“Gender equality is at the core of our country’s national policy. Promoting equal employment for women is conducive to promoting women's participation in social and economic activities, in turn, enhancing social productivity and economic vitality. The Party and the government attach great importance to this. Laws and regulations in China such as the Labor Law, the Employment Promotion Act, and other laws aimed to protect women’s right and interests,clearly specify women’s equal rights and put in place regulations to combat gender discrimination in employment.”

Over 60 guests joined the seminar – “Exploring International Business Opportunities” – which gathered together key toy industry stakeholders including industry association presidents, representatives brands and retailers, as well as senior factory management for multi-stakeholder dialogue.

In order to allow time for Chinese New Year 2018 celebrations, the Ethical Toy Program will instruct our accredited firms to not conduct audits between February 1st 2018 through March 4th 2018 (1 week prior to and 2 weeks after Chinese New Year).

In November 2018, we added further checklist requirements on responsible recruitment to support the implementation of the EPP, introduced as part of wider updates and enhancements to our program. Developed with input from the Institute for Human Rights and Business and other stakeholders, these checkpoints require factories to establish effective recruitment policies and procedures to ensure that no fees are charged to any factory workers – whether recruited directly or via a labor broker. Procedures must also include provisions for handling and remediation of any violations of the policy where workers have paid unauthorized fees in their recruitment process through brokers or agents.

Every child has the right to grow up loved and cared for by their parents. But what if they can’t? An estimated 15 million migrant workers in China – many of whom are factory workers – have left their children behind and only see them once a year. Many others have no choice but to leave their children in dorm rooms during the summer holidays while they work or take them to the factory floor.

“Inequality abounds in schools, workplaces, in government and beyond…if we do not capture the energy and creativity of women we cannot achieve the full potential of our economies and societies,” said Michelle Yeoh, award-winning actress and UN Development Programme (UNDP) Goodwill Ambassador during the Responsible Business Forum in Singapore in 2016.

Vietnam is an emerging center for toy production; the country is home to the largest community of Ethical Toy Program certified factories outside of China.

IETP is co-hosting a seminar with Shenzhen Toy Industry Association for toy, children & baby products and souvenir manufacturers who are interested in expanding to Vietnam, detail of the seminar please refer to the Chinese page.

Ethical Toy Program audits can only be conducted by either accredited auditors from our approved panel of audit firms or authorized Ethical Toy Program staff members. Our panel of approved audit firms includes ELEVATE, SCSA, SGS and UL.

We are working with these companies and, the companies who will exit our panel, to ensure a smooth transition, with no disruption to any of our members. We expect this transition process to take six months. It will involve on-boarding 3 new firms to the panel and the exiting of 2 firms.

To help factories respond to these challenges, IETP organized a free seminar in November 2019 which introduced the idea of lean manufacturing to over 100 participants. Lean manufacturing is a systematic approach to minimizing waste in the production process. Through using tools to plan and execute production, factories can minimize defects and eliminate waste which will increase the productivity and efficiency of a production line, leading to increased profit and competitiveness of a factory.