Day 1 | 7 June

Inclusive Entrepreneurship for Impact: The role of MSMEs in advancing business and human rights in the Asia-Pacific

14:30-16:00 ICT

Background

As sustainability and ESG have gained prominence as necessary frameworks for resilient and competitive business operations in the Asia-Pacific, the past five years have also seen accelerated commitments from the private sector in the Asia-Pacific to take action on gender equality and women’s empowerment. From 2019-2023, the number of companies in the region becoming signatories to the UN Women and UN Global Compact Women’s Empowerment Principles (WEPs) grew from just below 600 to more than 1,600. In other words, more companies joined in four years than in the previous nine year since the WEPs was established in 2010. However, as stated in UN Women’s 2022 Trends and Opportunities to advance Gender Equality in Business in Asia and the Pacific report, more work is needed to translate commitments into intentional and measurable actions to deliver on gender equality.

While larger corporations and multi-nationals often have dedicated resources and capacity to develop and implement policies and practices to implement for example the Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and advancing other frameworks such as the Women’s Empowerment Principles (WEPs), businesses of all size and sector have a role to play. With overall commitment to the WEPs growing, the number of MSMEs signing on has equally increased. Micro, small and medium sized enterprises (companies with 200 or fewer employees) now account for more than 50% of WEPs Signatories in the Asia-Pacific.

MSMEs form the backbone of the Asia-Pacific economy, accounting for 96% of all businesses and two out of three private sector jobs in the region. They are crucial to create a responsible and inclusive economy.

Approximately 60% of MSMEs are owned by women, but the majority are informal microenterprises and struggle to scale up or survive due to gender-specific challenges in accessing finance, technology, business skills and training. Women’s businesses also struggle to access markets needed for business growth and expansion. This is due to a combination of factors, such as their smaller size, position within value and supply chains, and prevailing gender inequalities such as lower access to and proficiency in technology, unconscious bias among investors and limited networking opportunities.  

Coordinated, multi-stakeholder action and resources are needed to support women-owned/led MSMEs and unlock their potential to drive inclusive growth. Beyond targeted support to women-owned/led MSMEs, there is also a need to support MSMEs more widely to become inclusive enterprises that advance gender-responsive business conduct and see themselves as responsible parties and contributors to inclusive growth and development to deliver on the SDGs. Alongside the G20 India ‘High Level taskfore to strengthen Gender-Diverse MSMEs in APAC’ was set up and identified 3 key priorities that need to be addressed: ‘Access to Finance and Markets, Digital Inclusion and Transformation and Climate Risk and Adaption. This taskforce is embracing a multi-stakeholder approach to look at these systemic issues.

Larger corporates across industries have a role to play here, for example they can support by increasing action on implementing the WEPs, especially WEPs Principle 5: Enterprise development, supply chain and marketing practices. One particular action is to diversify their supply chains through initiatives like gender-responsive procurement (GRP), defined as “The sustainable selection of services, goods, or civil works that considers the impact on gender equality and women’s empowerment.” GRP promotes the principles of buying from women-owned/led businesses (WOBs) to enable their equitable access to markets and buying from gender-responsive enterprises (GREs) in order to create more gender-responsive value chains.

About the session

Supporting women-owned/led, gender-diverse and inclusive businesses to access finance, markets, networks and technical assistance, as well as promoting gender-responsive conduct among the wider MSME landscape, is vital to creating an overall inclusive entrepreneurship ecosystem. This session will bring together social enterprises and impact businesses, corporates, investors, and key ecosystem players, inclusive of corporates, investors and others to share insights on the challenges, opportunities and benefits on creating an enabling environment for an inclusive and diverse economy and positioning MSMEs as equal players in advancing the Business and Human Rights agenda through inclusive entrepreneurship and gender-responsive business conduct. The session will share best practices and leave participants with clear recommendations and next steps on what’s needed to support diverse MSMEs to deliver on this potential.

Objectives

This multi-stakeholder session will bring together entrepreneurs, investors, corporates, and international organizations with the following objectives: 

Build an understanding and raise awareness about the importance of gender-inclusive entrepreneurship for delivering on the Business and Human Rights Agenda 
Gather insights into the challenges and barriers that especially women-owned/led MSMEs face and the support they need to grow
Raise awareness of what’s needed and what mechanisms currently exist to increase financing for women-owned/led MSMEs
Share examples and best practices of gender-inclusive entrepreneurship for impact

Questions

Panelists will reflect on the following questions in relation to the Asia-Pacific region:

What role can impact enterprises, women-owned/led and gender-inclusive MSMEs play in advancing the Business and Human Rights agenda and accelerating sustainable economic growth?
What role do corporates play in advancing / supporting diverse MSMEs?
What needs to be done to drive more capital into the hands of especially women-owned and-led, gender-inclusive and other impact enterprises?

