Case Studies

Promoting Women’s Economic Empowerment: The Learning Journey of Tupperware Brands Corporation Company: Tupperware Brands Corporation

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Global Impact

Tupperware Corporation and later Tupperware Brands have replicated this model again and again, increasing sales while helping women learn skills, create networks, and share information. Since the early 1990s, there has been rapid expansion into developing countries where women often face steep educational and cultural barriers to employment.

In India alone, the company's 100 percent female sales force is more than 50,000 strong and growing. Local currency sales growth was 40 percent in the year ending 2008.

Asha Gupta, managing director for India, recalls that when they first started out in 1996, they often had to convince conservative husbands and in-laws to allow their wives and daughters-in-law to try this job. Today, it is easier. According to Asha, "There is a palpable societal change that we are engineering to empower women to become confident – by offering them financial independence, identity, exposure, and a secure future for them and their families."

Full-time consultants in India can expect to earn at least as much as a nurse or teacher. Some have become quite well off. Others prefer to work part-time. Each woman has the opportunity to attain "manager" status, with increased commission levels and an expectation that they will recruit, train, and motivate a new team.

Lakshmi Rajendra in Chennai, India Lakshmi Rajendra has been in business with Tupperware Brands for six years. Before Tupperware, she and her husband struggled financially, borrowing funds to send their daughter to an English-language school. "My monthly income was 600 rupees," she explains with emotion, "and with that money we could not educate our child." For Lakshmi, joining Tupperware "changed our lives. After that, I became confident for the first time. I did not know anything about Tupperware in the beginning but I still joined. I consider it to be the biggest achievement in my life. Now my daughter is an engineer. I paid her engineering school." Today, Lakshmi earns more than 20,000 rupees per month. She is a saleswoman, a manager, a motivator, and her own boss. Just as important as the income is the feeling of pride and recognition she gets from Tupperware and her family. She is a role model for her daughter. And she laughs when she tells that she has "even been able to go abroad because of Tupperware. None of my relatives have even boarded a plane!"

In South Africa, team leader Leah Modiane describes how she develops new managers. After promoting them out of her immediate group, she has special meetings where she teaches them how to complete paperwork and set targets. She challenges them to focus and rewards them when they do. "For the first month," she says, "I work closely with them to make sure they manage their unit effectively and ensure that they achieve set sales and recruitment levels. They earn money immediately. I've realized that this motivates them to work even harder to grow."

The impact on women extends beyond the improved circumstances and confidence of the sales consultants. A critical part of the "meaningful earning opportunity" that Tupperware Brands promotes is basic networking and information-sharing among women. This supports product sales but also gets to the heart of home and family matters.

Health, for example, is an important platform that Tupperware Brands addresses via product demonstrations, company meetings, and literature. Asha explains that in India, where the company's positioning message is "Wealth of Wellness," the teams are able to focus on many hygiene and nutrition matters, from water purification, to healthy microwave cooking and children's diet issues. In a way, she says, our "women have become de facto health and nutrition consultants sharing a powerful message that helps families live better …."

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