Companies Leading the Way

Safaricom, a Kenyan based company, is a leading integrated communications provider with over 17 million subscribers in Africa.

The company has integrated gender equality into its internal policies and efforts through the adoption of best practices in creating a mother-friendly environment. The importance of providing adaptive workplace solutions for mothers is essential to Safaricom’s business operations as the current female-to-male ratio of call center employees is 1:1. Employees are provided with comprehensive medical insurance that covers both pre and post-delivery medical expenses. Antenatal clinics, medical scans, natural and caesarian deliveries, and post-delivery immunizations are covered by the insurance plan to ensure the health of the mother and child. Mothers are also provided with three-months of maternity leave in addition to their regular annual leave, and are able to choose from various flexible working shifts when they return to the workplace to allow for the safe development of their newborn.

Safaricom’s efforts to ease the transition back into the workforce have also included the development of child-friendly facilities. Fully equipped day-care facilities staffed by childcare professionals are available for mothers at no charge and private, hygienic facilities are provided to allow for a safe and secure breastfeeding environment. The health of the child is also provided for through an onsite doctor and the promotion of nutritious meals in cafeterias.

Novo Nordisk, a global healthcare company headquartered in Denmark, provides life-saving treatments for people with diabetes and rare bleeding disorders. Half of its employees (currently over 32,000) are women. Diversity, inclusion and equal opportunity are anchored in the company’s business approach, Triple Bottom Line, and in its core values.

Gender is an important focus area for Novo Nordisk. To advance women internally, Novo Nordisk embeds gender diversity into key corporate organizational assurance and accountability processes. For example, annual internal organizational audits require that each business unit rigorously review diversity as one of many key organizational growth drivers, and link business and gender diversity in succession planning.  The Balance Score Card promotes, with a common set of measurable gender indicators, accountability and ownership of gender diversity results at the business unit and executive levels. Furthermore, progress towards equal opportunity and inclusion in the workplace is regularly assessed through in-depth interviews with approximately 20% of staff annually.

A focus on women has explicitly been integrated into talent selection, ensuring solid growth of gender-diverse pipelines, and the company provides leadership development and networking opportunities targeted at women. Diversity has also become one of the key themes for corporate communications for the year 2012, which will lead to increased awareness among employees globally.

MAS Holdings, a Sri Lankan based company founded in 1986, specializes in the production of intimate apparel and sportswear goods and provides services to such companies as Nike, Gap, and Victoria’s Secret. 

In 2003, the company initiated the “Go Beyond Program” in apparel plants in Sri Lanka. The program, targeted at women, provides career development, life skills education and recognition for female garment workers. Prior to the initiative, MAS plants provided meals, banking services, skills building classes and transportation to their garment workers in Sri Lanka; however, the extent and funding of each program was at each plant manager’s discretion. With the “Go Beyond Program”, MAS Holdings established a company-wide framework to standardize and evaluate employee programs at each individual plant based on internally identified best practices. The program identified a four-point framework of empowerment and development based on career advancement, work-life balance, rewarding excellence and community activation. Specific classes included: awareness on domestic violence, stress management, balancing multiple roles of a woman, dressmaking, financial management and computer literacy.

During the initial roll-out of the program and based on an impact measurement framework that was developed in July 2004, MAS Holdings’ plants implemented 290 programs in the four thematic areas and reached the average worker 3.7 times in the first year. Since its rollout, the program has been extended to India and Vietnam.

Alcatel-Lucent is a global telecommunications company, headquartered in France, with operations in more than 130 countries.

With over 75,000 employees within its operations, the company’s leadership has exhibited a commitment to women’s empowerment and equality. CEO Ben Verwaayen has signed the Women’s Empowerment Principles CEO Statement of Support and was also a member of the World Economic Forum’s Gender Parity Board for 2011-2012. The company has also set up a high-level Diversity Board to pursue equal opportunities. Alcatel-Lucent’s efforts also extend beyond promotion from high-level leadership and include efforts to increase the representation of women in management positions. The company has set a target of increasing women’s representation by 20% for 2012 and to support this endeavor, the company’s management committee and their teams have committed to sponsor, mentor or provide coaching to women in the company’s leadership pipeline to help prepare them for executive positions. 

In addition to the above, Alcatel-Lucent is launching a series of workshops in 2012 to help people managers understand gender balance as a strategic business issue, as well as increase understanding of the differences between the two genders in terms of leadership style, communication, behavior and career cycles. The workshops will give participants space and time to express themselves honestly on the topic and make visible different internal attitudes, as well as providing tools to better manage gender diversity within the company and as part of the employee life-cycle.  

Rio Tinto is a leading international mining group headquartered in the UK with operations in five continents. The company currently employs over 75,000 people in more than 40 countries.

In the mining sector, the involvement of women has been slight. Recognizing the importance of women’s equality and in an effort to increase female participation, Rio Tinto developed a guideline entitled Why Gender Matters in 2009. The main notion behind the document is the concept of equality and inclusiveness. The publication provides guidance on how to integrate gender into the company’s operations at the community level through the use of case studies, by highlighting inclusive activities, and through best practices. The implementation and integration aspect of the publication acts as a “how to” guide covering a milieu of topics ranging from “gender considerations in social risk analysis” to mainstreaming gender into monitoring and evaluation metrics. For example, the monitoring and evaluation “how to guide” identifies gender sensitive indicators within the themes of labor (gender wage differential), education (% of females with access to formal education), empowerment (number of females in leadership positions at the village/community level), and vulnerability (% of households headed by single females).

