The latest news on workplace equality and gender lens investment
After more than a year of living in a global pandemic, the race to be vaccinated has exposed the fragility of recovery. While some countries are striving forwards, for example the UK’s quick vaccine roll-out, other countries like India are heading back to lockdown.
For gender equality, the situation is equally precarious. We have seen some improvements in business practice over the last year, for example more flexible working. However, we have also seen women shouldering the majority of housework and homeschooling – many being pushed out of the workforce in the process – and women making up the majority of frontline workers, for example, with nearly 80% of health workers in the US being women, and 83% working in childcare and emergency services being women, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. The pandemic shows us that progress towards equality can never be taken for granted.
This is part of the reason why collecting and monitoring data is so important at Equileap. Every year, we launch a Global Gender Equality report, analysing close to 4,000 companies and ranking the top 100. The results are very interesting. Some companies have become star players, other previous winners have fallen down the ranking. This is because gender equality does not exist in a vacuum and should not be seen as such. It is a reflection of changing regulations, company leadership, economic circumstances, politics, as well as society’s evolving views.
The positive news is the rest of the financial industry seems to agree we are onto something. The European Union has recently launched new legislation imposing sustainability-related transparency to financial participants and financial products, including disclosing the gender pay gap and the gender diversity of boardrooms. And we have also seen a growing interest for social and gender equality data in the past months. We feel increasingly confident that the social ‘S’ in ESG will finally get the spotlight it deserves this year.
EU Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation presents new ESG opportunity
As of the 10th of March, new EU rules require fund managers to disclose ESG risks alongside financial ones in a bid to drive more transparency for investors. A few years ago, so-called “ESG integration” was relegated to sustainable fund managers. Now, everyone is required to provide the same data on 14 indicators, which helps institutional and retail investors to pick the right fund and exposes the laggards in the industry. Excitingly, two of the core indicators are related to gender equality at work - the gender pay gap and the gender diversity of the board. Equileap monitors these gender related SFDR indicators and will make the data points available to investors in the second half of the year.
Equileap launches its yearly Gender Equality Global Report
Equileap is proud to launch its fourth annual 2021 Gender Equality Global Report & Ranking, which ranks the top 100 companies around the world that are leading the way in terms of gender equality. The research examined close to 4,000 companies, across 23 markets and 19 in-depth criteria, including gender representation at all levels of the workforce, anti-sexual harassment policies and pay equity.
While there were clear top performers – for example, Norwegian Bank DNB claimed the top spot with a score of 74% – the report also discovered systemic problems. Despite the #MeToo movement, only five out of 10 companies globally publish an anti-sexual harassment policy, and only 15 companies have closed their gender pay gap.
There are also surprises in the report. Even though DNB Bank grabbed the number one spot, the financial sector’s average gender equality score is just 35%.
We have seen more evidence that regulation works. Two years after Spain passed new laws to foster gender equality at work, the country is now the second highest performing in our rankings. Our research found 82% of Spanish companies publish gender-segregated pay information, and 73% have an anti-sexual harassment policy.
World’s largest asset owner invests billions in gender equality
Japan’s Government Pension Investment Fund (GPIF) has given ESG a massive boost by selecting a new gender equality-focused Morningstar index, developed in collaboration with Equileap, for its equity investments.
The Morningstar Developed Markets ex-Japan Gender Diversity Index tracks mid and large cap companies according to 19 gender equality criteria, including equal pay, gender representation, diversity in the company’s supply chain and flexible working policies. Companies that trigger Equileap’s so-called “alarm bell”, for example if it had been sued for sexual harassment, are excluded from the index.
GPIF is the world’s largest asset manager with around USD 1.5 trillion in assets. It has started to invest USD 3 billion in the ESG-focused index of Morningstar and Equileap.
In the spotlight: CIBC
In this year’s global report, we found that the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC) is the best performing company in Canada for gender equality, ranking 19th, with a score of 67%. This is a notable improvement from our research in 2019, which found CIBC in 57th place in the top 100 world rankings and a score of 60% overall.
What makes CIBC stand out?
CIBC is one of two Canadian companies to achieve gender balance at both the board and executive levels, and one of seven Canadian companies to achieve gender balance at three out of four levels.
The company publishes a living wage policy, a policy for flexible work hours and locations, and gender-segregated pay information, as well as a strategy to close the gender pay gap.
The Bank incorporates all of Equileap’s recommended policies, including a supplier diversity programme that promotes women-owned businesses and an anti-sexual harassment policy.
The company is a signatory to the United Nations Women’s Empowerment Principles.
Get comfortable being uncomfortable and design transparency into your workplace are some of the top tips for male leaders today - including advice from Diana van Maasdijk.
Women make up 52% of those furloughed in Wales at the end of January. The news is off the back of an Office for National Statistics report that shows women across the UK have been “disproportionately impacted” by repeated lockdowns.
Joe Biden is calling to tackle structural inequalities such as race and gender discrimination and excessive employer power in the labour market. He says economic growth alone will not dismantle these inequalities.
This op-ed author, Sanda Ojiambo, the CEO and executive director of UN Global Impact, argues that economic policies in areas such as Hawaii, Canada, Argentina and West Africa that specifically help women in the post-pandemic recovery should be the norm rather than the exception.