20 companies combatting gender inequality
2022-03-07
Confido
8 minutes
International Women’s Day is coming up which means women are celebrating being recognised for all they have accomplished. Of course, this shouldn’t just happen one day a year, but it is the perfect opportunity to raise awareness about gender inequality and the continued empowerment of women and girls.
Across the world, those who identify as female face numerous threats to their equality. The UN found that the COVID pandemic intensified all threats against women including violence, child marriage, and workforce opportunities and it will have lasting effects on female empowerment in the future.
Here are 20 companies combatting gender inequality...
Violence against women
During the pandemic, violence against women increased both domestically and outside the home. To put some figures to it, 1 in 3 women (736 million) have been subjected to physical and/or sexual violence at least once in their lifetime since the age of 15.
These organisations were created to provide protection and opportunities for women to escape persecution.
About: WalkSafe believe that everybody has the right to feel safe, wherever they are and in any situation. Through their app you can access maps that show police and WalkSafe community reports of dangers such as knife crime, sexual assault and mugging. Other features include TapSafe, which immediately connects you to loved ones through your phone, and HomeSafe which automatically alerts loved ones if you fail to get home on time.
Location: Cheshire, UK
Company size: 1 to 10 employees
Funding: The team have recently secured £300k investment with Fearless Adventures. Read more on that, here
About: AVA (Against Violence and Abuse) is a charity working to end gender-based violence. They work with survivors of abuse and provide them with support, and they use their network to ensure survivors’ voices are heard. They also work in violence prevention with the next generation and participate in research to better understand how to prevent gender-based violence and support those enduring it.
Location: London, UK
Company size: 11 - 50 employees
Funding: Unknown
About: Women’s Aid is a grassroots organisation that provides lifesaving resources to women and children experiencing domestic abuse. They provide resources for survivors as well as a community where they can find support. Women’s Aid works to raise awareness about domestic abuse to the public in order to create a future without it.
Location: Bristol, UK
Company size: 101-250 employees
Funding: Unknown
About: The FreeFrom team is made up of queer, trans, im/migrant, and BIPOC survivors. We envision a world in which all survivors are able to build the wealth and financial security necessary to support their individual, intergenerational, and community healing—enabling them to thrive.
Location: Los Angeles, CA, USA
Company size: 1-10 employees
Funding: FreeFrom has raised a total of $150k in funding from one round. This was a Grant round raised in July 2020.
About: Encouraging Her is a social enterprise that focuses on empowering women that have survived domestic abuse. Their initiatives are an intervention strategy aimed at remediating survivors’ lives. They work with local authorities, women’s refuges and a range of other organisations to provide a unique set of services, which are designed to arm our women with tools and strategies required to rebuild their lives within their communities.
Location: London, UK
Company size: 1 to 10 employees
Funding: Unknown
Child Marriage
While child marriage is often thought of as an issue only present in developing countries, it is a persistent threat regardless of a country's development. This includes in the UK, due to a legal loophole enabling 16-17-year-olds to marry with parental consent. The UN predicts that due to the pandemic the 100 million girls projected to be child brides in the next decade could increase up to 110 million.
About: Karma Nirvana is working to get legislation passed that will close the loophole being used across the UK to enter girls into child marriages. They recognise that legal marriages are not the only danger underage girls face, but cultural and religious ones as well. They are calling upon parliament to ensure that any and all forms of child marriage, or the aiding of child marriage is punishable.
Location: Leeds, UK
Company size: 11-50 employees
Funding: Unknown
About: Girls Not Brides reaches around the world with over 1,500 organisation partners all with the same purpose: to end child marriages. Organisations of all sizes work together, sharing their information and are connected with funding, media contacts and more to drive their missions forward. They also have partners that work on national and state levels to create responses to child marriage issues.
Location: London, UK
Company size: 11-50 employees
Funding: Unknown
About: FORWARD works with local authorities, traditional leaders, and national and community-based organisations in Sub-Sahara Africa to develop programmes and initiatives focused on supporting child brides and changing attitudes about child marriages. This includes a network of child brides where they can find support and safe spaces to grow and become advocates for change.
Location: London, UK
Company size: 11 - 50 employees
Funding: Unknown
About: IKWRO provides support and advice to women living in the UK facing honour-based abuse, including child marriages. Their support includes training so women and girls know their rights, advocacy and counselling services, plus refuge service to provide safe accommodation. Through their campaigns, they’re trying to raise awareness in order to improve laws and protect women and girls from abuse.
