MAS Holdings doubles empowerment commitment in the midst of COVID-19

MAS Holdings, the largest and leading design-to-delivery apparel solutions provider in South Asia, has renewed its commitment to empower more of its employees by extending its original undertaking to provide health and well-being education and services focusing on sexual and reproductive health; and awareness on gender-based violence, to its employees and the communities adjacent to their manufacturing locations.  

Having surpassed the target of 10,000 beneficiaries since its commitment in June 2019, MAS doubled its commitment to reach 20,000 beneficiaries by the original 2021 timeline. The company formalised their new commitment at the virtual parallel event of the 75th session of the UN General Assembly co-hosted by the World Benchmarking Alliance (WBA) and the Universal Access Project of the UN Foundation (UNF), the company said in a media release. 

MAS Holdings was one of 11 trailblazing global companies that committed to improving the health and well-being of its workers and community members around the world in 2019 through the UNF’s Universal Access Project and its Private Sector Action for Women’s Health and Empowerment Initiative. The company outlined bold, measurable and time-bound plans to empower its employees through highly focused programmes anchored to its globally acclaimed hallmark women’s empowerment platform, ‘Women Go Beyond’ (WGB) in alignment with SDGs 3 and 5, among others. 

With women making up 70 per cent of the company’s 99,000 global workforce, MAS identified a fundamental requirement to support and empower its female employees early in its operation. Stand-alone initiatives that helped women, soon started showing results and began to scale into larger, long-term programmes. 

“We are proud to announce the expansion of our commitment to the UNF’s Universal Access Project and its Private Sector Action for Women’s Health and Empowerment.,” Deputy General Manager of
Women’s Empowerment, Advocacy and Code of Conduct, Thanuja Jayawardene said during the virtual event. “Gender equality is a core value for us as an organisation and we have an expansive framework to drive this agenda, focusing on economic, social and personal empowerment. We see health, well-being and freedom from gender-based violence as basic requirements, to developing female leaders for our businesses and our communities. This is a journey and we have a long way to go, implementing meaningful change.”