Amsterdam, 9 August 2022 - IDA Foundation has recently joined the UN Women's Empowerment Principles (WEPs), strengthening our commitment and progress to gender equality. The WEPs are a shared initiative of UN Global Compact (of which IDA Foundation has been a participant since 2018) and UN Women. The WEPs are a set of principles offering organisations guidance on how to promote gender equality and female representation in the workplace, marketplace and community. They are seen as a supporting tool for the gender equality dimensions of the Sustainable Development Goals (e.g. SDG5 and SDG8), which IDA Foundation has also aligned its strategy with.

Target gender equality programme

To emphasise this commitment and roll out actions to support gender equality within IDA and its network, we are also joining the 6-month Target Gender Equality Accelerator programme. This follows IDA’s recent participation in UN Global Compact’s Netherlands network ‘SDG Ambition Accelerator programme’, which supported our environmental sustainability strategy, for example by initiating the ISO14001 certification process.

To realise further progress in our gender equality / diversity and inclusion strategy, two additional team members are participating in the upcoming UNGC ‘Target Gender Equality programme’ starting this month. The programme lasts six months and touches upon different subjects and topics related to gender equality, giving us the right tools and measurements to further improve gender equality at IDA.

Diversity & inclusion at IDA

Recognising that the communities we serve and our people are diverse, in recent years we have prioritised the topic of gender equality and Diversity and Inclusion both within our strategy as well as in our offices. With a gender division of 58% female and 42% male staff members and female representation within our management team, there is a balance in our team. However, we realise that gender equality and diversity and inclusion goes far beyond that. Our focus in the coming period is on defining our policy and setting key milestones to be achieved in this area. 

Prioritising products for women and girls

Gender equality is also an important factor to be considered in global health. In shaping our product portfolio, we have focused on giving extra attention to reproductive-, maternal- newborn-, and child health (RMNCH), to ensure that girls and women worldwide have access to products such as contraceptives, female hygiene products and pregnancy supplements. These products are essential for them to live healthy lives and can take away barriers that would otherwise prevent them from having the same opportunities and chances that boys and men have. Find these products on our RMNCH page.

If you want to read more about our approach to sustainability, find our sustainability reports here.