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How do poverty reduction, social responsibility and gender equality help businesses to perform better? What good practices are out there and how can we learn from them? These are amongst the questions that will be addressed at a half-day meeting at the Royal Tropical Institute (KIT) in Amsterdam on the 8th of March 2012.
Businesses world-wide, as well as standard setters and NGOs, agree that the private sector has a key role to play in the reduction of poverty, and at the same time that poverty reduction serves business interests. But how do businesses benefit when it comes to addressing gender equality? Evidence is scarce as to how gender equality can be achieved and how that benefits the business, the value chain and wider society. In other words: How can certified cocoa, coffee and tea chains work to the benefit of all (men and women throughout the chain) involved?
In 2009, four Dutch development organisations – KIT, Oxfam-Novib, Solidaridad and Hivos – began working together to better understand the role that standards and certification can play in improving gender equity in coffee, tea and cocoa value chains. The role of the private sector became an important focus of this collaboration – known as the Gender and Global Standards Initiative - because strategic partnerships between business, standard setters, producers and support organisations are essential for a chain to work better and to produce more.
For the Portal of selected electronic material on gender equity in certified value chains, click here
For the exchange of ideas of the past workshops visit the
Virtual Community, click here
