working sessions focused on knowledge sharing, identification of key issues, current situational analysis, and potential factors impacting future epidemic scenarios.
The feminization of HIV/AIDS is a global phenomenon that challenges development progress and undermines local economies. Its impact is the most severe in sub-Saharan Africa, where, in the nine most heavily affected countries, 75% of all young people infected with HIV are female; in some Southern and East African countries, young women and girls can be up to 4 to 13 times more likely to be HIV-infected than young men. The epidemic’s feminization indicates that the specific HIV-related needs of women and girls are not being addressed. In addition, the wide-spread discrimination, gender inequity and violence against women and girls make them extremely vulnerable to an epidemic with a known propensity to prey on vulnerable populations.
The two-day workshop facilitated deeper understanding of the wider context and policy issues shaping HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa and fostered a greater appreciation for the underlying structural issues fueling the epidemic’s feminization. Participants from various constituencies were able to share insights and challenge assumptions and beliefs—an important part of the process in expanding dialogue on the issue and improving individual and collective strategies.
The focal question that developed from the workshop—"What is the specific role of business in a multi-sectoral response to the feminization of HIV/AIDS"?—was addressed through four different scenarios (partnership, gender, leadership and health systems). Scenario Development is composing a workshop report and formulating future scenarios regarding feminization in sub-Saharan Africa; recommendations will be distributed to participants and member companies.
GBC is committed to further engaging members on this issue and is working to provide increased guidance and tools for programs and policies as part of our HWHE initiative. GBC recognizes that members are committed to more concrete actions, and the workshop was an important step in this direction.
As part of the HWHE initiative GBC will:
- Formulate a policy brief on business’ role, with specific recommendations from the Scenario Workshop.
- Formulate guidelines on integrating gender into the corporate response, through GBC’s Business Action Methodology™ (BAM).
- Gather and disseminate Case Studies, featuring Best Practices related to HWHE.
- Partner with Scenario Development to formulate and distribute scenarios on the future of the Feminization in SSA.
» Read an Overview of the Feminization in sub-Saharan Africa
GBC Member Companies Visit East Africa with HWHE
It is particularly impressive when just a few photos encompass myriad emotions and ideas. That’s precisely what happened when GBC invited delegates from over twenty member companies, as well as our partner organizations, to comment on photos Getty Images photographer Brent Stirton took during the three-day HWHE East Africa Field Trip. The delegation saw men, women, and children infected with and affected by HIV/AIDS, programs that are empowering vulnerable populations through workplace interventions, and a highly successful World AIDS Day business symposium. In this collection, the delegates delivered short essays, providing a perfect complement to images taken during the life-changing trip.
» View the photo slideshow
» Read a full report on the East Africa Field Trip
The Nike Foundation contributes to poverty alleviation through investments in adolescent girls. The Nike Foundation uses its passion, voice and resources – through grant making, advocacy and partnerships – to support initiatives that inspire and mobilize support for girls’ empowerment and well being, worldwide. The Nike Foundation also strives to foster innovative models of corporate philanthropy.
David and Lucile Packard Foundation
The David and Lucile Packard Foundation is a private family foundation created in 1964 by David Packard (1912–1996), cofounder of the Hewlett-Packard Company, and Lucile Salter Packard (1914–1987). The Foundation is committed to expanding reproductive health options among women and families around the world and in the United States.
FedEx
FedEx recognizes that their impact is greater than the services they provide. They are committed to being a great place to work, a thoughtful steward of the environment and a caring citizen in the communities where they live and work. FedEx is passionate about sustainably connecting people and places and improving the quality of life around the world.
» View Selected Resources on Women and Girls and HIV/AIDS