International Women’s Day – March 8

The empowerment of women and girls is an important and powerful theme at Difrax. For this reason, we warmly support the Free a Girl Foundation. They free underage girls from prostitution, help these girls reintegrate into society, work to prevent prostitution, and defend women's rights.

To help the Free a Girl Foundation, together with Dutch celebrities, Difrax has designed a couple of collections of Limited Edition pacifiers. For every pacifier sold, Difrax donates €1 to the Free a Girl Foundation. The foundation receives an annual donation from Difrax, too.

Difrax has also actively supported the Free A Girl Foundation in other ways. Several times, our CEO, Vivienne, has taken part in the ‘Lock Me Up – Free a Girl’ campaign, where she allowed herself to be locked up for 12 hours in a small room (1 by 2meters) somewhere public, like in a well-known restaurant. The goal of this campaign is to collect donations and draw attention to the prostitution of millions of girls worldwide. In India, for instance, underage girls are exploited day in and day out in small, mouldy rooms no bigger than 1 by 2 meters.

Difrax also makes an annual donation to Oxfam Novib. Through the ‘Ondernemers voor Ondernemers’ (Entrepreneurs for Entrepreneurs) program, Oxfam Novib builds the empowerment of women by granting them microcredit. With these loans, women can work on building a future for themselves.

Equal rights for women is very important to Difrax. Women are well-represented at every level of our company. Almost two-thirds of the employees in our factories are women and more than half of our management positions are held by women. Difrax also makes sure that their working conditions are good. The Difrax team in the Netherlands is also predominantly female—no less than 85% are women!

Vivienne van Eijkelenborg—awarded Businesswoman of the Year in 2016—is personally committed to supporting female entrepreneurship. By creating awareness and coaching female entrepreneurs, she strives to contribute to this cause.