This special issue uses feminist perspectives to explore the field of business and human rights (BHR). Gendered inequalities, based on embodied, assigned or presumed gender identities and sexual orientations, have long been eclipsed from international law; the same has occurred in BHR. Rarely is gender addressed holistically to fully encompass the systemic discrimination and deep-seated patriarchal and neo-colonial structures that create and perpetuate inequalities. The contributions in this special issue challenge both the absence of attention to gender in BHR as well as conventional approaches used to address gendered inequalities within BHR discourses and frameworks. Three recurring themes characterize the special issue: (1) bodies and embodiment; (2) women’s positionality in the marketplace; and (3) borderlessness. Collectively, the contributions proffer feminist approaches to BHR that embed gender justice as foundational, rather than an afterthought.

The female sexual and reproductive wellness industry is flourishing, valued at around US$4.5trn globally. Heavily focused on the female reproductive life cycle, products are marketed to women and girls from puberty through to the menopausal years, with medically unsubstantiated claims that can fail to deliver on promises made and leave damaging physical and psychological side-effects. In this article we ask: do the harms caused by the sexual and reproductive wellness industry fall within the boundaries of business and human rights (BHR) scholarship? We establish the landscape of the industry, identify human rights relating to sexual and reproductive healthcare and education, and use BHR literature to make the case that the industry should be placed on the BHR research agenda so that the various tools used in BHR such as the law, corporate governance, and the weight of public consciousness, can be applied to encourage appropriate regulation of this industry.

Many of those who dare to raise their voices in defence of human rights in response to abuses committed in connection to mega-projects are being repressed in the Americas. In this context, Indigenous women leaders face multiple forms of violence, including gender-based violence. The prevailing narrative of ‘progress’ and ‘development’ that accompanies mega-projects in the region often stands in stark contrast to their lived experiences, as Indigenous women human rights defenders frequently face silencing practices from companies, authorities and other groups including paramilitary forces. In this article, I contend that Indigenous women leaders have managed to overcome the silence that is being imposed on them. But what are silencing practices? What does gender-based violence mean in this context? How do Indigenous women leaders overcome silencing practices? The article responds to these questions by focusing on the Wayúu Women’s Force mobilization in Colombia and drawing on the emerging ‘braided action’ theoretical framework.

The 2013 collapse of the Rana Plaza in Bangladesh brought global visibility to the human rights abuses experienced by women workers in the garment sector. As the spotlight on this incident dims, the need to hold the fashion sector accountable remains. In this article, we suggest that greater accountability could be achieved through the application of a human rights-informed understanding of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to promote gender justice in the sector. By drawing on international women’s rights law and sustainable fashion, we demonstrate how sustainability and gender justice are intimately connected, and illustrate what role the SDGs can play in promoting sustainable outcomes that are gender-just. The article unpacks concepts such as sustainability, the circular economy, social responsibility, and ethical fashion, and places the experiences of women workers within this context. Its principal contribution is a set of six requirements to ensure a gender perspective to the fashion industry’s role in implementing the SDGs.

This paper analyses whether the implementation of business and human rights (BHR) frameworks in Colombia properly responds to the challenges posed by informal mining and gender-based violence and discrimination in the context of conflict and peacebuilding. The mining sector has been considered key in Colombia to promote economic growth, but it is also characterized by significant informality. Informal mining in Colombia has been linked to gender-based violence and discrimination. We contend that while informality has been identified as a substantial hurdle to the realization of human rights, BHR frameworks still fall short in addressing this aspect of business. By examining the specific measures Colombia has devised to implement BHR, including two National Action Plans on BHR, we demonstrate the urgency of addressing informal economies in BHR and to continue developing particular insights to properly protect, respect and remedy the human rights wrongs women experience in the context of informal mining.

Corporate-led women’s empowerment initiatives appear, in their proactiveness, to be a welcome addition to a range of measures addressing adverse human rights impacts by business. This article questions the claim that these projects significantly advance women’s rights. Instead, they can be understood as a manifestation of what Catherine Rottenberg terms ‘neoliberal feminism’ with women at risk of being transformed into ‘gender capital’ for business gain. This article rejects the claim that empowerment can only be delivered by encouraging women into market-based work. Instead, it is argued that the corporate responsibility to respect the human rights of women can better be supported by reorienting business away from its preoccupation with delivering value for shareholders, towards an approach that values women’s unpaid socially reproductive labour.

In this paper I use South Africa as a reference point to discuss the company as a juristic person and its relationship to natural persons through the concepts of subjectivity and personhood. I do this in an attempt to reveal that granting of juristic personality as ‘the company’ is not a neutral, organic or inevitable product of the law and economy but a construct symbiotically bound to the colonial state. Underlying this juristic personhood is colonial ideology which perpetuates racialized and gendered poverty and inequality as systemic oppression, in order to deliberately facilitate and maintain conditions of domination and exploitation. Rather than taking the conventional business and human rights starting point that accepts the corporate structure without critique, it is argued that by reorienting away from juristic personality as purportedly ‘neutral’ and reframing the construct, the powers of the company might be curtailed, thereby interrupting these continuing colonial logics.

