While I was reading Buying for Impact, I kept having a strong feeling that the very ground was shifting. This book is about something revolutionary in the gender domain. Recently, I heard John Priddy of Full Circle Exchange refer to the spontaneous alliance and focused attention that is going on behind the scenes of the global supply chain as “radical collaboration.” And when he said that, I suddenly “clicked.” That is the right term: radical collaboration.
Vazquez and Sherman describe the collaboration now occurring among some of the biggest companies in the world– Walmart, Goldman Sachs, IBM, ExxonMobil, Intel–and governments, NGOs, international agencies. The radical aspect is in the intent: to refocus the global supply chain to include women as vendors. This sounds so technical when you write it out, but the upshot will be an historic equalizing in the location of wealth, from a gender perspective. It is one of the most exciting things that has ever happened in women’s rights. And that makes Buying for Impact an important book.
It doesn’t read like Beauvoir. And the little diagrams are more like B-School than Betty Friedan. And they will never accept this in gender studies, even if they read it (which they won’t). But mark my words, there will be more change coming from this radical collaboration than from a month of marches.
My hat is off.
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