Welcome to the seventh issue of our Chinese Responsible Investment Overseas Newsletter. This newsletter aims to serve as a platform for updates, insights, and tools on key topics relating to social and environmental impacts of Chinese overseas investments, and as a resource to promote peer-learning and informed decision-making. This issue casts the spotlight on the gender-responsive approach.

You can also view our previous issues on Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) Disclosure, Responsible Land Use, Management and Investment, Conflict-affected and High-Risks Areas, Myanmar, Responsible Mining, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), and Free, Prior & Informed Consent (FPIC). To sign up for future newsletters, please click here. To suggest materials for future issues and our website, please contact Lowell Chow on [email protected].

Incorporating Gender-responsive approach in responsible business practice

The UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights alone have not been enough to fully bring about a discussion on business and state responsibilities to prevent and redress gender-based discrimination. However, after nearly a decade’s practice in implementing the Guiding Principles in the form of laws, regulation, policies, plans, code of conducts, etc., both the human rights and corporate circles have gradually reached a consensus: Business must go beyond minimum standards to respect human rights, and consider ways in which they might use their influence to facilitate human rights guarantees by identifying, confronting and helping to dismantle structural forms of inequality. The recent progress in this field includes a new Gender Guidance (A/HRC/41/43) of the UN Working Group on Business and Human Rights, as well as the ILO Convention on Violence and Harassment in the World of Work.

However, a gender perspective is still missing against the backdrop of “China going out.” This is despite the Joint Communique of the second Belt and Road Forum being committed to the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, and fulfilling international responsibilities on human rights, including on gender. There are very few policies and initiatives relating to Chinese overseas investment that try to address environmental, social and governance issues with a gender dimension, and little research drawing on the gender impacts of China’s expanding globalization. The report by the British Council and UK Aid on “Improving Gender Equality through China’s Belt and Road Initiative” shows gaps in Chinese policies, and provides concrete recommendations for China’s government and companies to ‘mainstream’ gender in its foreign aid and investment.

We thank Harpreet Kaur, Business and Human Rights Specialist at UNDP, and our colleague Huang Zhong for contributing guest blogs for this issue. Harpreet introduces the key concepts of the newly released Gender Guidance led by Professor Surya Deva, Member of the UN Working Group on Business and Human Rights, and how investors and businesses can incorporate a gender-responsive approach using this document. Based on her field research, Huang Zhong shows positive examples of the emerging good practices of Chinese companies overseas in promoting gender equality and inclusion in the workplace and in communities. Companies can only unleash this huge potential by tackling systemic challenges and bridging the current gaps if they can take more proactive actions.