To mark International Women’s Day (IWD), we want to explain how transparency technology can play an important role in protecting women in supply chains by empowering companies with the tools to identify, address and mitigate human rights violations, gender-based violence and harassment risk.
With 27.6m people living in forced labour across the globe, it is important to tackle these issues and eliminate slave labour from your supply chains. When it comes to women, they are often a more vulnerable demographic in third world societies.
This blogpost will be discussing how you can do due diligence for your company to protect women in supply chains and improve labour conditions with supply chain mapping and transparency technology.
Challenges for women in agricultural supply chains
Women account for around 43% of the agricultural workforce worldwide, however they face significant barriers, including:
Sexual harassment
Survey by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFRPI) found that 40% of women agricultural workers reported experiencing some form of sexual harassment or abuse at work.
Forced labour
Women and girls are more likely to be subjected to forced labour and human trafficking, with the International Labour Organization estimating that around 71% of all trafficking victims are women and girls.
Land ownership
Reports by the World Bank show that women own less than 20% of agricultural land globally, even though they represent 43% of the agricultural labour force.
Software solutions to help protect women in supply chains
So how can we improve transparency in supply chains and still meet customer demands of goods and services? Authenticate has a few long term solutions.
More and more companies are looking for ways to protect women throughout (often opaque) global supply chains from unfair treatment, labour abuses and inequality.
With the help of transparency technology, such as the Authenticate platform, businesses can collaborate with direct and indirect suppliers through the tiers, to identify, mitigate and address gender-based, diversity and inequality risks using a range of scalable solutions.
Supply Chain Mapping
Supply chain mapping can be used to plot direct and indirect supplier locations to pinpoint areas where gender-based violence is prevalent, such as on certain farms, within high-risk regions or commodities. This improved supply chain visibility can be used to target interventions and prevent future issues via enhanced supplier collaboration.
Audits & Assessments
Audits and assessments can create bespoke surveys and send to defined supplier lists remotely to monitor gender-based inequality, diversity, slavery risk, standards and compliance at the touch of a button. By conducting regular digital audits, companies can manage supplier compliance to forced labour commitments, whilst supporting women all the way back to source.
KPIs
KPIs can capture supplier performance data against defined metrics to identify progress against social issues. This could include capturing the number of female farmers or rate of pay by gender to ensure women are being represented and treated fairly within your organisation’s supply chains.
Document Management
Use document management to share company and request supplier policies concerning modern slavery, gender pay gap and much more within a secure, central environment to get sight of critical documentation concerning women in supply chains. This can help to promote accountability, understand supplier compliance with company commitments and prevent potential abuses.
Here at Authenticate, we’re proud our supply chain technology can help to play a small part in protecting women through the tiers by increasing visibility, mitigating risk and monitoring compliance.
Want to see how our supply chain management software can assist with safeguarding women in high-risk supply chains this International Women’s Day and beyond? Contact the team for a platform demonstration.
