Using the Power of Beauty to #BreakTheBias and Empower Women Everywhere

Research indicates that building gender-inclusive workplaces unlocks greater prosperity, heightens resilience, and boosts socio-economic progress.?As the?benefits of gender diversity?become ever more apparent, companies are working to close the gender gap and reap the rewards of equal representation of men and women across their organizations.

While women’s equality is important all year, International Women’s Day – recognized globally on March 8 – is a unique moment to come together and celebrate the social, economic, and cultural achievements of women and take a stand to accelerate women’s equality. This year’s global theme is ‘Break the Bias’ encouraging us all to commit to helping forge an inclusive world. Whether deliberate or unconscious, the bias makes it difficult for women to move ahead. Knowing that bias exists isn’t enough, action is needed to level the playing field.

Our ambition is to shape L’Oréal India as a company of the future, a company with strong values, committed to sustainability and growing while respecting planetary boundaries, but also to making beauty play its role toward humanity — a role of inclusion, harmony, respect, and encouragement of diversity and differences.

We have a proud history of empowering women within L’Oréal and in the world around us. Be it at the workspace, communities around our manufacturing facilities, through our salon partners, in science and academia, or through our brand campaigns - we empower women to #BreakTheBias.?

We are taking more action in our communities to actively help those most at risk and systemically remove the obstacles that prevent women and girls from fulfilling their potential. L’Oréal launched Beauty for a Better Life, a training program that delivers free, high-quality vocational beauty training to vulnerable women. Established in 2009, the program helps women gain employment or create their own businesses.

To provide women with opportunities within the salon industry, a segment traditionally male-dominated, L’Oréal International Hairdressing Academy was the first academy globally, launched by L’Oréal Professionnel, which has been successfully educating and training future hairdressers in India. We strengthened our vision with the launch of Absolute Route to Hairdressing (ARTH) committed to supporting amateur hairdressers through practical and classroom training connecting them to 20,000 plus network of salons across India.

In areas of sustainability and to fight against climate change, it is imperative to empower women to play an equal role in solving the most urgent challenges of our time. To achieve inclusive and sustainable development, our recent collaboration with Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM) aims to support the Women4Climate Mumbai chapter to mentor women leaders at different stages of developing their climate solutions to contribute to the city’s set climate priorities based on our “think local, act global” philosophy.

We want to change how others behave towards them and help women stand up for themselves, from standing firm against violence. Since its launch, the L’Oréal Paris Stand Up campaign against street harassment has trained over 650,000 people with over 7.5 million visitors on the StandUp website.

Creating an equal and inclusive organizational culture with gender equality and diversity is at the core. Over the years, we have been at the forefront of creating industry-first policies to support equal pay, recruitment, and promotion, leadership development opportunities. Taking another step in this direction is our unique initiative Take-Two with L’Oréal, which serves as a platform for women to have a successful second inning at work and seamlessly integrate back into the workforce.

At L’Oréal, we want to be the world’s most inclusive Beauty leader. While I’m proud of the current initiatives that aim to Break the Bias, it is important to continue the conversation at an individual level, every day, at home, and at work.?

#InternationalWomensDay #IWD2021 #BreakTheBias #WomenEmpowerment