Call for Nominations: WEPs Awards

The 2024 WEPs Awards is part of the new UN Women program Gender Action Lab (GAL): Innovation and Impact for Gender Equality in Asia-Pacific, powered by the Women’s Empowerment Principles (WEPs), supported by the Government of Australia Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. Under GAL, the WEPs Awards will become part of a two-year cycle with the WEPs Awards happening one year followed by a WEPs Forum the next year. The first cycle will begin with the 2024 WEPs Awards and culminate with the 2025 WEPs Forum.

Categories

• In each of the following categories, one Winner, 1st Runner Up and 2nd Runner up will be awarded.
  • Leadership Commitment and Action (Aligned to WEPs 1):
    • This category recognizes leaders (aged 35 and above) in corporations who have been instrumental in setting strong corporate commitments inclusive of progressive polices, regulations or practices that aim to promote gender equality in the workplace, marketplace and/or community. This may include company leaders taking specific roles and responsibilities in promoting gender equality within the company and making public commitments or delivering gender sensitive messages to the public.
  • Gender-Inclusive Workplace (Aligned to WEPs 2,3):
    • This award recognizes achievements that corporations have demonstrated in adopting relevant gender-inclusive measures in the workplace. This may include innovative approaches to equal recruitment, support to provide flexible work arrangements, addressing specific needs of female and male employees, transformational initiatives to support family responsibilities of female and male employees to address the unequal care burden, and accelerative actions to guarantee the safety and well-being of female and male employees, accelerating progress towards equal pay, and promote women’s career development and leadership.
  • Gender-responsive Marketplace (Aligned to WEPs 4,5):
    • This category recognizes corporations for embracing a gender-lens throughout their value-chains from sourcing to disposal. This may include championing supplier diversity, gender-inclusive distribution and selling and gender responsive marketing and advertising. It may include supporting women entrepreneurs through capacity development or market access opportunities, implementing progressive programs and/or policies to incentivize procurement from women-owned businesses or other gender-responsive companies. This category will also award actions and programs that promote gender equality and women’s empowerment in advertisements and other sales and marketing activities.
  • Community Engagement and Partnerships (Aligned to WEP 6):
    • This category recognizes corporate champions that promote gender equality through community engagement and partnerships. This engagement may include integrating gender equality into their sustainability strategies, CSR or philanthropy programs, and especially supporting and collaborating with NGOs, international organizations, or other organizations committed to promoting gender equality within wider communities. Beyond community engagement, this category will also award actions to promote transformational action or systemic change through partnerships. This can include individual companies participating in any advocacy or multi-stakeholder platforms to promote gender equality, such as the Unstereotype Alliance, or also Industry Associations, Chambers of Commerce, and Stock Exchanges working with others working to promote change within and industry or among a large group of companies.
  • Transparency and Reporting (Aligned to WEP 7):
    • Tracking performance and progress towards gender equality and women’s economic empowerment is a core value of the WEPs since it allows companies to uphold their commitments to gender equality in the workplace, marketplace, and community. This category recognizes commitment to transparency and reporting of gender data that goes beyond minimum requirements and seeks to measure, analyze and report on performance of their gender policies and practices across the value chain. The category will reward companies and organizations that have accountability frameworks in place and have set targets and consistently reported and taken steps to improve their performance on gender indicators (i.e. recruitment and retention, women in management). This category may also be awarded to companies conducting an audit and analysis of a particular gender-related issue, such as the gender pay gap, or also to companies committing to increase the number of gender indicators they publicly report on each year. In addition, this category may be highly relevant for Industry Associations and Stock Exchanges integrating more gender criteria into their sustainability and/or reporting criteria.
  • 2024 Highlighted Category: Innovative Financing for Gender Equality
    • Inspired by the 2024 International Women’s Day theme ‘Invest in Women: Accelerate Progress,’ this category seeks to showcase the pivotal role that private sector financing plays in advancing gender equality and women’s economic empowerment. This category will recognize financial institutions, investors, corporates, stock exchanges and others for exemplary and innovative efforts to design products and services, financial instruments, funds, investing frameworks and/or other innovative programs that advance gender equality. Examples of such efforts might include, among other things, issuing a gender bond, launching a gender-lens investing fund, leading the development of an innovative financing product and/or mechanism for women entrepreneurs, and developing tools or frameworks to accelerate and guide investments for gender equality. This category is not applicable to organizations that have only provided or facilitated financing for gender equality initiatives without substantial involvement in the design, implementation, and/or tracking of progress and results.

Special Recognition

• While organizations of any size or sector can be awarded, to recognize the valuable contributions of SMEs to the regional economy, three applicants from SMEs (smaller enterprises (< 200 employees)) across the 5 categories will be awarded as a WEPs Awards SME Champion.

Eligibility Criteria

• Businesses, companies and enterprises (private, public, state-owned, cooperatives and social enterprises), including subsidiaries of multinationals and/or their branches, industry associations, stock exchanges and chambers of commerce from the following countries are eligible to apply. *For the Leadership awards, they encourage all individuals to apply and will consider of all nationalities as long as the nominated individual has established residency in the country of nomination and/or is a citizen of one of the Asia-Pacific countries.
• The WEPs Awards is a public recognition from UN Women and aligned to UN Women’s corporate standards and due diligence. As such, awards cannot be granted to companies that produce or sell alcohol, tobacco, armaments, adult entertainment and gambling products. The majority of these companies are still eligible to become WEPs signatories, and they encourage all of them to make the commitment and showcase their efforts for gender equality through engagement with the WEPs community.

For more information, visit UN Women.