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

Gender equality initiatives 119
PSA Peugeot Citroën SA has in 2003 signed an Agreement on Gender Equality and
Employment for Women together with 6 relevant French Unions. In 2007, this Agreement
has been renewed.
PSA Peugeot Citroën's social policy since 2002 has been based on five principles:
social dialogue, respect for human rights at the workplace, an efficient organisation with
good working conditions, an international employment base, and equal pay. This
seven-year period has been marked by a number of key achievements and innovations.
The group’s commitments to gender equality were first expressed in the Agreement on
Gender Equality and Employment for Women (Accord d’Entreprise Relatif au
Developpement de l’Emploi Feminin et a l’Egalite Professionelle entre les Femmes et
les Hommes) of November 12 th , 2003. This agreement has been signed by the
company together with the 6 French unions; in November 2007 it has been renewed for
the period from 2008-2011, demonstrating a commitment to remaining a benchmark in
this area and to pursuing the innovations undertaken to support jobs for women.
PSA Peugeot Citroën has opted for this voluntary cooperation with the unions to
ensure that their policy is agreed upon on a broad basis and also because this is a
demanding procedure that leads to very good results. The Agreement on Gender
Equality and Employment for Women is embedded into the group’s Sustainable
Development Approach.
In 2008, the group has implemented an auto-evaluation process, since then PSA
reports on their sustainable development performance on an annual basis, following the
third generation (G3) Sustainability Reporting Guidelines issued by the Global
Reporting Initiative (GRI) in 2006. Monitoring indicators have been set to assess
progress. With regard to the Agreement on Gender Equality and Employment for
Women, Progress Reports are submitted to and negotiated with the unions at
least twice a year (i. e. each site has to report to the group level before).
Besides sharing progress data, external communication also includes information
events (at schools, universities, etc.) that are tailored to women and the companies
may participate in awareness raising initiatives (e. g. girls’ day at Siemens AG, role
models at recruitment events at IBM Corporation).
With regard to marketing 30 , the companies questioned reported to take this issue
seriously and to avoid the utilisation of gender stereotypes. Formastur S.A. e. g.
explicitly states to detect and correct discriminatory language and images. There also
are a number of companies that, similarly to the internal code of conduct among
employees, have implemented codes of conduct for marketing that explicitly deal with
gender issues and with avoiding the reproduction of stereotypes.
The internet and document analysis that has been carried out to gather information on
the company initiatives give the impression, that multinational companies have already
made a big step in avoiding misleading and gender discriminating communication
and images in their external communication.
30
It shall be noted, however, that the issue of gender-sensitive marketing of products and services was
outside the main focus of this study and therefore was not investigated in-depth.