Let's simplify the sentence to make the interesting parts easier to see: "Unilever said that the change is part of its project, which started in order to help a problem." The relative pronoun in this sentence is "which." You use a relative pronoun to start a relative clause. In this case, the word "which" ties two sentences together. "Unilever said that the change is part of its project. The project started in order to help a problem." This makes it clear that "which" refers to "the project," and that it is acting as the subject of its clause. So I think the answer you are looking for is "Relative pronoun AS subject." If the relative pronoun were acting as the object of a sentence, it would be what the verb is acting upon. For instance: "I was sad when I thought of all the money which I had lost." The "which" here refers to "the money," which is the object of the sentence. "I had lost the money." So let's rewrite the original sentence so that the pronoun acts as the object of the sentence: "Unilever Japan said that the change is the first part of its "Lux Social Damage Care Project," which everyone viewed as a success." The two sentences here would be: "Unilever Japan said that the change is the first part of its 'Lux Social Damage Care Project.' Everyone viewed the 'Lux Social Damage Care Project' as a success." Notice that "which" in this case stands in for the direct object of the sentence. Hope this helps!

Thank you so much Bill! That makes total sense!

In sentence 1, "which" introduces the relative clause "which it started in order to stop gender-based prejudice". In this clause, "which" is the direct object of "started", and the subject of "started" is "it", which refers to Unilever Japan. In sentence 2, "which" introduces the relative clause "which started in order to help stop gender-based prejudice". As there is no other apparent subject in this clause, "which" must act as the subject of the verb "started". There is a small difference in meaning. In sentence 1, "which it started in order to..." explicitly states that Unilever Japan started the project. In sentence 2, "which started in order to..." explicitly states that the project started itself. However, as a project is not an animate being or a machine, it is impossible for it to start itself, in sentence 2 we have to guess who or what actually started the project. For this reason I think that sentence 1 is better than sentence 2. I can think of one change to sentence 2 that would make it a little better: use passive voice in the relative clause; "which was started in order to help stop gender-based prejudice". In this version, "which" is the patient subject of the passive voice verb "was started"; it means the same thing as active voice "which [someone or something] started", but [someone or something] is not stated explicitly. We still have to guess who or what actually started the project, but using passive voice makes it clear that the project did not start by itself.