Background

The Global Reporting Initiative and the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the private sector arm of the World Bank Group, are partnering on a twelve month research and consultation project to improve the coverage of gender issues in organizations’ sustainability disclosures.

Rather than just focusing on basic information, such as the number of women in the workforce, the GRI / IFC project will seek to encourage companies and other reporting organizations to address wider gender issues such as engaging women as consumers, women as entrepreneurs in the supply chain and women in the community. 

A series of multi-stakeholder workshops will be held in late 2008 and early 2009 to explore linkages between gender and sustainability reporting and how the GRI sustainability reporting framework can better guide reporting in this area.

The project will result in a Gender Resource Document that will help organizations seeking to better incorporate gender issues into their reporting.

Oversight of the project will be given by an gender and reporting advisory group - details of which will be published soon.

To register your interest in the project and involvement in the multi-stakeholder workshops, contact Katherine Miles Hill at GRI.