HYDERABAD: As is the case every year, big corporates might be going all out to celebrate International Women’s Day. However, a recent report called Telangana CSR Outlook Report 2018, released by NGOBOX, shows that when it comes to giving out Corporate Social Responsibility funds, women empowerment only got about 2% of the total chunk of Rs 5,618 crores spent in State by corporates.
The report had analysed 129 companies of Telangana during the financial year 2016-17 and found that merely 2% of the total CSR expenditure was for women empowerment related projects in Telangana. Majority of the fund, the report found, went for education related CSR projects with 49% of total CSR expenditure incurred for education. Keeping this in mind, the Department of IT is trying to bring the Women and Child welfare department closer to the Corporates’ CSR scheme on the occasion of International Women’s Day.
Experts note that this is a common problem seen for any women related project undertaken both by NGOs and government where CSR is sought as companies prefer to spend their money on something where their company can get a more tangible publicity. “Corporates usually do not invest alot on women related issues because one can’t see the gains in a tangible form.
They generally go for environment related, Education related, Healthcare related themes but very few specifically for women,” noted an expert from an NGOs. The trend remained same across the country with only 2% or 158 crores spent on women empowerment in Financial year 2017-18Other areas like Environment and healthcare projects got 17% and 7% share respectively, which has been noticed recently in terms of many corporates adopting lakes in the city.
IT department to change trends?
The State’s Department of Information Technology has been attempting to reverse these trends by bringing the corporates and Women and Child Welfare Department on the same page