Location: London, UK
Company size: 11-50 employees
Funding: Unknown
About: Plan International is working to end the robbing of girls’ childhoods and their lives. They work in communities where child marriages happen to educate girls on their rights as well as educate families and communities about the risks of child marriage. Their support creates safe places where girls’ voices are heard and find ways to protect them from child marriages including staying in school.
Location: Surrey, BC, Canada
Company size: 5,001-10,000 employees
Funding: Unknown
Education inequality
When girls and women get the education they deserve, they gain access to better opportunities. This also gives them the tools to help empower those around them, too. Across the globe, girls' educations are put at risk for socio-economic and political reasons including cost, family needs, and child marriage. The Malala Fund found that 20 million girls in developing countries may never return to school after their education was disrupted by COVID 19.
About: Camfed believes that the way to create a better future in Africa is by educating girls. They work in impoverished areas in rural Sub-Sahara Africa and partner with schools to not only get girls into class, but keep them there where they can become leaders and changemakers, and give them the power to create the future they imagine.
Location: Cambridge, UK
Company size: 51-100 employees
Funding: Unknown
About: Wonder Foundation believes that through education, women's and girls’ lives can be transformed. They work with local partners to empower women and girls with education including training for high-quality jobs as well as mentorship to help them reach their full potential.
Location: London, UK
Company size: 11 - 50 employees
Funding: Unknown
About: The Malala Fund knows that girls’ education is an investment not only for them, but the world. Efforts to improve access to education for girls has been a slow climb in their eyes and they want to accelerate it. The Malala Fund creates a network of activists and educators and supports them and their efforts for a more impactful investment.
Location: Washington, DC, USA
Company size: 11-50 employees
Funding: Unknown
About: Action Aid is fighting to turn the 40% of countries that don’t give girls equal education into 0%. They run girls’ clubs in schools and community centres to provide girls with a space to learn about their right to education, talk about issues and find community through their experiences. At these clubs, girls are empowered to become leaders and stand up for themselves and their futures.
Location: Chard, UK
Company size: 501-1,000 employees
Funding: Unknown
About: dressCode was founded with the aim to close the gender gap in Computing Science. The team are building a network of dressCode clubs in schools with an aim to bridge the gap between education and industry and create opportunities for young girls to see the opportunities in tech.
Location: Edinburgh, Scotland
Company size: 1 to 10 employees
Funding: Unknown
Workplace inequality
Prior to the pandemic progress was being made towards equality for women in the workplace. However, due to ‘The pandemic’s gender effect’, one in four women are considering leaving the workforce or downshifting their careers versus one in five men. Despite companies’ efforts to support employees during the crisis, women are feeling more exhausted, burned out, and under pressure than men are, too.
About: ENTITY Academy are on a mission to close the gender pay gap by training, mentoring, and placing women in 21st-century careers. They are motivated by the fundamental belief that women have infinite potential and that background or opportunity gaps should not be barriers to future success.
Location: USA
Company size: 11 to 50 employees
Funding: ENTITY has raised a total of $103.1m in funding over four rounds. Their latest funding was raised in Oct 2021 from a Corporate Round.
About: Culture Shift believes in a world where everyone is safe, happy, and supported at work. They are working towards this by making it easy to report harassment of all kinds at work. Their platform not only makes this process easier, but provides further support for the victims, plus insight for organisations so they have the information needed to make impactful changes.
Location: Stockport, UK
Company size: 1-10 employees
Funding: Culture Shift has raised a total of £2.9m in funding over two rounds.
About: Smart Works wants every woman to be confident when they have a job interview. They know that physical appearance plays a big role in landing jobs, but also in people’s self-confidence. Smart Works has centres across the UK where women are not only given a high-quality interview outfit to keep followed by a one-on-one interview coaching session. Women leave Smart Works with the tools to shine in interviews and afterwards a capsule wardrobe to continue working confidently.
Location: London, UK
Company size: 1-10 employees
Funding: Unknown
About: The focus of Birdsong is ‘dress in protest’. Not only do they make ethical and sustainable clothes in protest of the treatment of women in fast-fashion production, but they are committed to caring for the people that work for them by hiring women struggling with employment barriers and by paying a living wage.
Location: Richmond, UK
Company size: 1-10 employees
Funding: As of their last Seed round in Nov 2016, Birdsong has raised a total of £113.9k in funding over two rounds.
About: You Make It focuses on the professional and personal development of young women. They give young women access to tools, mentoring, training, and a network to aid their growth and empowerment. Through their program, young women get the professional support they need to find employment, pursue entrepreneurship, or continue their studies in higher education.
Location: London, UK
Company size: 11 - 50 employees
Funding: Unknown
We want to do everything we can to help support these fantastic businesses and the work they’re doing to combat gender inequality.
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