An international cross-sector study from Equileap has drawn on publicly available data of 3,000 companies to see who is winning (and who is losing) in terms of gender equality.
The top 200 companies in the world for gender equality have been revealed, and no Irish company has managed to make the cut.
Social enterprise firm Equileap pulled publicly available data from 3,000 companies around the globe across a variety of sectors. These are, according to the release, “defined as all public sector companies with a market capitalisation above $2bn”. Equileap used a number of different metrics such as the gender ratio among all levels of the business, including leadership, equal pay and shared parental leave policy.
In terms of sector, the communications, financial and utilities industries all performed well. Equileap noted that the technology sector showed the biggest improvement over the last year, with 14pc of eligible companies now reaching the top 200, up 3pc from the previous year.
US-based General Motors (GM) nabbed the top spot in the top 200. Its current CEO, Mary Barra, is the company’s first female CEO and the first woman to hold a CEO position at a major global automaker. GM is also, according to Equileap, one of the only of the US’s 20 largest firms to have an equal number of men and women on its board of directors. The report also named it as one of two global businesses that have pay equality across all bands of the business and no overall pay gap across the company.
French-based cosmetics giant L’Oréal, which is number one in Europe, took second place. It is followed by luxury conglomerate Kering, with brands such as Gucci, Alexander McQueen, Balenciaga and Yves Saint Laurent.
“We have seen organisations making great strides towards improved gender equality in the past 12 months, but they are still the exception and not the rule,” commented Equileap CEO Diana van Maasdijk. “There is a long way to go until we reach the goal of true global equality in the workplace for everyone.
“More businesses should view providing equal opportunities to all employees as an essential part of their work and a business advantage that can lead to higher financial returns and lower volatility; it’s not just a tick-box exercise.”
Only five companies in the list had specific data to back up a claim of gender pay equality across all pay bands: Agilent Technologies (US), Enbridge (Canada), GM (US), Link Administration (Australia) and StarHub (Singapore).
Norway had the highest proportion of companies (43pc) reaching the top 200 ranking. This was followed by Israel (40pc), Belgium (38pc), Australia (36pc) and the Netherlands (33pc). Japan, Austria and Ireland were the only countries among the 23 researched with no company in the top 200.
The report can be downloaded here.
