CEBDS members: Anglo American, Bradesco, Santander Bank, bayer, Coca-cola, ecolab, Itau, Nestlé, Schneider It is Siemens are also in the Bloomberg Index
Alcoa, a CEBDS member company, has been included in Bloomberg’s 2020 Gender Equality Index (GEI). The 2020 GEI includes 325 companies headquartered in 42 countries and regions. The Index tracks the financial performance of public companies committed to supporting gender equality through policy development, representation and transparency.
“Year after year, the Bloomberg Gender Report continues to expand the universe of environmental, social and governance (ESG) data available to investors around the world, providing more detailed metrics from a wide range of public companies across 50 industries,” said Peter T. Grauer, Chairman of Bloomberg.
“This level of transparency about how companies are addressing gender equality in the workplace and in their local communities is informing financial decision-making around the world and supporting the business case for an inclusive corporate environment.”
“For Santander, publicly disclosing our data through the Bloomberg Gender Equality Index is an important step not only in assessing our internal practices, but also in helping us understand how we are performing compared to our peers,” says Ana Botin, CEO of Santander.
The 2020 GEI shows that companies led by a female CEO have more women in senior management positions than companies with a male CEO. Companies led by women also have more women among the top 10% earners than companies led by men.
Gender equality is urgent
“Gender equality is an urgent issue around the world, and with the Index, we track the financial performance of companies committed to supporting it through policy development, representation and transparency,” says Geraldo Coelho, Head of Sales for Latin America at Bloomberg.
The guarantee of gender equality, in addition to being a fundamental right, is a necessary basis for building a peaceful, prosperous and sustainable world, as indicated by the Sustainable Development Goal 5.
The issue encompasses several themes on CEBDS's Vision 2050 agenda, and in addition to specific legislation, it demands engagement from society as a whole. The aim is to ensure women's full participation and equal opportunities for leadership at all levels of decision-making in political, economic and public life.
“How can we move faster to end inequality? The first secret is to work in a network. We need to bring all actors together, because a more equal world is better for everyone”, says Adriana Carvalho, project manager at UN Women.
A survey released by Ipsos in 2018, conducted with 20,000 people in 27 countries, including Brazil, showed that for most of the interviewees (32%) the biggest problem faced by women is sexual harassment, followed by sexual violence (28%) and physical violence (21%). In Brazil, the biggest problems highlighted are the same as those presented in the global result, but the order is different.
Sexual violence leads the ranking (47%), followed by sexual harassment (38%) and physical violence (28%). It is noteworthy that for 61% of the women surveyed, reports of sexual harassment are ignored, generating a feeling of impunity. The issue of equal pay appears in fifth place in the world ranking, leads in developed countries and in Brazil is the sixth most important problem faced by women.
“All of this comes down to one word: respect. We are far from it, but I see progress in respect within companies. We need to convince leaders to support equality within companies,” said Ana Lúcia Salmeron, director of Schneider Electric for Latin America.
Photo credit: Bloomberg