Inspired by the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the international development community is driving digital ID programmes in low and middle income countries (LMICs) such as Kenya. Kenya has had experience with state-issued identity registration such as that proposed in digital ID programmes for over a century. Identity registration has gendered impacts, stemming from the historical exclusion of women in the system, lack of recognition of their contribution to new uses of the system, as well as lack of engagement with women regarding remedies. Digital ID risks continuing and exacerbating these injustices, as it is based on the existing system. This article uses the ‘protect, respect, remedy’ framework of the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights to analyse how decolonial approaches could be applied in digital ID to untangle it from colonial legacies, check the ever-increasing power of businesses involved in digital ID systems, and broaden intersectional understanding of human rights.

The business and human rights field and the international LGBTI human rights agenda have evolved almost entirely separately. The United Nations ‘Standards of Conduct for Business on Tackling Discrimination against LGBTI People’ (2017) is the primary effort to bridge this gap. Although drafted in a way that strongly aligns with the second pillar of the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights on corporate responsibility, the dissemination of the Standards has mainly been untethered from the human rights framework and system. This article identifies the need to reassert the human rights foundations of the Standards and leverage their existing momentum to set out a more robust research and policy agenda for meaningfully accounting for sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, and sex characteristics in business and human rights frameworks. To that end, the article sets out priority areas for greater attention from researchers, decision-makers and advocates.

Today’s children and youth1 are constantly exposed to a media deluge, fuelled by a globalized and ever-expanding media and information technology sector. The marketing and advertising industry has used this expansion in media platforms to more effectively target young consumers. Worldwide, 71 per cent of youth (aged 15–24 years) is online – the most connected age group – compared with 48 per cent of the total population, with regional variations.2 It is estimated that the amount spent globally on advertising targeting children in 2019 was US$4.3 billion – now one of the fastest-growing online audiences.3

Cross-border surrogacy is a global industry that offers intended parents options for family formation by providing foreign surrogate mothers remuneration, directly or via an intermediary, in excess of their actual out-of-pocket expenses. It is a multi-million-dollar business with no international regulation.1 In most countries, limited domestic regulation or oversight is in place. Many countries − such as Australia, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, Canada, Hong Kong and South Africa − only permit altruistic surrogacy, while Germany and France ban surrogacy entirely.2 Fully legalized commercial surrogacy is the model followed in some states in the United States of America (USA), as well as Georgia and Ukraine.3 This unregulated cross-border market has produced a lucrative business, with surrogacy arrangements growing by nearly 1,000 per cent between 2006 and 2010.4 The for-profit surrogacy sector has expanded and fertility not-for-profit organizations have also entered the market.5

The Kenyan flower industry is one of the largest in the world and it is estimated to contribute around one per cent to Kenya’s gross domestic product (GDP).1 According to the Kenya Flower Council (KFC), Kenya exports about 70 per cent of its cut flowers for sale on the European market.2 Women constitute around 65 to 75 per cent of the workforce in the Kenyan flower industry, performing unskilled and poorly paid jobs.3 Female floriculture workers in Kenya experience high rates of sexual harassment (SH) and other forms of workplace violence.4 SH is deeply rooted in power imbalances between the parties involved, which can impact on the ability of the victim to resist or expressly indicate that the conduct is unwelcome. Such power imbalance can threaten victims into silence, resulting in incidences going unreported.5 According to a study on gender, rights and participation in the cut flower industry in Kenya, SH is particularly prevalent among women who are supervised by male managers.6 It was found that the persistence of SH is related to the hierarchical employment structure of floriculture companies, coupled with the lack of female managerial staff, both of which also prevented women from reporting incidences of SH.

This piece uses the Doce River case (2015) to illustrate the gendered impacts of the failure of corporate human rights due diligence. We also ask the question: would the Gender Dimensions of the Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights1 (Gender Guidance) have made a difference to the way women were treated in preventive measures taken and in the application of redress mechanisms? Taking this specific case, we seek to illustrate the importance of integrating gender into international business and human rights (BHR) frameworks if women’s rights are to be protected and respected in the context of business activities.

It is well documented that the private military and security industry has the capacity to do great gendered harms to both those it encounters and those it employs.1 Significantly, it is also a sector where a variety of human rights-based approaches, instruments and mechanisms have emerged beyond the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs).2 The International Code of Conduct for Private Security Providers (ICoC) addresses gender, and sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV), and explicitly requires private military and security companies (PMSCs) to integrate a gender perspective in their practices.3 Through an examination of publicly available documents and policies required for PMSCs certified as complying with the ICoC, this piece evaluates whether PMSCs do in fact integrate a gender perspective into their human rights policies and grievance procedures (see Table 1).4 Our study of certified PMSCs demonstrates that despite increased attention to the potential for negative gender impacts in the sector, companies have not developed gender-responsive policies and procedures. It can be said, therefore, that gender is not addressed in any meaningful way by PMSCs. More specifically, we conclude that PMSCs have not yet shown the required holistic understanding of gendered impacts and barriers that is required to respect human rights, and that further efforts are needed in the sector.