The guidebook further highlights the importance of empowerment and inclusion by placing its recommendations within a broader background by identifying common gender concepts and relevant international protocols and standards for gender.

Symantec, founded in 1982, is one of the world’s largest software companies that employs more than 18,000 employees in over 50 countries.

As a signatory of the Calvert Women’s Principles™ and the Women’s Empowerment Principles, Symantec has displayed a firm commitment to women’s empowerment and equality within their operations. For the company and the industry as a whole, the attraction and retention of technical women is a challenge. To help facilitate greater career advancement, Symantec has identified “Top Talent Technical Women” within their company and these women are provided with advanced learning and development opportunities. In addition, the Symantec Women’s Action Network (SWAN) was established in 2007 to attract talented female employees, and to encourage and support women in their efforts to further their careers at the company. The network, which has 1,350 members, provides a forum for personal and professional networking throughout all levels of the company, enabling women professionals to build relationships and share information.

To supplement the network, Symantec has also established mentoring circles as a mechanism to share information and best practices around career development and work-life balance. The company hosted six mentoring circles for three different learning tracks aimed at: new hires and college graduates, managers, and individual contributors. Women who participated in the circles earned Symantec learning credits, applicable towards their annual training requirements.

ExxonMobil is the world’s largest publicly traded oil and gas company operating three brands: Esso, Mobil and Exxon.

As a component of its operations, ExxonMobil undertakes community and development initiatives that are aligned with its social priorities and business strengths in its regions of operations. One such focus area for the company is enhancing economic opportunities for women. Launched in 2005, the Women’s Economic Opportunity Initiative empowers women by enabling them to act as market participants. To achieve this goal, ExxonMobil identified three intervention areas to further enhance the economic opportunity of women. The first area enhances female economic participation by developing entrepreneurs and leaders through skills training, mentoring support and business networks. The second area fosters female economic empowerment by working with partners to advocate for just and equitable laws and policies. The third area enables women to participate economically by supporting the development of women-friendly technology. Each of these program areas contributes to the empowerment of women through greater market participation.

For example, ExxonMobil has partnered with Vital Voices, a US based NGO that grew out of a U.S. government initiative, to enhance the economic participation of women in the company’s first and second program area. In 2011, Vital Voices launched the Latin America and Businesswomen’s Network to grow the capacity of local partners and to advocate for policy changes with the company’s support. 

Gap Inc. is a leading international specialty retailer of clothing, accessories and personal care products based in San Francisco, California.

In 2007, Gap Inc. launched the Personal Advancement and Career Enhancement (P.A.C.E.) program, which was developed in partnership with Swasti Health Resource Center, the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW) and CARE International. P.A.C.E. empowers women by providing technical and life skills training for female garment workers in six Asian countries. The program consists of trainings in communications, problem solving and decision-making, financial literacy, women’s health and legal literacy. As of 2011, 7,500 female garment workers have participated in the program and results have shown that beneficiaries of P.A.C.E. are more productive, advance faster in the workplace and have lower absenteeism rates.

P.A.C.E. is an innovative public-private business model that leverages Gap Inc.’s internal and external stakeholders to promote women’s empowerment. Vendors are provided with a clear business case that illustrates how empowering women can increase their productivity and efficiency. One such vendor in India has committed to extend P.A.C.E. to its 60,000 employees by the year 2020.

Calvert Investments launched the Calvert Women’s Principles™ in 2004, as the first global code of corporate conduct focused exclusively on empowering, advancing and investing in women. 

The Women’s Principles, consistent with Calvert’s longstanding investment approach, hold that well-governed, socially responsible companies are better positioned to manage risk and deliver long-term value to their shareholders, and reflect the view that there is a strong business case for gender equality. Since their launch, the Principles have offered corporations a set of standards against which they can assess their performance and provided investors with a set of tools to assess corporate progress on gender equality and women’s empowerment.  Calvert’s main focus has been on turning the Principles from the aspirational into the operational.

In 2008, Calvert partnered with the City of San Francisco’s Department on the Status of Women and Verité to adapt the Principles for the Bay area. As part of the partnership, the company launched the Gender Equality Principles (GEP) and a companion website (www.genderprinciples.org). This resource serves as a one-stop shop to assist companies in implementing and promoting the GEP, by allowing them to establish a baseline, identify areas of strength and opportunities for improvement, leverage extensive indicators and resources, and set concrete goals and objectives to strengthen gender-related policies, practices, and organizational culture.

Yahoo! Is a California-based digital media company whose digital content is available in more than 30 languages. The company, founded in 1994, now employs over 10,000 employees in 25 locations.

Yahoo! has displayed a deep commitment to human rights and women’s empowerment and as a component of Yahoo!ForGood, the company has acknowledged the salient linkages between human rights and business. Within their human rights initiatives, Yahoo! has incorporated human rights impact assessments to identify potential areas where privacy and freedom of expression are in jeopardy or can be strengthened. Yahoo!’s focus on human rights and women’s empowerment was highlighted in 2012 at their annual Business and Human Rights Summit. The one-day event in Cairo, Egypt highlighted examples of how women are using technology to promote freedom and empowerment, and the event focused on four broad themes: women’s leadership, women’s rights and social justice, journalism and entrepreneurship.

Yahoo!’s recognition of the important link between women and technology is also underpinned by their efforts to promote greater female participation in the tech industry through partnerships with organizations such as the Anita Borg Institute for Women in Technology. Yahoo!’s activities to increase female participation also include providing travel and attendance scholarships for women to attend technology-focused events such as Random Hacks of Kindness.