Gender Equality and Responsible Business: Expanding CSR Horizons is a journey into some of the less obvious reaches of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and gender equality. Grosser, McCarthy and Kilgour, the editors of the book, have assembled an intriguing and novel set of contributions spanning industries, settings and questions not often addressed in more mainstream CSR and gender research. The book is split into three sections. Section one is concerned with pushing the theoretical boundaries of the field, section two affords insights into the experiences of companies, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and consultancies who work with CSR, and section three highlights case studies that contribute to new and novel directions in the field of CSR and gender equality.
The opening essay by Laura J Spence is a thoughtful view of the gender roles and challenges that are pervasive across the academic CSR community, as she reflects on the challenges new entrants to the academic profession experience both in terms of research, service and teaching. She highlights the two competing views of CSR that prevail in the literature – CSR as strategic and a potential source of competitive advantage, versus the morally imbued view, promoting egalitarian ideals around justice, equality, ethics and opportunity – and offers her own views as to how to balance the need to engage with both of these elements as professional scholars in the field of CSR, and more broadly as a senior female scholar. She offers as a conclusion that women remain under-represented across academia and argues that bias prevails in a way that leaves women with less of a voice than their male counterparts.
Busch, Chee and Harvey’s chapter on corporate responsibility and gender in digital games is good example of the unusual insights offered by this book. The chapter touches on the lack of female professional game designers, online sexist abuse of gamers, and the backlash a documentary maker who sought to document the way women were portrayed in video games experienced. The chapter looks to the history of the gaming culture for clues as to its continued masculine culture, and makes the case that the toxic culture is a CSR issue that gaming companies must take seriously. It offers some views on potential areas of intervention, and shows how one company came to invest heavily in diversity following a derisive battle with online gaming groups who sought to silence women in the industry.
Prügl’s chapter on CSR and neoliberalization of feminism addresses three specific facets of this debate: the empowerment of women through paid work, the business case for gender parity, and the governance dimension of gender equality. She offers key insights across these issues, including an intriguing view as to the potential negative consequence of well-meaning corporate projects designed to empower women, but which instead can undermine equality.
Cervi’s chapter on assisted reproductive technologies juxtapositions feminism, female corporality and business responsibility in the context of governance of fertility treatments in the UK. The chapter touches on the role of power between corporations operating in the fertility space, women’s identity and motherhood and highlights the absence of women’s voices in an industry deeply entwined with women’s corporality and identity. She concludes that a feminist perspective on these challenges would afford a more complete view than the one that is currently peddled by science and society.
Harwin’s chapter on the work to raise the profile, awareness and fundraising around domestic violence starts off section two of the book. This chapter charts the struggles related to raising charitable funds for domestic violence victims. Women’s Aid, the charity set up to help women who are victims of domestic violence, is the subject of the chapter, which provides a compelling account of the charity’s early struggles to raise funding in the face of the taboo of domestic violence, and how it began to make the combating of domestic violence a societal responsibility, which led to corporate engagement. The chapter notes the challenges and opportunities that lie at the intersection of corporate partnership and not-for-profit collaborations, which are important to learn from as corporate involvement in not-for-profit causes proliferates.
Commercial sex is the subject of Holgersson and Thögersen’s chapter, which addresses the topic of commercial sex and corporate responsibility. The authors outline a compelling case for why private firms should include guidelines and corporate rules against the purchase of any form of sexual services by its employees, both at home and abroad. Citing a survey which identified that many Swedish men who buy sexual services do so whilst on business trips, Holgersson and Thögersen argue that making engagement with sex services and sexual entertainment explicitly forbidden for a firm’s employees will contribute to a better working environment, help combat prostitution and uphold human rights.
Alexa Roscoe’s chapter looks at female emancipation at the bottom of the pyramid, and discusses how commercial enterprise targeted at women who often work in fragmented sectors and in uncertain industries can contribute to breaking patriarchal cultures, empower women and improve incomes for both women and business.
Oxfam’s campaign to change the problems associated with gender quality in the agricultural supply chain is the topic of chapter 8, which is written by Erinch Sahan of Oxfam. The chapter shows how Oxfam sought to create a ‘race to the top’ through a combination of corporate means and public engagement, in an effort to have major brands use their influence with suppliers to change the conditions for women in their supply chains. Noting some important improvements, Sahan acknowledges that firms still have a long way to go in ensuring gender equality across supply chains, and she offers some key ways in which firms can engage to improve on their track record for gender equality.
Saravaiya and Eweje address the relationship between CSR and human resource management (HRM) in chapter 9, where they draw on interviews with CSR and HRM managers. They argue that CRM and HRM can collectively help engender equality and diversity in the workplace, in particular by engaging in ethical or discretionary responsibilities that extend employee welfare and gender equality beyond the legislative requirement, and which embed CSR responsibilities in HRM practices.
The third and final section of the book provides a selection of case studies covering Fair Trade initiatives by firms such as the Body Shop International, child labour in the leather sector in India and Pakistan and Coca Cola, and female micro-entrepreneurship. Butler and Hoskyns in their chapter on The Body Shop International discuss the issue of pricing of unpaid labour. The chapter recounts how the unpaid work of rural women in Nicaragua came to be included in the pricing structure of sesame, and the added pay for unpaid work would benefit the women in question. The results of the project were mixed, with some notable advantages to women but also some challenges. Delaney, Burchielli and Tate delve into the CSR implications of homeworking in chapter 11. Homeworking here is defined as piecemeal work undertaken at the homes of labourers, often women and sometimes by children. Many firms deny the use of homeworkers in their supply chains, and little has been done to address the precarious conditions of the many women and children who undertake labour at home, although the authors acknowledge greater response by firms when faced with evidence of child labour across their supply chains. The authors note that firms when responding to the issue of homeworking in their supply chain either reject homeworkers or re-organize the work; however, both responses cause challenges for the women and children affected, and do not address the systematic inequalities underlying homeworking. Finally, Tornhill in chapter 12 draws on ethnographic research of women micro-entrepreneurs who were part of Coca Cola’s 5by20 initiative, which aims to get 5 million women engaged as micro-entrepreneurs in marginalized communities by 2020. Her narrative of interviews with women who had been enrolled in training programmes under the 5by20 banner, only to receive a certificate of completion, whether they had successfully completed or not, and then been left with no further support or engagement, provides a powerful insight into the competing objectives, expectations and views of what female emancipation means in marginalized communities.
Through the varied settings of CSR and gender equality presented in this book, Grosser, McCarthy and Kilgour and the contributors to the book lift the lid on CSR and gender equality challenges, questions, paradoxes and opportunities of our time. As such, this is a timely contribution to current debates on the roles and positions of women, feminism and equality, as well as CSR and accountable business practices.
