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International Women's Day at Reckitt

We’re shining a light on SDG 5: Gender Equality.

08 Mar 20222 minute read

Today (Tuesday 8th March) is International Women's Day. This year, we’re recognising the great work the Women @ Reckitt Employee Resource Group (ERG) and allies have done.

It's International Women’s Day and we’re also shining a light on the World’s To Do List that’s working to highlight Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 5. Learn more about the campaign here.

worlds to do list

Keeping girls in school: how we’re working towards SDG 5: Gender Equality

Did you know that each week, there are nearly 4,500 new cases of HIV in South Africa, and a third of these are estimated to be young women aged 15–24?

In response, we’re scaling a sexual education programme empowering young women and girls in South Africa with improved access to sexual health services and safe sex.

Durex - along with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation - each pledged $5 million to The Global Fund in 2018, to support the ‘Keeping Girls in School’ programme in South Africa. This aims to reduce new HIV infections and teenage pregnancies, by improving access to reproductive health services and education.

The programme encourages girls to stay in school, through tutoring and homework support, peer education, reproductive health education, career fairs, and home visits. After three years, we’ve seen some amazing results:

  • Condoms distributed – 876,074
  • HIV tests provided – 129,866
  • People educated about HIV – 98,115

This has all meant that more girls have been able to stay in school and the burden of HIV and AIDS has been reduced.

You can take a look at more case studies in Our Social Impact Report 2021. And keep an eye out for our Gender Pay Report – which will be published next week.