Business In Society (BIS) reports on how the private sector can have an influential effect on our lives through sustainable and responsible business. This programme features the Women's Empowerment Principles and interviews with Ms. Anne-Marie Slaughter, President of The New America Foundation, Ms. Barbara Krumsiek, CEO of Calvert Investments, and Ursula Wynhoven, Chief, Governance and Social Sustainability and General Counsel of the United Nations Global Compact by John Paluszek of BIS. In these interviews, a spotlight is put on the Women's Empowerment Principles and the tipping point for women’s empowerment in business, government, civil society and other institutions

Principle 3 of the Women’s Empowerment Principles encourages companies to ensure the health, including sexual and reproductive health, of all workers. Investing in women’s health not only benefits employees and surrounding communities, but it can also have a positive social and economic effect on the private sector. In ensuring that workers have safe working conditions and available health services, companies establish healthier staff, better relationships, and in many cases higher Return-on-investment (ROI). This webinar highlights the benefits of investing in women's health, real life examples from Levi Strauss & Company and Merck, and strategies that businesses can implement to respect and support women’s health.

This webinar introduces examples of innovative approaches to empowering women in the workplace, marketplace and community by focusing on women's health initiatives in the private sector. These inspirational examples illustrate some of the concrete ways in which companies can and are taking action to implement the Women's Empowerment Principles (WEPs).

With the development of the Post-2015 agenda and discussion of the scope of potential sustainable development goals, the United Nations Global Compact has been asked to bring private sector perspectives and action to the global development agenda. As one of the priority areas designated by the UN Global Compact’s LEAD companies, Women’s Empowerment and Gender Equality aims ensure that all sustainable development goals be inclusive and gender-sensitive to facilitate maximum impact and avoid increasing inequalities. This issue paper explores the responsible business community’s willingness to contribute to the creation of women’s empowerment goals as well as to inform government and policy makers in future implementation of efforts involving the private sector. In addition, gender is incorporated into all ten (10) Issue Briefs exploring a different priority issue area as identified through extensive consultations with LEAD companies and other stakeholders.

This brief explanatory note explains the relationship between the Women's Empowerment Principles (WEPs), the UN Global Compact and the Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights

This handbook provides guidance material and tools for employers and business to strengthen their capacity to address the risk of forced labour and human trafficking in their own operations and in global supply chains. (2015 revised edition)

Demonstrates how companies can help to advance the SDGs by operating responsibly in alignment with universal principles and finding opportunities to innovate to address societal challenges. Through a commitment to the UN Global Compact, companies are taking the first step to contribute to achieving the SDGs and have access to a range of tools to scale up their efforts.

Provides guidance on how businesses and business schools can collaborate to co-create solutions for sustainability challenges. The toolkit and brochure feature inspiring examples of partnerships, categorized under five themes: influencing, training, collaborating, researching and consulting.

An assessment tool that enables companies and civil society partners to understand corporate impacts on multi-dimensional poverty. As a tool to help implement the SDGs, the Poverty Footprint provides a comprehensive overview of factors that influence poverty, and it emphasizes stakeholder engagement and partnership between companies and civil society as a means for establishing pro-poor business strategies.

Features companies who have made a commitment to changing education; however, none of them acted alone. All have worked with numerous partners to maximize the impact of their investments. These examples are intended to initiate conversation between stakeholders with shared goals to better understand how to work together. By working collaboratively to assess needs and implement activities, investments in education by the business community can be better coordinated, have a greater impact and make a larger contribution to achieving the 2030 education targets.

Business has much to gain from more inclusive economic prosperity, through access to new markets, unleashing more innovation, and greater social stability so necessary for markets to function. Conversely, business has much to lose from an economy that fails to capitalize fully on human capital, constricts markets, and experiences sluggish demand. This working paper introduces BSR’s perspective on the business role in creating inclusive prosperity.

Fostering women’s entrepreneurship is critical to achieving sustainable businesses, economic growth and to meet current and future sustainable development goals and targets. By leveraging the talents, skills and innovation of women entrepreneurs, women can bring needed action to global challenges such as climate change and water scarcity. This resource provides an overview of considerations for companies to support women entrepreneurs as well as examples of steps some companies are already undertaking.