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

Gender equality initiatives 141
With a view to the design, implementation and further development of nonlegislative
initiatives for companies to promote gender equality at the workplace, the
following aspects should be taken into account:
• Thematic focus: When designing and developing an initiative it is important to
choose a thematic focus considering the general development of gender
equality in a particular country (Which problems have to be addressed? Which
fields lack gender equality the most?) and the problem of interdependences
between the different fields of intervention. This could best be addressed by
initiatives with a broad thematic scope while developments within society can
be considered by continuously shifting the focus towards the most topical
problems. The more specialised initiatives have the advantage of promoting
best tailored measures to a specific problem and putting emphasis on more
controversial issues. The assessment of the enterprises, the progress
measured by concrete data and the benefits for the enterprises can probably
better be illustrated when concentrating on a specific field of intervention.
Special attention has to be put on the field of reconciliation. Being a
precondition for fostering many aspects of women’s equal labour market
participation it is naturally very important to promote initiatives which focus on
reconciliation, especially in countries where childcare institutions are not
provided adequately or reconciliation as such is controversial. But there is a
danger that gender equality is reduced to the reconciliation debate and
traditional gender roles are even reinforced.
• Target group: To avoid the reinforcement of gender roles and gender
stereotypes, more attention should be paid to the fact that gender equality
addresses both, women and men. Thus, initiatives promoting gender equality at
the workplace must target at both genders and support programmes and
measures of enterprises which involve women and men. This is mainly true for
measures supporting the reconciliation of work and family life. Men should be
motivated to further participate in childcare and household – on the one hand to
give women a real choice on how to combine work and family life and on the
other hand to increase the share of men responsible for the family which will
entail the breaking of gender stereotypes. But also in other fields, the
participation of men is crucial. E. g. to tackle the vertical segregation managers
– mainly men – have to be convinced about the advantages of women in
managerial boards or male co-workers have to accept a female boss.
• Development: As non-legislative initiatives for companies have no end in
themselves but want to promote and increase the level of gender equality in a
broad sense the design of these initiatives must be adaptable to the changing
social environment and the progress gender equality registers. This continuous
development is crucial for both, the thematic focus of the initiative in general
and the concrete design with a view to requirements, assessment criteria, and
target groups (groups of enterprises and employees) etc. in particular. From an
international perspective, such adjustable initiatives will also be transferable
from one country to another.