'Focus on private sector: female suppliers drive profits', 28 Jul 2015:…UN Global Compact and UN Women announced that 1,000 companies…have signed up to their Women’s empowerment principles…[which] require businesses to take steps to advance gender equality throughout their operations…Principle 5…includes a commitment for companies to source supplies from women-owned businesses…[R]esearch suggests that integration into global supply chains is vital to economic growth in the global South…[a]nd such growth will benefit women…Second, focusing on women-owned suppliers rewards women as asset-owners…[which] is critical because women’s lack of assets is a key source of global gender inequality...[However] [w]omen-owned companies can face barriers to…finance…may lack…formal accounting expertise to comply with multinationals’ auditing systems and...a marketing presence, making them hard to find. This calls for companies committed to supply diversity to invest in developing women-owned supply chains…For example…Exxon-Mobil’s philanthropic foundation has trained Nigerian women who want to join global supply chains…