Page 326 - Ministry of Economy - December 2017

12/26/2017 Concrete steps to promote women's leadership in economic growth taken at WEEGS | MENAFN.COM
will promote gender equality, and empower women in the
workplace, marketplace and community as a norm and not an

exception. Big international conglomerates like Ernst and
Young, Mubadala Investment Company, Citi, Accenture, and

Procter and Gamble (P & G) have signed up to WEPs at the
summit.

Joelle Zilliox, IMEA Purchase Leader at P & G, shared the

company's experience, saying, "P & G wanted to expand
diversity and inclusion beyond the walls of their of ces for a

reason. These qualities are rooted in our culture with a small
example being the 95,000 people who have come together
from all over the world to make up our workforce. Through

bringing our external suppliers into this ambit of diversity and
inclusion, we have sourced goods and services worth USD 2

billion from diverse and minority women-owned businesses in
the US and Canada. This number is growing. Why? Because

our ndings show that companies that run effective supply
diversity programmes report increased pro tability. Our

internal data shows that women-owned and diverse suppliers
actually perform better than the average supplier base."

The nal session of the two-day event , dedicated to the WEPs,

and titled 'Driving WEPs Implementation: From Promise to
Practice,' sheds light on the fact that with 1,655 countries

signed up to WEPs so far, the ball may be rolling, but there is a
long way to go.

Dr. Enas Makkawi, Director of Women, Family and Children's

Department at the League of Arab States said, "We have Japan
and Turkey as our largest contributors but the gures are

peanuts compared to what they should be. From issues such
as recruitment and fair pay to encouraging suppliers to

expand their operations to women owned and managed
businesses, the pillars of WEP are not only workable, they are

positively bene cial."

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