UN Women conducts workshop on Transparency and Accountability for Gender Equality

Aug 16, Karachi, Pakistan – UN Women Pakistan in collaboration with The Center of Excellence in Responsible Business and Pakistan Business Council conducted an informative training today on the importance of disclosure for transparency and accountability for corporations. The training was led by Hassan Ali Abbasi, Partnerships and Communications lead at UN Women. He shared about the Women Empowerment Principles developed by UN and how companies can use them as goalposts when developing their gender strategy.

He particularly highlighted how initiatives like the WEPs Awards and the “Employer of Choice” Gender Diversity Awards create incentives for businesses to improve their gender strategy. He advocated for a holistic view of gender inclusion in the areas of the workplace, marketplace and within leadership as well because inclusion is an overall philosophy not just tick-in-the-box activity limited to a few departments.

Programme Manager at CERB, Rajaa Bokhari presented her findings from the Gender Diversity Scorecard which is a tool developed by the IFC and PBC to gauge progress within companies who have inculcated the WEPs in their work culture. She elaborated on how family friendly policies and optimal work cultures that emphasise on safety and mobility encourage more women to join workplaces and then stay in those workplaces.

Finally, Nida Qureshi and Nihaan Shahzad from Engro Fertilizers shared their best practices for retaining talent in the workplace as a leader in having a winning gender strategy. They are two-time winners of the “Employer of Choice” Gender Diversity Awards and have the thought leadership to show for it.

The workshop was attended by representatives from Amreli Steels, EBM, K-Electric, Pakistan Cables, , Daraz, JS Bank, Gul Ahmed Textiles and Feroze Mills.