“A girl’s wealth increases nine percent for every year she stays in school,” said Carolyn Miles, President and CEO of Save the Children, summing up the business case that’s increasingly helping convince companies to focus on programs that support the financial and social empowerment of women and girls around the world.

Miles was the keynote speaker at the Forum on Corporate Social Responsibility and Women run by Working Mother Media. She introduced the conference’s recurring theme: Companies want to do good in the world, and are finding more ways to do it that may also improve their own bottom lines. Attendees from companies including Kraft, GE, Intel and Walmart talked about how their own efforts are aimed at both helping disadvantaged women and also earning the loyalty of potential customers.

Corporations and nonprofits – including Save the Children, the Foundation for Social Change, GBCHealth and Action Against Hunger – are developing partnerships to more effectively address women’s empowerment issues through initiatives that focus on health, nutrition, clean water and education: Miles detailed a project Save the Children worked on with Procter & Gamble brands Always and Tampax to provide usable restrooms – and, in particular, separate facilities for girls and boys – in schools in Ethiopia, South Africa and Nepal, so that girls would be able to attend comfortably even when they’re menstruating. Before the restrooms were provided, many girls missed a week of school every month or quit altogether to avoid the stigma associated with their periods.

The girls who stay in school and improve their economic situation now will be in a better position to buy Procter & Gamble products in the future, so the project meets the goals of both the nonprofit and the corporation: “Women in developing countries make up the biggest emerging market,” Miles said.

The forum ended with a call for best practices and for more public/private/nonprofit partnerships that can be scaled large enough to make a global difference. The willingness of companies to work for social change and of nonprofits to accept that their corporate partners will consider the earning potential of projects means that everyone can increasingly work to their own strengths – together – to improve the lives of women and girls around the world.