Calvert Women’s Principles Provide Starting Point for UN Global Compact, UNIFEM Initiative on Women’s Empowerment
March 11, 2009///Bethesda, MD///The Calvert Women’s Principles® (CWP) are the starting point of a project convened by the United Nations Global Compact and the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), entitled Advancing Women in the Global Marketplace.
At a recent forum, representatives of business, civil society, academia, labor, governments and the UN gathered to discuss ways in which business can help to empower women in the workplace and advance gender equality globally. In that context, the event targeted issues such as creating an optimal workplace environment, women and entrepreneurship and public-private partnerships as a critical means of advancing women’s equality.
A central element on the agenda was a discussion of the potential global application of the Calvert Women’s Principles, developed in 2004 by Calvert in collaboration with UNIFEM. Attendees considered how the CWP might further be enhanced to expand their international impact and reach and stimulate further progress in the advancement of women.
Calvert President & CEO, Barbara J. Krumsiek, featured speaker at the event, noted the significance of the occasion. “Now we have the remarkable opportunity to make the Calvert Women’s Principles truly international in scope. As a long-time member of the UN Global Compact and a long-time collaborator with UNIFEM on the Principles themselves, we are pleased and honored to join both organizations as they launch this international consultative process to widen the Principles’ international reach and impact. ”
Calvert’s Amy Augustine, Manager, Diversity and International Labor Relations, and Aditi Vora, Social Research Analyst, were lead panelists in a discussion titled, Why the Women’s Principles –Why Now? The panel was chaired by Joanne Sandler, UNIFEM’s Deputy Director for Programmes, and included Calvert partners Verité, the San Francisco Department on the Status of Women and Symantec. Using several CWP initiatives as examples, participants explored the integral relationship between respect for women’s rights and overall corporate, social and economic progress.
Since their launch in 2004, the Calvert Women’s Principles have heightened awareness of workplace issues affecting women, as well as the role of business in ensuring women’s rights. Reflecting subsequent changes in the corporate diversity landscape, Calvert updated the CWP in 2009 to address salient emerging issues, particularly those concerning work-life balance.
Ms. Augustine said, “In an increasingly complex global marketplace, the ability to draw on a wide range of viewpoints, backgrounds, skills, and experience is both a social and strategic business and investment imperative. Calvert welcomes the opportunity to participate in this international multi-stakeholder consultative process to champion the empowerment and advancement of working women worldwide.”
About Calvert
Calvert Investments is an investment management company that offers mutual funds and separate accounts to institutional investors, retirement plans, financial intermediaries and their clients. By combining rigorous analysis with independent thinking, our disciplined approach to money management goes beyond traditional factors in order to manage risk and to identify investment opportunities with greater long-term potential. We offer more than 50 equity, bond, cash, and asset allocation investment strategies, many of which feature integrated corporate sustainability and responsibility research. Founded in 1976 and based in Bethesda, Maryland, Calvert Investments managed assets of more than $12 billion as of February 28, 2009.
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