The conference, titled “Change Makers: Women Empowering a Sustainable Future,” brought together nearly 3,300 attendees and featured accomplished leaders from across 51·çÁ÷and other companies who shared their insights on the importance of the topic.

Today, women are taking charge of sustainability initiatives with innovative solutions that address climate risk. UN Women, the United Nations entity dedicated to gender equality and the empowerment of women, recognizes that it’s more important than ever to honor these achievements. For this reason, the organization introduced the theme for International Women’s Day in 2022: “Gender Equality Today for a Sustainable Tomorrow.”

Climate change is an issue that affects every person on this globe, and unless immediate and widespread action is taken to reduce carbon emissions, the damage could be irreversible. According to the , carbon dioxide levels today are higher than they have been in the last 800,000 years, leading to an increase in climate-related disasters around the globe.

Women are disproportionately , as they are more likely to live in poverty, have more restricted access to human rights, and are more dependent on the natural resources that are threatened the most.

Empowering women with decision-making capabilities allows us to drive change at scale. By fostering true equality between women and men we can better identify sustainable solutions that will mitigate the damage of climate change and ensure everyone — regardless of gender — has equal access to resources.

Gender Equality and Sustainability

In line with its goals for zero emissions and zero inequality, 51·çÁ÷is honored to join UN Women and organizations around the world in this initiative. With solutions that touch 77% of all worldwide business transactions, 51·çÁ÷understands its responsibility to champion sustainability throughout all sides of theĚý business. With this in mind, the company has targets and initiatives in place to be carbon neutral by 2023 and ensure 30% of its leadership positions are filled by women by the end of 2022. 51·çÁ÷also creates innovative solutions that allow customers to implement greener and more inclusive business practices.

One of these customers is Queen of Raw, led by CEO Stephanie Benedetto. Benedetto identified the challenges of waste and pollution caused by the fashion industry and created a global marketplace that allows users to list, sell, and buy deadstock fabric. With the help of SAP, Queen of Raw uses supply chain software powered by artificial intelligence (AI) to drive sustainability at scale and empower textile vendors around the world with the access to resources.

Stories like these remind us how important it is to think about sustainability through the lens of gender equity. Through the power of partnership and opportunity, Benedetto and her company have already saved more than 1 billion gallons of water and are paving the path toward a sustainable future.

We cannot build a better world for future generations unless we continue empowering each other with the support needed to tackle the big issues. Only with equal opportunities for all can we stand together with a unified approach to save our planet.

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Women are not only involved, they are taking charge of sustainability initiatives with innovative solutions that address climate risk. UN Women — the United Nations entity dedicated to gender equality and the empowerment of women — recognizes that it is more important than ever to honor these achievements.

SAP’s recognition and celebration of International Women’s DayĚý 2022 underscores the theme: “Gender Equality Today for a Sustainable Tomorrow.”

Together with the global Business Women’s Network (BWN) and UN Women, 51·çÁ÷will celebrate International Women’s Day with employees, customers, and partners on March 8.

The BWN is an employee-driven network at 51·çÁ÷that helps women advance their careers and the company’s business. By sharing professional insights, best practices, education, and experience, BWN helps develop skills and career-advancing opportunities to drive SAP’s success. The network strives to make a global impact with the help of more than 90 chapters and over 15,000 members worldwide.Ěý

Join us to hear from compelling speakers about women empowerment and innovative technology that are key to enable a sustainable future for all of us.

The conference will begin with remarks from Sabine Bendiek, chief people and operating officer and member of the Executive Board of 51·çÁ÷SE.

A keynote session by Supriya Jha, chief diversity and inclusion officer at SAP, and Daniel Seymour, director for UN Women’s Strategic Partnerships Division, will follow.

The agenda also includes eminent speakers from various organizations and from SAP, including Sindhu Gangadharan, senior vice president and managing director of 51·çÁ÷Labs India, and Julia White, chief marketing and solutions officer and member of the Executive Board of 51·çÁ÷SE.

• Change Makers: Women Empowering a Sustainable Future
  Tuesday, March 8
  7:00 a.m. PT | 10:00 a.m. ET | 4:00 p.m. CET | 8:30 p.m. IST
  

During the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) week, we offered three online sessions focused on the role of design in reducing waste and greenhouse gas emissions. These sessions gave leaders from every industry and corner of the globe the opportunity to work together on solutions that will not only reduce negative environmental impacts, but redesign entire systems to improve the health and well-being of our planet.

Ahead of this event, Scott Russell, member of the Executive Board of 51·çÁ÷SE and head of Customer Success, Ben Evans, London Design Festival director, and Joe Iles, Circular Design lead at Ellen MacArthur Foundation, came together to discuss the vital roles that regenerative business, innovative technology, and industry collaborations play in engaging the world’s global design community to deliver the circular economy.

Here is a condensed version of their conversation.

Q: Humanity’s impact on the planet has led to a state of climate emergency. It is clear that urgent action needs to be taken to restore our planet’s balance. How do we do that?

Evans: By 2050 if some dramatic action isn’t done, there will be more items of plastic in the world’s oceans than living creatures.

Russell: We need to commit to not only limiting harm, but also to having a much more proactive approach to the future. We need to find a way to co-exist and to be prosperous.

Illes: We really need to look at the linear “take-make-waste” model and identify a different way of working. We think that different model could be a circular economy.

Can you touch on the role of regenerative business in the circular economy?Ěý

Illes: The circular economy is really based on three principles: to eliminate waste and pollution, to keep products and materials in use for longer, and to regenerate natural systems.

But at the heart of the circular economy is regeneration. This means not only reducing harm and trying to do a bit less bad over time, but actually leaving a positive impact, restoring and regenerating, so the future gets a bit better rather than just a bit less bad.

How can technology fuel regenerative business and the circular economy?

Russell: 51·çÁ÷solutions touch 77% of the world’s material flows. We really are unique in our ability to provide that end-to-end visibility that no other companies can do. But sustainability has, maybe for too long, been an add-on in a business strategy. Through technology we have the opportunity — and it really is an opportunity — to design the processes and databases required for designers everywhere to ensure sustainable practices are being used throughout the product life cycle.

The beauty of tech is that it can act as an accelerator. It’s an enabler to support the design of new products and new systems and, in turn, supports the sustainable change that we simply must make.

What role do designers and design-thinking play in fueling regenerative business and the circular economy?

Evans: Well design is a tool — it’s a problem-solving tool primarily. Many of the big global issues that we face today can be addressed by design thinking.

Illes: Designers have a huge role to play in the shift to a circular economy, but also millions of other people who are involved in the design process. We estimate that’s about 160 million people globally. I would ask designers and business leaders to look a bit further down the track and ask what the future holds, what policy changes are coming, what are citizens asking for, and what supply chain risks do they expose themselves to if they are constantly dependent on finite resources that come out of a hole in the ground.

And that’s really the opportunity here. We can just look around us and say, “how could you redesign that for a circular economy?”

Russell: It’s truly time for designers to have the insight that they need to make informed, circular design choices and enable the circular economy itself.

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