Words Pihu Jain
Women’s empowerment is closely interlinked with India’s growth story. The country is home to over 691 million women, yet gender inequality remains deeply entrenched across socio-economic indicators. Top-down policy interventions have driven progressive legislative change. However, real transformation at the grassroots requires active participation from corporates and civil society alike. On this front, India’s leading companies are stepping up to catalyze progress by integrating women’s empowerment as a key priority within their CSR agenda.
Education and Literacy: The Bedrock for Women’s Advancement
The transformative power of educating girls is well-documented globally. CSR programs promoting education and skills development are among the most impactful interventions for achieving gender equality. Top Indian firms have developed multifaceted, scalable initiatives spanning building schools, teacher training, scholarships, bridging courses, and programs promoting women’s participation in higher education, particularly STEM.
Tackling Health Challenges: Bringing Healthcare Access to India’s Marginalized Women
Health and nutrition factors critically impact women’s wellbeing, economic participation, and resilience against gender-based violence. Over 57% of Indian women face anaemia, while child marriage, early pregnancies and inadequate healthcare access exacerbate poor health outcomes.
India’s leading companies implement large-scale programs to enhance the availability, affordability, and uptake of essential health services among underserved women residing in remote rural areas or urban slums. Major initiatives involve strengthening public health infrastructure at the grassroots, expanding community outreach efforts to provide doorstep care, launching malnutrition eradication drives and promoting awareness around sexual, reproductive and menstrual health issues.
Besides treatment, companies also focus on preventative health education to drive positive behavioural change regarding deviant cultural practices that undermine women’s health. Mass awareness campaigns, community mobilisation activities and technology-enabled interventions are pivoted to remove the stigma around women’s health troubles, thereby encouraging timely care seeking.
Advocacy and Awareness: Promoting Mindset Change
While enhancing access to education, skills and health services is vital for building women’s capabilities, realising their full potential requires transforming long-entrenched social attitudes. Additionally, dismantling conscious as well as unconscious biases that restrict opportunities for girls and women is essential.
India’s leading corporations are increasingly acknowledging their influential role in spearheading a critical culture change by publicly advocating gender equality across media channels. They are promoting inclusive values internally through policy initiatives and running targeted mass awareness campaigns addressing pressing issues like child marriage, sexual harassment, pay gaps, and gender stereotyping.
Additionally, front-running Indian firms implement innovative sensitisation programs for employees, managers and business leaders to foster more supportive organisational ecosystems where women professionals can thrive and realise their maximum leadership potential on an equal footing. Building a nurturing culture is pivotal so that ambitious young women can break existing barriers and stereotypes by aspiring to take on challenging leadership responsibilities.
Financial Inclusion: Promoting Women’s Economic Independence
Financial autonomy provides women with choice, resilience against crises and the ability to transform life trajectories. According to a survey, women spent 305 minutes on unpaid activities, 56 minutes on paid activities, and 1,079 minutes on other residual activities in a single day, indicating substantial scope for expanding access and uptake of basic financial services.
India’s top banks and fintechs leverage insights from women-centric design research and partnerships with NGOs to develop products catering specifically to women’s needs. SEWA Bank, Mann Deshi Bank, Easy Loans and GrameenKoota’sspecialised lending offerings are helping microentrepreneurs scale businesses in rural areas. Leading PSU banks also run programs promoting digital/financial literacy focused on women.
Additionally, companies are empowering women by providing seed funding and grants to women-led social enterprises working on sustainability solutions and mentoring young female entrepreneurs. Such interventions offer platforms enabling women changemakers and innovators to implement creative development ideas benefitting communities.
The Road Ahead
As leading change agents touching millions of lives daily, corporates have both an unprecedented opportunity and responsibility to drive positive transformation for India’s women through continued investment in impactful CSR initiatives.
Multidimensional approaches involving strategic partnerships between companies, communities, governments, and civil society actors can pave the path ahead – converting national and state policy commitments on gender equality into tangible progress improving outcomes for marginalized women across the nation.
The Author
Pihu Jain Head at the Girnar Foundation, the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) arm of the CarDekho Group
