Equality means business? Governing gender through transnational public-private partnerships

ABSTRACT

From the World Bank's ‘gender equality is smart economics’ to The Economist's ‘womenomics’ and Nike's ‘girl effect’, feminism seems to have well and truly penetrated the business world. Government action on behalf of gender equality is well institutionalized but private corporations appear as a new actor in this cause. This article asks: What do businesses and their public partners do in order to advance gender equality? What motivates their engagement now and how does it fit into existing public and private relationships of power? What do they mean for feminist agendas? How legitimate are they? And how effective are they? To address these questions the article examines four exemplary initiatives involving businesses in advancing gender equality and women's empowerment: the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Women Global Initiative, the World Economic Forum's Women Leaders and Gender Parity Program, the European Union's Programme on Gender Balance in Decision-Making Positions, and the UN Global Compact-UNIFEM Women's Empowerment Principles for Business. Our purpose is to conceptually locate these initiatives as new private forms of governance involving partnerships with governments. We assess these initiatives employing criteria of feminist evaluation and find decidedly ambiguous results. We argue that the new attention to gender equality in business and global economic governance is both an expression of and a key process in the transformation of states and corporations in the context of global competition and restructuring.

KEYWORDS:

• Public-private partnerships
• global governance
• women's empowerment
• gender equality
• gender mainstreaming
• feminist political economy
• economic development

Notes

1. 'Nike Harnesses “Girl Effect” Again', The New York Times, 10 November 2010, <http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/11/giving/11VIDEO.html> (accessed 9 October 2013).

2. The 2008 report of the Africa Forum announced the first meeting of the African Gender Parity Group and on its last page it lists some of the most prominent members: the deputy president and a minister of South Africa, the governor of the Bank of Botswana, the chairman of the board of the Development Bank of Southern Africa, the heads of a South African bank and a global media corporation, the CEOs of three companies (Accenture, ArcelorMittal and PG Industries, Zimbabwe), the head of the Nigerian stock exchange, and the president of an association supporting female entrepreneurs in Cameroon (World Economic Forum, 2008: 31). The Middle East Regional Parity Group was launched in 2008, and the media reported among its members the CEOs of two companies (Rachid Mashreq Group, Egypt and Rubicon, Jordan), the heads of the national bank of Kuwait and of the Arab League, the Egyptian minister of finance, and the head of the negotiations department of the Palestine Liberation Organization (AMEInfo.com, 2010). The people mentioned are only the most visible of the 50 members – half men and women – that make up all regional groups. No information could be gleaned on the Asian and Latin American regional parity groups.

3. Lists of members are in Appendix B.

4. See <http://ec.europa.eu/justice/gender-equality/gender-decision-making/database/index_en.htm> (accessed 9 October 2013).

5. See <http://www.weprinciples.org> (accessed 29 October 2013). The title of this article ‘Equality means business’ is taken from the WEPs promotional documentation.

6. For a full formulation of the WEPs, see Appendix D.

7. See principle 5, first bullet point (UN Global Compact/UNIFEM, 2010: 3).

8. See <http://www.weprinciples.org/Site/WepsLeadershipAwards> (accessed 9 October 2013).

9. This lists the bullet points present under principle 6 ‘community leadership and engagement’ (UN Global Compact/UNIFEM, 2010: 3).

10. See special issues on the economic crisis of Gender and Development 18, 2 (July 2010). Roberts (2012) questions Goldman's credibility in the matter of women's empowerment – on the one hand, promoting women entrepreneurs, while, on the other, having played an infamous role in popularizing collateralized debt obligations that initiated the subprime mortgage crisis in the USA and spiraled into a financial crisis. Poor women were disproportionately targeted for these financial products and many lost their homes during the crisis.

11. Goldman Sachs, ‘10,000 Women: About: Partners', <http://www2.goldmansachs.com/citizenship/10000women/about/partners/partner-list.html> (accessed X October 2013).

12. Source: http://www.webforum.org/reports/global-agenda-council-reports-2010 (accessed 11 December 2013).

13. Source: http://www.weforum.org/content/global-agenda-council-womens-empowerment-2012 (accessed 9 October 2013).

14. Source: <http://ec.europa.eu/justice/gender-equality/gender-decision-making/index_en.htm> (accessed 9 October 2013).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Elisabeth Prügl

Elisabeth Prügl is Professor of International Relations and Deputy-Director at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva, Switzerland.

Jacqui True

Jacqui True is Professor of Politics and International Relations and Associate Dean of Research in the Faculty of Arts at Monash University, Melbourne, Australia.