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Speakers

Amy Baum

Amy is a Consultant on Women’s Economic Empowerment with the UN Women Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific. Since joining the UN Women in 2019, she has developed action briefs to guide gender-responsive private sector response strategies to COVID-19, supported the development and implementation of innovative, market-based approaches to transforming the care economy, and provided technical guidance on private sector engagement to UN Women Country Office teams around the region. She also leads the regional UN Women Asia-Pacific WEPs Awards process. Amy holds a BA in Socio-cultural Anthropology from the University of Virginia and an MA in Development Studies from the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) at Sussex University in the UK.

Mackenzie King

MacKenzie King is the Asia-Pacific Regional Coordinator for Impact Hub, a locally rooted and globally connected network of over 25,000 impact makers, driving societal change in 109 locations across 65 countries. Prior to this position she worked at the Sasin School of Management’s Sustainability & Entrepreneurship Center, driving private sector innovation and engagement. She is a strategic advisor for OurLand Thailand, a conservation & environmental education social enterprise and WE-Can, a national women entrepreneurship technical and peer support initiative. MacKenzie also serves on the TIFI team (Thailand Investing for Impact), the task force bringing the Global Steering Group on Impact Investment to Thailand.

Gaurav Mehta

Gaurav Mehta is the Founder and CEO of Dharma Life. Dharma Life is a social enterprise working to improve the quality of life in rural India through a women entrepreneurship model that provides low-income households and individuals at the last mile with livelihoods, awareness and access to socially impactful products and services. Since 2009, DL has created 17,000+ DLEs (more than 70% women) and has impacted 14m+ beneficiaries across 50’000 villages in 14 states of India through its interventions, which are aligned to the UN SDGs with a focus on the four areas: energy access and climate change, gender equality, health & hygiene, and livelihood & digital education. Previously, Gaurav spent three years in the private equity space at General Atlantic, a large growth capital investment firm (until 2008). He focused his efforts on opportunities in the consumer and media, and healthcare sectors across Europe. He also initiated and led General Atlantic’s clean energy efforts in Europe. Prior to General Atlantic, he has worked at Morgan Stanley in London in the investment banking division, where he specialized in European capital products and healthcare investment banking. Gaurav graduated with a BA Hons degree in International Business Studies and French from the European Business School, London. He also has an MBA from London Business School. 

Nirri Shah

Nirri is Good Return's CAFE Program Manager and leads their flagship Financial Capability Program in the Asia Pacific region, including Cambodia, Nepal, PNG, Tonga, Solomon Islands, Fiji, and the Philippines. Good Return is focused on ending poverty through sustainable change, via inclusive finance and capacity building programs. Prior to working for Good Return, Nirri spent over a decade working in Management Consulting at various global consulting firms. She is passionate about Gender Equality and was an Executive Board Member of the United Nations Association of Australia, where she implemented various community initiatives to progress Sustainable Development Goal 5. Nirri has a double Degree in International Economics and Commerce, and a Post Graduate Diploma in Psychology.

Net Supatravanij

Net Supatravanij is the Co-founder of ila. She is passionate about using innovative business models to tackle gender inequalities. With ila's app ALLY, she 

Jittirat Tantasirin

Jittirat Tantasirin is a pro-active Chief Executive Office of Benz Talingchan Co., ltd, a leading authorized Mercedes-Benz dealer and service center since 1988, and ATTA Autohaus Co., ltd, the first automotive digital space in Thailand.

With strong intention to lift up automotive industry to the next level, my vision and mission is to be a change leader, creates leaders and innovative solutions accordingly to sustainable lifestyle for a better living tomorrow, committed to innovation and sustainability and leadership by strengthening a diversity-responsive policy; genderless recruitment, gender-balanced participation, performance-based promotion, customized welfare and benefits, to support new talents regardless of genders, ages, races, and backgrounds, optimizing their potentials with diverse skills trainings to innovate and building diversity and inclusive culture.

Having been in a luxury automotive industry from generation to generation, the opportunities to interact with variety of female leaders within the industry, clients, suppliers, and workforces has inspired me to initiate a community to connect women together and building a trust space for all to share expertise, experiences, and become an inspirational community of women to support each other growth.

United Nations Responsible Business and Human Rights Forum, Asia-Pacific