Equileap, an organization set up to accelerate progress towards gender equality at work, is issuing the first cross-sector ranking showing for the first time how well the world’s top public companies, across all sectors and countries perform on gender equality.
It is part of a new tool-kit designed to cut the 118 years; it is estimated it will take for equality to be achieved at present rates of change. This includes:
- The 2017 Gender Equality: Global Report and Ranking. Presenting the Top 200 companies, key findings on gender equality, as well as detailed insights per country and per sector.
- The Family of Equileap Gender Equality Indices (Global, US and Europe) designed to track best-performing companies in terms of gender equality. These indices will be used both as benchmarks and underlyings of various financial products.
Headlines From 2017 Gender Equality: Global Report & Banking
- The Top 5 countries are Norway, Sweden, the Netherlands, Finland and the UK. They have a higher percentage of companies making it to the Top 200 (respectively 58%, 38%, 35%, 33% and 28%). In comparison, only 2% of US companies make it to the Top 200
- The Top 3 sectors are Communications – 11% of the companies in this sector make it to the Top 200, followed by Financial and Utilities, where 9% of the companies in each sector make it to the Top 200
- Only 6 companies in the Top 200 report having no gender pay gap (of less than or equal to 3% in their country of incorporation. They are L’Oreal (Fr), Transurban Group (AU), Adobe Systems (US), Deutsche Boerse (DE), Origin Energy (AU) AND Enbridge (CA)
- 4 out of 5 companies in the Top 200 report offering paid maternity/primary care leave and two thirds of companies report offering paid paternity/secondary carer leave. Most of these companies are in Europe. Fewer than 5 of the 30 US companies in the Top 200 report offering both paid maternity and paternity leave
- The top 200 companies report having an average of 20% women executives to 80% man compared to 10% women and 90% men in the remaining 2848 companies in the database
Equileap’s Research and Report means that:
- Companies can find out for the first time where they stand within their sector/country and how to improve their performance and take greater advantage of the ‘gender dividend’
- Private and institutional investors can target top companies in the ranking to diversify their investment portfolios – making a difference and a return
- Female and male employees can make more informed choices about companies value gender equality
- Governments and other public institutions have a new tool to screen companies they use as suppliers for gender diversity
Diana van Maasdijk, Co-founder, Equileap said, “Gender diversity is not only the right thing to do, it is the smart thing to do with a significant number of research papers indicating that it tends to lead to higher returns and lower risk. The newly-launched Equileap tool kit will help companies as well as employees, investors, government and civil society to make decisions supported by in depth analysis.”
Jacki Zehner, Former Partner – Goldman Sachs, Chief Engagement Officer, Women Moving Millions, mentioned, “There is increasing demand for products that enable investors to align their investment capital around their values for gender equality. Equileap’s Gender Equality Ranking and indices mark an important step forward in the field of gender lens investing.”
Linianne Ploumen, Minister for Foreign Trade and Development Cooperation, the Netherlands, said, “Gender Equality is a vital part of Dutch foreign policy. As part of this commitment, we have supported Equileap from the start. We believe it has an important role to play in bringing together companies, investors and governments to speed up the achievement of equality in the workplace and reduce poverty.”
Prof. Paul Smeets, Maastricht University, added, “Social impact investing is slowly but surely gaining foothold in the financial world. The Sustainable Finance Group of Maastricht University, School of Business and Economics is proud to partner with Equileap in this unique research to help investors navigate the world of ethical investing.”
The organization investigated over 3000 publicly listed companies in 23 countries across all sectors and ranked them based on 19 criteria covering leadership, career development, work life balance, equal pay, family leave as well as health and safety. This unique database was built in collaboration with the Sustainable Finance Group at Maastricht University and the ranking methodology was inspired by the United Nations Women’s Empowerment Principles.
Research papers
- Mickensy Global Institute report. The power of parity (September 2015), $28 trillion (28%) could be added to global annual GDP by 2025 if full gender equality is achieved in the workforce
- Peterson Institute for International Economics: Is Gender Diversity Profitable? (February 2016). The results suggest that the presence of women in corporate leadership positions may improve firm performance significantly. The impact is greatest for female executive shares, followed by female board shares: the presence of female CEO has no noticeable effect. This pattern underscores the importance of creating a pipeline of female mangers and not simply getting women to the very top.
- World Economic Forum: The Global Gender Gap Report (2006-2015). Annual pay for women only equals the amount men were earning ten years ago, despite an additional quarter of a billion women entering the global workforce 2006. The global gender gap across health, education, economic opportunity and politics has closed by only 4% in the past ten years, with the economic gap closing by just 3% suggesting it will take another 118 years to close this gap completely.
About Equileap
Equileap is an organization aiming to accelerate progress towards gender equality in the workspace, using the power of investments, grants and knowledge. Headquartered in Amsterdam and London, the organization is led by Diana van Maasdijk, Co-founder and Executive Director and Jo Andrews, Co-founder and Director of Social Impact.
Download the full global report and ranking
