Increasing inclusion, opportunity and empowerment for women are global priorities at Mastercard. In December 2015, we set out to understand the depth and breadth of Mastercard’s work focused on women’s empowerment initiatives and gender balance. While we were engaged in a number of activities across the company focused on gender, there was a clear need for a single vision and strategy to effectively drive the agenda forward and create a bigger impact. 

We launched the Give Me 5 initiative in response to the United Nations' fifth Sustainable Development Goal to address the work that Mastercard is doing for gender equality. There are three pillars of the program:

• People – Creating a dynamic, engaged and balanced workplace globally
• Society – Driving an inclusive approach to business
• Markets – Bringing balance and equal access to products and solutions

Each pillar is led by a senior executive and our initiatives ladder up to the three pillars to ensure we are advancing gender equality in each of these critical areas.

Mastercard has been recognized by Gender Fair as a company that demonstrates real and substantial commitment to women’s equality as employees, consumers and citizens. Here are a few examples of our flagship programs:

• Girls4Tech™ - showcases our payments technology and engages our employees as role models and mentors — all with the goal to inspire a career in science, technology, engineering and math. Since the program’s launch in 2014, we’ve reached more than 22,000 girls in 16 countries.
• UN Women Partnership — 1.5 billion people around the world don’t have formal proof of identity, and most of those are women. Our partnership with UN Women will provide half a million Nigerian women with ID cards enabled with electronic payments functionality, advancing gender equality and women’s economic empowerment.
• 2Kuze — developed by the Mastercard Labs for Financial Inclusion in Nairobi, 2Kuze digitizes the agriculture supply chain and helps supports women farmers, who often have household duties that prevent them from leaving the farm gate and are more often subject to having to take whatever deal is given them from middlemen in the process.
• Women in Technology — This initiative aims to grow the pipeline of girls in STEM/technology fields, find women to join the Mastercard workforce, and keep inspiring and empowering women within their technology careers.
• Women’s Leadership Network — WLN is one of our nine business resource groups. It seeks to advance women’s careers and performance through a culture of mentoring and coaching. There are currently 2,000 members across 26 chapters.

Marisa Grimes