Wal-Mart to Help Women Around the World Post-Lawsuit

Wal-Mart may have gotten the class-action gender discrimination lawsuit filed against it dismissed by the Supreme Court, but it has decided to invest in a little insurance; billions of dollars worth of insurance.

The retailer has announced a women’s initiative that will include the purchase of $20 billion worth of product from women-owned companies over the next five years, training for female workers around the world, and millions in grants to nonprofits.

“The Wal-Mart public-relations machine is spinning overtime on this,” a Wall Street Strategies analyst told Bloomberg.

The Huffington Post is quick to point out that the women working at Wal-Mart here in the U.S. are still stuck in low-paying, low-level positions and that the promised training is for women in other countries working for suppliers rather than for the women working here. (Leslie Dach, EVP of corporate affairs for the company, recently said Walmart has realized that “the majority” of its associates are women.)

Even with the obvious reputation-building the company is trying to do, Wal-Mart and nonprofits benefiting women around the world applaud the effort as one that will help hundreds of thousands of women around the globe.

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