Women's Empowerment Principles Award Launched

The Women's Empowerment Principles (WEPs) Award has been officially launched under the framework of the Women's Economic Empowerment program in Asia (WeEmpowerAsia) in Hanoi.

The award is designed to encourage and recognize the efforts of companies that have programs and actions to create corporate culture toward gender equality and women's empowerment; to raise awareness and attract more and more companies to apply the Women's Empowerment Principles in their businesses.

WeEmpowerAsia is a joint program between the United Nations Agency on Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women) and the European Union (EU). The Vietnam Women Entrepreneurs Council under Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI) is currently the national partner of UN Women in implementing this program in Vietnam.

One of WeEmpowerAsia's core activities is to mobilize companies to commit and implement the Women's Empowerment Principles, developed by UN Women and UN Global Compact (UN Global Compact Network) and kicked off in 2010. This is a set of seven principles to support businesses in achieving gender equality in the workplace, in the market and in the community.

The First WEPs Award in the Asia-Pacific region is organized by UN Women WeEmpowerAsia on the 10th anniversary of the Women's Empowerment Principles, the 25th anniversary of the implementation of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action and aims to promote the implementation of the Law on Gender Equality in the business community through the application of WEPs.

There are five categories of the award including: Leadership commitment; Gender equality in the workplace; Gender equality in the market; Gender equality through community and industry participation; Gender equality through action in the COVID-19 pandemic.

According to the organizers, the participants of the award are all businesses in the Asia-Pacific region, regardless of size or industry, having good programs and practices to promote gender equality; meeting one or more of the award categories and having a (current or former) CEO who signed or intends to sign a declaration in support of the WEPs.

The organizers start to receive entry for the awards from August 26, 2020 at the website www.asiapacificwepsawards.org to September 25, 2020.

The domestic award ceremony will take place in seven member countries of the UN Women WeEmpowerAsia program scheduled for November 2020. Vietnam's award ceremony is expected for mid-November, 2020 in Hanoi. The regional award ceremony will take place online on December 10, 2020.

L.A (Vietnam Business Forum)