How a digital tool can help companies to conduct gender responsive human rights due diligence

Per, for those who have never heard of SheDil, can you tell us a bit about the tool?
SheDil is made up of the words “she” and “diligence” and refers to women and due diligence. SheDil is a web-based self-assessment tool designed for companies to conduct gender responsive human rights due diligence, with specific guidance for the agricultural, extractive, and garment and footwear sectors. SheDil is based on the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) Due Diligence Guidance for Responsible Business Conduct and the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGP).

Who is behind SheDil?
SheDil is developed by FOKUS – Forum for Women and Development, in collaboration and consultation with companies, civil society and public entities. The development of SheDil was supported by the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and has been endorsed by the OECD and FAO in their recent guidance on integration of the gender dimensions into human rights due diligence in agricultural supply chains.

Why is it important to include gender in corporate due diligence?
An increasing number of countries and national/international companies acknowledge that protection of women’s rights and gender equality are essential parts of delivering on the sustainable development goals (SDGs), in particular SDG 5 on gender equality and SDG 8 on decent work for all. We know that while working for gender equality and women’s rights is the right thing to do, it is also profitable for companies. SheDil is an efficient tool for companies’ efforts to integrate women’s rights and gender equality into their due diligence processes.

Why do companies often ignore gender-related risks?
A main reason is that the methods are not designed to assess the gender dimensions. Though women’s human rights are no different from men’s, the risk of being violated as a woman is higher. And the impact of rights being breached is often different. 71% of modern slaves are women, 50 countries lack legislation against gender-based discrimination, and 65 countries lack legislation against sexual harassment. What is more, women are not a homogenous group, and the discrimination and challenges they face often take on intersectional forms, depending on characteristics such as ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity, religion, caste, whether one is able bodied or not, age, etc.

What are the business risks of neglecting the gender dimension?
There are several reasons why ignoring gender-specific human rights pose risks for businesses. Negative impacts or rumors about them create unrest, can disrupt and delay operations, alert ethical investors and lead to lost business opportunities. Uncovered negative impacts can also damage reputations with consumers and customers, business relationships, affected communities, investors, governments, and potential workers. In addition, corporate responsibility to respect human rights is increasingly being incorporated into national laws and treaties.

Why are existing due diligence methodologies often insufficient when it comes to gender?
While the UNGP and OECD Guidance are absolutely crucial, both instruments provide a general methodology rather than detailing specific human rights risks for women workers and stakeholders. Non-discrimination and gender issues are explicitly mentioned in the UNGPs, still the only specific gender-related issue raised is gender-based and sexual violence. Therefore, it is unlikely that even a thorough human rights due diligence process would identify and prevent and mitigate gender-specific human rights risk. These risks can be particularly complex because they can result from multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination and rely heavily on context-specific conditions. In fact, the UNGP draws attention to the “different risks” and “specific challenges” that women face and encourages that guidance, such as the type that SheDil provides, “indicates expected outcomes and helps share best practices” so that companies can more effectively consider gender issues.

How does SheDil help companies go further with gender due diligence?
SheDil helps companies to get into the “nuts and bolts” of the gender dimension of a human rights due diligence by providing tasks and key checkpoints for each step (embed; assess; integrate and act; track, and communicate) of the process, tailored for the different business relationships (directly employed; suppliers and subcontractors, agents, recruiters, and facilitators; and external stakeholders). The garment and footwear sector has a total of 70 indicators. SheDil also draws attention to sector-specific risks, such as the extremely vulnerable and insecure situation of the large number of female homeworkers working informally in the supply chains, in the garment/textiles sector. The design of SheDil allows the user to take a full-fledged or a more narrow approach through selecting the desired indicators at the different levels of a SheDil exercise.

Who is SheDil aimed at?
SheDil is designed for companies and has specific guidance for the agricultural, extractive, and garment and footwear sectors. However, any company in any sector can benefit from using SheDil to safeguard women and girls’ human rights in their operations. SheDil ca also be a useful tool for NGOs and other actors in assessing how specific companies, or sectors, are addressing the gender dimension of business operations.

How is the SheDil tool structured?
SheDil is formatted as a structured checklist, the tool offers a number of key check points under the different tasks. The goal is to make companies and users acknowledge, be aware, and understand the issues at stake. Moreover, SheDil challenges companies on what to do about these issues. It offers practical guidance through four different business relations: (1) directly employed, (2) suppliers, (3) agents and recruiters, and (4) external stakeholders. Moreover, the tool uses OECD’s five due diligence steps: (1) embed responsible business conduct into policies and management systems, (2) identify and assess adverse impacts in operations, supply chains and business relationships, (3) integrate and act to cease, prevent or mitigate adverse impacts, (4) track implementation and results, and (5) communicate how impacts are addressed. The pilot version of SheDil, launched in June 2020, is available free of charge at shedil.org.

Which companies in the garment sector are already using SheDil?
Yes! In May of this year, we launched The SheDil Index Report, which included an analysis of five companies that operate in the garment/textiles sector in Norway. We found that the garment/textiles sector performed strongest of the seven sectors (the other sectors were construction, finance, food/agriculture, extractives/energy, marine, and maritime) in its supply chain operations but the weakest of all sectors for its own operations. This reflects the rather well-known fact that human rights risks are higher in the supply chain than within the company. It also shows that the garment sector have put more efforts into improvement in the supply chain than compared to the other sectors. However, it also leaves a challenge to garment and textiles companies to ensure that the rights for their women employees are properly secured, starting with establishing clear, concrete commitments and policies on issues like employment and wage discrimination, short-time contracts and equal opportunities.

What feedback have you received so far from companies?
We asked one of the major Norwegian textile company to test the final version of SheDil prior to launching the tool . “This really made me want to work more on women’s rights”, said a key staff at the company after having worked their way through SheDil. They had two main take aways from the exercise; update policy documents, CoCs and purchasing contracts with relevant gender clauses, and secondly to identify and start using another tool specifically tailored to collect sex-disaggregated data at garment factories. The collection of such data is a cross-cutting recommendation in SheDil.

Per N. Bondevik holds a Master’s degree in Economics and started working on what was then framed as CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) in 2007. He has been part of the movement towards today’s legislation on human rights due diligence, as an advocate and lobbyist as well as in developing tools and guidance for business. Per was the Managing director of Ethical Trade Norway for a number of years, in which the garment industry was a key sector, before joining FOKUS in 2020. He is a firm believer that the courage to talk about the realities on the ground, the commitment to constantly work for improvements, and collaboration are the essential elements to make textile production beneficial for all, including factory workers, homeworkers and their communities.