Harnessing Equity

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How can a multidimensional approach to equity boost business performance and investor value?

View this webinar to delve into the critical question of how businesses can effectively integrate intersectionality into their equity, diversity and inclusion programmes. Explore how understanding the overlapping dimensions of equity – such as gender, race, socio-economic status, and LGBTQ+ identities – helps companies adopt a truly people-centred approach that delivers business and investor value, ensures every employee’s unique experiences and challenges are recognised and valued, and where progress can be effectively measured.

Speakers:

Rudaba Zehra Nasir, Global Lead, Economic Inclusion, Gender and Economic Inclusion Department, IFC

Daniel Seymour, Director, Strategic Partnerships, UN Women

Ama Ocansey, UK Head of Diversity and Inclusion, BNP Paribas

Dale Buscher, Vice President of Programs, Women’s Refugee Commission

Sandra Kerr CBE, Race Equality Director, Business in the Community

Moderator:

Alice Allan, Director of Collaboration, Business Fights Poverty

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Ama Ocansey, BNP Paribas:

“It’s important that organisations understand that people are not a monolith, they are not one thing. If you are trying to create an equitable space but you have blanket solutions, they are not going to address people who have multiple systems that are challenging them.”

Ama Ocansey, BNP Paribas:

“It’s important that businesses understand intersectionality, because unless you can see a problem you can’t solve it. As you explained, the whole idea of intersectionality is that of compounding systems of oppression. As a woman of colour, my intersectionality is racism and sexism”

Rudaba Zehra Nasir, IFC:

“Our latest guide, Investing for Inclusion: Exploring an LGBTI Lens, expands upon the well-established gender lens investing approach, which is an investment strategy that seeks to use capital to address gender inequalities.”

Daniel Seymour, UN Women:

“It’s not enough to look at just one lens of discrimination, exclusion, or diversity. You need to look at multiple ones at once to try and achieve genuine diversity and inclusion”

Daniel Seymour, UN Women:

“Until you can measure the extent to which advertising is promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion, or working against it — as advertising often can —you’re not going to move the needle very much”

Dale Buscher, Women’s Refugee Commission:

“How do we as humanitarians think about the opportunities created through conflict and displacement for promoting gender equality? What are some of the challenges – men losing status, women being exposed to more sexual violence – and how do we programme and respond to those?”

Dale Buscher, Women’s Refugee Commission:

“We’re still not putting an intersectional lens on the work… We look at vulnerability as if it’s something innate to the individual instead of something structural and related to power relations.”

Rudaba Zehra Nasir, IFC:

“The #LGBTI community represents a significant population globally … (and) are often subjected to social exclusion, with wide-ranging negative impacts on their individual potential as well as at a macro level: business performance and economic growth”

Sandra Kerr, BITC:

“Look at getting employers to demonstrate their commitment to social value — how they deliver it, who they invest in, and monitoring contract performances”