Is your company Pinkwashing?

The backlash is beginning 

It’s summer in the Global North, and that means Pride season in many cities. The streets are strewn with rainbows, emblazoned on banks and buses and billboards. Big businesses rainbowize their logos, and fly rainbow flags from their office rooftops. Rainbows, rainbows everywhere. But not everybody is happy. 

In New York this year, the Pride Parade had 61 corporate sponsors, 13 promotional partners, and 31 media sponsors. And it’s a similar story in many cities. Activists object that corporates are jumping on the bandwagon – pinkwashing, without taking substantial action to promote LGBT+ rights. 

Already, there have been anti-Pinkwashing protests during Pride parades in Paris and Washington DC. In New York this year there was an alternative “Queer Liberation March”, organised by the Reclaim Pride Coalition, with a “No Cops, No Corporates” slogan.  

The concern is growing, according to social media data on the term Pinkwashing.Web searches for the term “pinkwashing” have increased steadily over recent years, according to Google Trends data, with regular spikes around June. Twitter data for"pinkwashing" or #pinkwashing also shows a pronounced “Pride spike”. 

Category is: PINKWASH 

Sure, many companies that sponsor Pride in cities like New York or London have the best intentions. They can point to their efforts to create inclusive workspaces, and their high scores on HRC’s Corporate Equality Index or Stonewall’s Workplace Equality Index. And they can celebrate their senior LGBT+ executives as role models and leaders. 

Of course, it’s great that many companies are now committed to root out discrimination against LGBT+ people in their workplaces, and to provide equal opportunities to employees regardless of sexual orientation and gender identity. But it’s not enough: you don’t get bonus points for treating people fairly and respecting their rights.  

The problem is that many companies are happy to fly the rainbow flag in countries where it’s safe to do so, but do nothing in countries where LGBT+ people really need their support. At best this looks like expediency; at worst it leaves a whiff of hypocrisy. 

Is your company Pinkwashing? Here are some examples how global companies risk falling into the category of PINKWASH:  

• A global bank sponsors Pride in San Francisco but does doing nothing for LGBT+ inclusion in its extensive Africa operations.
• A sportwear company sells rainbow sports merchandise in Europe but is silent on LGBT+ rights during an international sports tournament in Russia. 
• A tech company CEO speaks out in the U.S. but the company declines to meet LGBT+ activists in Kenya to discuss decriminalising homosexuality.

Stories like this are common, and they infuriate activists. But it’s not surprising: taking meaningful action in countries that are hostile to LGBT+ rights is difficult, and fraught with risks.

That’s why at Open For Business we worked with the UN Free & Equal campaign to understand how companies can use their influence in a way that’s safe and impactful – and takes them out of the Pinkwash category. 

How companies can take action

Most large companies have global footprints of employees, suppliers, customers and partners. Even many small and medium sized businesses today have strong global links. Often these networks will extend into countries that are hostile to LGBT+ rights.

This is an opportunity to take action. But what can a company do? And what are the risks? To answer these questions, we drew upon the experience of our coalition partners to develop the Channels of Influence framework: 

We hope this framework can open up some new opportunities for companies to move beyond the rainbow flags and focus on creating real change. We’ve seen how, working together in the Open For Business coalition, hand-in-hand civil society groups on-the-ground, businesses can make a real impact in some of the most challenging countries. 

Open For Business is a coalition of leading global companies LGBT+ inclusive societies. Partners include: Accenture, American Express AT&T, BCG, Brunswick, Burberry, Diageo, Deutsche Bank, EY, GSK, Google, IBM, Inditex, KPMG, Linklaters, MasterCard, McKinsey & Company, Microsoft, PWC, RELX Group, Standard Chartered, Tesco, Thomson Reuters,  Virgin and WeWork.

Download the Channels of Influence report at https://open-for-business.org/