Transnational corporations have important role to play in women’s empowerment — Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka

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Good afternoon your Excellencies,

Ladies and Gentlemen.

It is a great pleasure to be with you today in Geneva to join this discussion.

It is clear that corporations that operate globally have tremendous capacity to influence women’s empowerment and gender equality in emerging and developing countries.

Their impact can be seen, for example, in patterns of employment, the stability and growth of domestic production, international trade, environmental sustainability and transfer of knowledge. 

Despite progress made, gender gaps stubbornly remain — in labour-force participation, wage differentials, earnings, and asset accumulation.

We know that foreign direct investment and contract manufacturing by multinational corporations do not have uniform outcomes for women.

On average, it has increased women’s employment — in particular in labour-intensive sectors in developing countries, such as consumer goods, horticulture, and the textile and footwear industries.

On average, multinational corporations in developing countries pay higher wages. Their presence may influence domestic competitors to raise wages.

This has clearly benefited women.

In addition, employees of multinational corporations are better protected by labour legislation, have higher union representation and provide more employment benefits.

However, in countries where export competitiveness is based exclusively on low skills and low-paid jobs, multinational corporations can have adverse effects on female employment and gender wage gaps.

Typically, when multinational corporations recruit for higher-value production and require a more skilled workforce, women’s employment declines and the wage gap between women and men increases.

This is a lost opportunity that relates directly to capacity-building.

We must support women’s education and targeted skills development. Women need on-the-job learning programmes and skills upgrading. These efforts must start with equal access to education and especially to science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) training. They must include school-to-work and adult education lifelong learning programmes.

Additional measures to help would include ensuring that women’s small and medium size enterprises receive their fair share of multinational corporation sourcing, and that local firms who increase their share of women employees are recognized and rewarded for it.

Unpaid care work is an important barrier to girls and women joining the labour force. It puts major constraints on women’s and girls’ time and opportunities — including to complete secondary education. It prolongs economic marginalization and prevents their enjoyment of many human rights.

Transnational corporations can be champions of change.

They can offer benefits that specifically address women’s unpaid care burden: on-site or subsidized early childhood development centres; maternity and paternity leave; state action on active labour-market policies.

In addition, they can introduce voluntary employee targets for women at all levels of operation and initiate work-family life reconciliation policies.

Together, these policies could have important multiplier effects across a spectrum of development goals, including increased female labour-force participation, reduced fertility rates and aggregate demand.

The second area of discussion today is foreign direct investment.

Where this is focused on building up capital stock and transferring technological know-how, it similarly has the potential to benefit the local economy and provide broad growth dividends.

There is equally a potential negative effect that must be carefully managed through bridging technology gaps for local business and gradually integrating change.

We have proposed a set of best practices — the Women’s Empowerment Principles — that help corporations to navigate some of these complex areas. They elaborate the gender dimension of corporate responsibility and businesses' role in sustainable development. They are the result of collaboration between UN Women and the United Nations Global Compact.

As of today, over 800 CEOs from around the world have signed the CEO Statement of Support for the Principles, signaling their support for gender equality and the guidance provided.

Ladies and gentlemen,

We all know that with a livelihood and an income of their own, women have increased status. They can provide for their families and become empowered in other parts of their lives as well, such as making decisions about education, housing, food choices and medical care.

That’s why women and the economy was included as a critical area of concern in the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action. It has a particular focus on differences in women's and men's access to, and opportunities to exert power over, economic structures in their societies.

We also know that global policies on international trade can impact negatively on women, especially in poor countries, and that the debt crisis has raised the stakes still further since 2008.

There are no simple answers to these issues.

As we build to the 20th anniversary of this road map to gender equality next year, it is especially relevant that we consider the complex role of transnational corporations and foreign direct investment in providing those opportunities — and reaping the rewards for society.

I look forward to discussing further with you how we can work together to achieve this.

Thank you.