Study on non-legislative initiatives for companies to promote gender ...

98 Gender equality initiatives
Out of these 30 companies, 6 multinational enterprises and 1 SME have been
selected for further in-depth analysis. The following presentation summarises key
aspects based on brief descriptions of all initiatives identified in the 30 companies and
on the case studies of companies selected for an in-depth analysis (the information in
the boxes refers to the initiatives of companies which have been analysed in detail and
which are fully described in Annex 3).
The companies have been carefully chosen. The choice was mainly based on expert
recommendations, company rankings or award winners in (a category related to)
gender equality at the workplace. A statement such as “most of the companies follow a
certain approach”, therefore has to be understood in that context, i. e. the underlying
sample is not a random one but one that has specifically been chosen to gain insight
into interesting and innovative practices in the promotion of gender equality at the
workplace.
It also has to be borne in mind that the initiatives described in the following sections of
this chapter are examples of what companies can do in a certain field or – for the
more comprehensive approaches – throughout these fields. When stating that a certain
approach is pursued by one specific company, that does not necessarily mean that
other companies within this analysis do not implement the same or a similar initiative. It
means that the company/initiative described here has been chosen as an example.
The choice of initiatives has been based on the innovativeness of the approach and
on what the interview partners at the companies found important to highlight, i. e. which
of their company’s approaches they consider most important and effective. For
example, companies with a comparatively long-standing tradition in the implementation
of flexible work schedules would not have spoken about these practices as their main
approach, but have rather presented their more recent approaches with specific focus
on gender equality.
Although the companies are active in different industries, there are some issues in
relation to gender equality at the workplace that are not industry-specific (e. g. retention
of women after the birth of children). Other issues, such as too few applications from
women are a typical problem of technology intensive industries; while to the contrary
the cosmetics industry appears to hardly receive applications from men as has been
experienced by L´Oréal, for example.
From the analysis of the multinational enterprises it has been interesting to learn that,
although there are strategies, programmes, etc. that apply throughout all countries
these are in most cases adapted to the specific situation within a country. On the
one hand, this is necessary to comply with e. g. national labour legislation while on the
other hand the company has to take national culture into account.
Out of the multinational enterprises that have been analysed in the course of this study
7 have their headquarters in the USA. It has been sought to give an “European”
example in these cases, i. e. to describe how the global strategy has been enriched
or adapted to suit the framework conditions of a specific country in Europe.