Can soft drinks empower women?

Coca-Cola’s 5by20 Initiative: Celebrating Women Worldwide from The Coca-Cola Co.

Wonder women

Women are a powerful global economic force, but they are consistently undervalued. Coca-Cola wanted to do something to change that, so they’ve made a global commitment to enable the economic empowerment of five million female entrepreneurs by 2020. Through their 5by20 programme, they are focusing on small business owners in over 200 countries around the world – from fruit farmers to artisans – with the aim of helping women overcome the barriers they face when trying to succeed in the marketplace.

5 million

In 2010, Coca-Cola made a commitment to economically empower 5 million women by 2020 through its 5by20 initiative. Their programmes meet women where they are—in their communities, businesses and online—and provide enabling activities that include: business skills training, financial services and/or assets, and peer-to-peer mentoring networks. Across diverse geographies including developed and developing countries, 5by20 has supported the success of individual women and shown how gender-balanced entrepreneurship can increase economic resilience. To date, the initiative has empowered 3.2 million women in 92 countries.

Sari-Sari Success

Since 2011, Coca-Cola has supported women entrepreneurs in the Philippines who operate “sarisari stores”—micro-enterprise neighbourhood convenience stores. In fact, the Sari-Sari Store Training and Access to Resources (STAR) Program, which focuses on making the businesses more financially sustainable, has reached more than 150,000 women with 97% of the women stating that the training was useful for their overall business management. Coca-Cola is now using a similar approach for woman-owned stores in China, where they have a goal to empower 500,000 women by 2020.

This story shows how Coca-Cola supports Goal 5: Gender Equality, specifically Target 5.A: “Undertake reforms to give women equal rights to economic resources, as well as access to ownership and control over land and other forms of property, financial services, inheritance and natural resources, in accordance with national laws.”

About Coca-Cola

Founded in 1892, Coca-Cola Company is a manufacturer, retailer, and marketer of non-alcoholic beverage concentrates and syrups. They have over 60,000 employees and their products are available in more than 150 markets around the world.

Learn more about Coca-Cola.