Evermos won a prestigious award for its commitment to gender equality, namely the UN Women 2022 Indonesia Women Empowerment Principles (WEP's) Award for the Transparency & Reporting category. Through the implementation of an accountable framework to improve gender indicators, this Bandung-based social commerce managed to achieve the first position previously held by a leading unicorn. After a curation process for at least 100 candidate companies, startups, and SMEs from various cities in Indonesia, this award was given in person in Jakarta in early November 2022.
Risa E. Rustam, Director of Finance & Human Resource Indonesia Stock Exchange as an independent jury alongside experts of women empowerment said during the announcement of the winners of the UN Women 2022 Indonesia WEPs Award, "The Transparency and Reporting category aims to appreciate the commitment to transparency and reporting of gender data to continuously measure, analyze, and report on the performance of gender equality policies and practices throughout the company's value chain." The award, which is endorsed by the European Union, is held to promote good gender equality practices as a model.
GhufronMustaqim, CEO and Co-Founder Evermos, said in an interview, "Evermos was born with a vision to facilitate entrepreneurship and make it more inclusive. Therefore, women's empowerment is an inseparable part of Evermos from day one. We have established a dedicated communication line to continue to promote Evermos' women empowerment program throughout the company's ecosystem."
Evermos drives women's empowerment throughout its ecosystem starting from within the company
Seventy-three percent (73%) of Evermos' 500,000 resellers are women who live outside big cities and mostly are housewives. They strive to earn additional income for their family without neglecting their roles as mothers, wives, and sisters at home. Known as the number 1 social commerce in Indonesia, Evermos provides comprehensive end-to-end assistance and support for them to be able to sell professionally.
On the other hand, local brands and SMEs need support from a sales network that can reach areas outside the big cities to grow their businesses. At the same time, consumers outside big cities also find it difficult to get quality and affordable goods. This is the situation that prompted more than 1,000 brands, almost half of which are led by women, to join Evermos.
In order to create these impacts, Evermos starts its spirit of empowerment from within the company. "Evermos strives to set an example of how we support gender equality. We hope we can be an inspiration to other stakeholders in our ecosystem to do the same and even better," said Ghufron.
Evermos organized several internal programs, including seminars, training, flexible working arrangements including for mothers, as well as the #MelangkahBersama (Moving Forward Together) movement which ensures a supportive and safe work environment, especially from intimidation, discrimination, and harassment. On the last Mother's Day, Evermos invited psychologist to share insights about the things that a mother goes through. This initiative attracted hundreds of participants from within the company and unexpectedly including a number of men who joined in to better understand women.
Strengthening commitment to gender equality by establishing a special team and winning various awards
On end of 2021, Evermos became a signatory to the WEPs of UN Women and established a cross-departmental team for women empowerment. This team has the purpose of confirming the objectives and increasing the monitoring and transparency of the women empowerment program carried out by the company for the internal scope. In addition, this team is tasked with designing reports on the women's empowerment program in Evermos that has been running so far and in the future.
The Evermos women empowerment team also implemented tools from WEPs, namely the Gender Gap Analysis Tools (GGAT), designed for assessing the performance of gender equality implementation in four areas: leadership, workplace, marketplace, and community. During the first quarter of 2022, Evermos successfully improved the structure, communication, and commitment of each department in the company, and managed to increase its GGAT score by 34% to reach 51% in the second quarter.
Thanks to the fully-committed women empowerment team, all women empowerment programs at Evermos are better documented. As a result, Evermos already won two other prestigious gender equality awards this year. The first award received by Evermos was the 3G Championship Award 2022 from the Cambridge International Financial Advisory in Dubai for the category of Women Empowerment, and the second one was the Transformational Business Awards 2022 from the world-renowned media outlet Financial Times in a collaboration with World Bank Group member, the International Finance Corporation, for the category of Gender-lens Finance.
"This award is a proof that Evermos' efforts to empower Indonesian women have gone one step further in building an increasingly inclusive prosperity. Our goal is to have a wider impact. There are around 30 million female entrepreneurs that we can support, so this is the first step," concluded Ghufron.
