Activating With Purpose: How Brands Too Can Make a Difference for Women

It’s no secret that women’s rights and female empowerment have taken center stage in today’s society. Just this past weekend hundreds of thousands of women and men, again took to the streets to make their voices heard across the US on human rights, gender equality and parity, immigration reform, healthcare, reproductive rights, racial and LGBT equality and countless other issues. This coming at a time when movements like #MeToo and #TimesUp are galvanizing women globally to elicit real change—igniting a spark that’s led to the groundswell for women’s rights we’re experiencing today.

With all of this focus on women and gender equality continuing to dominate conversations in the media, it’s no surprise that consumers are taking notice – something that companies should not take lightly as the majority of Americans (76 percent) say they would boycott a company based on corporate values. Even more notable, is that more than eighty percent (84 percent) rank women’s rights as one of the most pressing issues they expect companies to address. Here’s a roundup of four companies committing to gender equality in big ways:

• Citigroup announced a new commitment to closing the gender pay gap, becoming the first major U.S. bank to analyze and disclose its compensation data. The company will now increase pay for women in the U.S., U.K. and Germany, as well as U.S. minorities in an effort to close the gap and will also assess pay level in other countries where more than 200,000 of its employees work. This is a move that separates the firm from its financial peers, allowing them to emerge as not just a responsible company but a true leader in gender parity and for women
• CVS Health* has long been regarded as true Purpose-driven company that embeds its Purpose of helping people on their path to better health across its entire enterprise whether through banning the sale of tobacco, delivering healthier food offerings or removing chemicals from its store brand beauty line. The company recently made headlines again when it announced a commitment to eliminate materially altered images from its store beauty products by 2020 and to introduce a watermark called the “CVS Beauty Mark,” to signify unaltered images. CVS said a driving factor behind the commitment was in response to the larger conversation today on women and female empowerment in society.

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