Companies: Aiming to economically empower women? Invest in their reproductive health.

Amidst the rat-a-tat machine gun speed of executive orders coming from the newly minted Trump administration was the reinstatement of the Global Gag Rule — and for those of us working with women and girls, this was one of the most disheartening. Like a ping pong match, the rule — which denies foreign aid funding to family planning organisations that dare mention the word abortion — is put in place or repealed, depending on whether a Republican or Democrat is sitting in the Oval Office. Since 9 November, global health organisations have been preparing for the Global Gag rule’s reinstatement, but companies investing in women’s economic empowerment may not have been. And if they want to achieve their objectives — they should think again.

Corporate programmes that aim to economically empower women and girls have sprung up in the past decade, from actors as diverse as Nike and Exxon Mobil. With solid evidence that women who are economically empowered — meaning they have both the ability to succeed economically and the power to make economic decisions — enrich communities and boost GDP, companies have understood that supporting women across their value chain yields a robust return on investment.

Most companies, however, still view economic empowerment through a relatively narrow lens, focusing on interventions like financial literacy, job training, and mentoring. In 2015, we wrote a report for the Global Business Coalition for Education called The Journey of a Girl, examining how companies invest in girls across their lifecycle. The majority of the 32 companies reviewed were investing in girls at the upper secondary school level. More than half of those cited economic empowerment as their ultimate aim, and more than 75% pursued this through programmes offering financial literacy and STEM skills.

Several of these programmes have seen solid outcomes among the girls they reach — but what those that they don’t? Only three companies we researched explicitly referenced reproductive health, but the link to economic empowerment is irrefutable. Every year more than 16 million adolescent girls give birth (plus an additional million under the age of 15). Complications that arise from these pregnancies are now the second leading cause of death for girls of that age. Besides the heart-breaking implications of that staggering statistic, the economic impact on lost productivity is enormous: in India, productivity would increase by US$7.7 billion if girls joined the formal economy; in Malawi, the cost of teen pregnancy is 25% of GDP. These are conservative estimates.

The maths behind this is simple: the less girls that make it to and through secondary school, the smaller the pool of girls for these corporate initiatives to target — leading to fewer well-trained employees in the workforce and fewer women able to lead the companies of the future. Without holistically examining women’s economic empowerment and understanding how access to reproductive health is fundamental to reaching those outcomes, a company’s return on investment is significantly limited.

Some companies, particularly those in the pharmaceutical industry, are investing in women’s reproductive health in exciting ways — from Merck’s production of contraceptive methods that are suitable for use in developing countries, to Bayer’s partnership with the Clinton Health Access Initiative to make its reversible contraceptive implant more accessible. However, the vast majority of companies remain quiet on the issue for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the controversial and seemingly political nature of supporting reproductive health.

Amidst a funding gap resulting from this new iteration of the Global Gag Rule that will potentially affect $9.5 billion, companies have more than just a social responsibility to engage: they must do so to protect their investments in economically empowering women.

Here are a number of simple ways companies could have an impact:

1) Ensure reproductive health is part of other life skills or holistic education programmes. When I was establishing the Goal programme at Standard Chartered, we included information on menstruation, contraception and other elements of reproductive health as part the overarching life-skills curriculum; we gave girls the tools they needed to seek further help.

2) Collaborate with other investors across sectors to provide more holistic support to your target group. Companies can be restricted in how they invest, particularly around an issue seen as controversial — however, Foundations and individual donors often have more flexibility. A bit of research into who else is funding women and girls in a company’s target market could yield an opportunity to collaborate and ensure their needs are holistically met.

3) Start with your own value chain. The business case for this is a no-brainer. Companies like Levi’s have been investing in their female employees and suppliers for years. There are existing initiatives, like the P.A.C.E. programme and BSR’s HERHealth, that are simple for companies to plug into. Companies can start by looking closest to home for their reproductive health investments.

There is a clear opportunity for those who are bold enough to invest in reproductive health to economically empower women. With four years of executive orders ahead, companies will need to take the matter of safeguarding their investments into their own hands. They — and we — can’t afford not to.