A Time for Action and Ambition: How Business Leaders Can Lead the Way Towards Gender Equality

Earlier this week, the 30% Club and UN Foundation co-hosted a CEO briefing about the Generation Equality Forum (GEF) with an audience that was likely the biggest ever single meeting for business leaders about gender equality.

Their interest could not be more timely. The GEF, convened by UN Women and co-hosted by the governments of France and Mexico, is just a few weeks away, and offers a once-in-a-decade opportunity to accelerate progress for women and girls through multi-sector investments, actions, and partnerships. The private sector’s leadership – in Paris at the end of June and beyond – is essential.

I was joined by Melinda French Gates and Diageo Chief Executive Ivan Menezes – both admired and committed champions for gender equality.

Melinda encouraged the audience to carefully consider their role in improving outcomes for not only the women they employ but also their customers and women in their broader communities.

Ivan, one of the 30% Club’s strongest supporters and among its most active members lives and breathes diversity as a key business priority.

In fact, Diageo has done much to progress gender quality, from introducing paid parental leave and tracking how many men actually take it to investing in women in STEM and supporting female farmers in Africa who are a vital part of company’s the supply chain. Ivan said that committing to diversity gives Diageo a competitive advantage, leading to greater innovation and better decision-making.

We were also delighted to hear from Bloomberg’s Peter Grauer, Deloitte’s Sharon Thorne, Barclays Europe’s Francesco Ceccato, Mastercard’s Michael Miebach, and Vidya Shah from the EdelGive Foundation. They gave us a flavour of how their different organisations are working to bring about gender equality, with comments about the need for greater collaboration between companies but also government and civil society.

Of course, there’s a long way to go to achieving gender equality. An audience poll revealed 47% of attendees reported women accounted for less than 30% of their executive committees. 

Here are the eight themes that emerged from discussion…

What does success look like?

Think about five years from now. What would we have done on our way to gender equality? Will we have more women in positions of power and influence? Can we take down the barriers to progress in companies? Get the culture of your business right, and you can change the world. Ivan Menezes advised the audience to start with a vision and a mission but remember gender equality needs to be more than a top down approach. He said: “Seek ideas from across the business. Create the energy and interest among your employees. This can ultimately push senior management to be bolder in its targets and ambitions.”

Your business can make a difference

Melinda French Gates stressed the importance of good paid parental leave policies. Today only 21% of employees in the U.S. have access to paid parental leave and flexible work hours. She would like to see this equalised to make sure men can also participate. In Denmark, for example, parents receive 52 weeks paid parental leave. Equality in care is key – women are still spending 95 minutes more than men each day on care duties. Creating the conditions for flexible working leads to a huge advantage in terms of attracting and retaining talent.

Tackle the Covid effect

According to the World Economic Forum, 5% of employed women worldwide have lost their jobs due to the pandemic, compared to 3.9% of men. Melinda pointed to anecdotal evidence suggesting many women won’t come back to work. That will impact the bottom line for companies and our economy. We now know and have proved that remote and flexible work can be done. If we strike the right balance between work and care, then women will come back into the workforce.

Create a strong mentorship scheme

Ann reminded the audience it’s often difficult for individuals to have conversations about their career within their own company. One way to address this successfully is through cross-company mentorship schemes. Senior execs from one company can mentor women from another who have the talent to rise through the ranks into the C-suite. To learn more about the 30% Club’s mentoring programme, click here.

Trust the data

What we measure helps us to see the progress we’re making and leads to better decisions. Women make 85% of day-to-day buying decisions, so to not include women in shaping products is a strategic error.

Look at your supply chain

Integrating more female-owned businesses into your supply chain is a powerful way to make a difference. More than 50% of farmers in Africa are women. There’s usually a middleman who takes their product to market, sells her goods, and takes his cut. Companies can eliminate the intermediary, work directly with women, and improve their economic opportunities Also, it is often incredibly difficult for women to access to funds and secure loans for women to get their businesses off the ground in developing countries. Business leaders can do something about that. Awareness about this disparity and a constant push for change are needed, and urgently.

Be open and realistic

Set your goals, such as closing your pay gap, within a timeframe and make them public. Then implement robust measurement and publish the results so that everyone in the organisation can see them. Build Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) targets into senior management’s bonuses as well. It is not just a numbers game. How are you creating the opportunities for the next generation of leaders? It takes time but it’s important to create the pipeline so that women can advance throughout their career, while your business benefits from diverse leadership. And test yourselves: regularly look at remuneration and progression in the company and test for gender bias.

Get Involved in the Generation Equality Forum

Next month, businesses have a unique opportunity at the Generation Equality Forum to advance all these policies and more to accelerate gender equality. An audience poll revealed that more than half of companies in the briefing are either already leaders or commitment-makers, or are in the process of designing their commitments. Melinda emphasized the importance of this moment for the private sector to step up and lead by example by making bold, actionable, and transformative commitments to advance gender equality. To learn more about how your company can get involved, click here.

It was an inspiring, lively, and energetic discussion, full of passion and commitment to change. The event finished off with Margaret Mead’s famous words:

“Never underestimate the power of a small group of committed people to change the world. In fact, it is the only thing that ever has.”