Calvert Women's Principles - Role of
Companies for Women's Rights
The First Global Code of Corporate Conduct focused
exclusively on empowering, advancing, and investing in women worldwide.
In partnership with the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM),
Calvert launched the Calvert Women's Principles (CWP) in June 2004. Since
their launch, the CWP have heightened awareness of workplace issues affecting
women and called attention to the role of companies in ensuring women’s rights.
While the response to the CWP has been strong and positive, the corporate
diversity landscape has shifted in the years since the original text was
written. Accordingly, the CWP were extensively revised in March 2009 when
Calvert recognized the need to address salient emerging issues, and incorporate
some of the most progressive contemporary policies and best practices.
As part of this process, during 2008 Calvert again consulted with a range of
stakeholders including Verité, the San Francisco Department on the Status of
Women, the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), gender advocacy
experts and human rights, legal, and diversity professionals.
The most significant change was adding work-life balance to the top-line
Principles. Work-life balance was identified as essential to the attainment of
gender equality in the workplace and the one issue most noticeably absent from
the original version.
Calvert has begun the process of translating the Principles into practical
policies, guidelines, indicators and other performance tools that companies can
use to implement these standards.
Seven Core
Principles
The Women's Principles provide companies a set of goals they can aspire to
and measure their progress against, while offering investors a set of tools
they can use to assess corporate performance on gender equality issues. The
Principles provide a concrete set of indicators for tracking the progress of
gender justice in the corporate community.
- Employment and
Compensation
- Work-life Balance
and Career Development
- Health, Safety and
Freedom from Violence
- Management and
Governance
- Business, Supply
Chain and Marketing Practices
- Civic and
Community Engagement
- Transparency and
Accountability
1. EMPLOYMENT AND COMPENSATION
Corporations will take concrete steps to attain gender equality by adopting
and implementing employment policies and practices that eliminate gender
discrimination in areas such as recruitment, hiring, pay, and promotion.
Key elements of this principle include:
- Pay the legal wage to all women.
- Ensure fair and comparable wages, hours, and benefits,
including retirement benefits, for all employees for comparable work.
- Undertake concrete, verifiable actions to recruit and
retain women and candidates from traditionally underrepresented groups.
- Eliminate all forms of discrimination based on
attributes such as gender, race, ethnicity, religion, disability, sexual
orientation, gender identity, or cultural stereotypes in all work-related
privileges or activities, including wages, hours, benefits, job access and
qualifications, and working conditions.
- Prohibit discrimination based on marital, parental or
reproductive status in making decisions regarding employment or promotion,
including ensuring employment security that allows for interruptions in
work for maternity, parental leave, and family-related responsibilities.
- Implement equitable policies for non-salaried employees
regarding contract work, temporary work, and layoffs that do not
disproportionately affect women.
- Strive to pay a living wage to all women.
2. WORK-LIFE BALANCE AND CAREER DEVELOPMENT
Corporations will take concrete steps to attain gender equality by adopting,
implementing, and promoting policies and practices that enable work-life
balance and support educational, career, and vocational development.
Key elements of this principle include:
- Undertake concrete, verifiable actions to make
professional and private life more balanced, by implementing and promoting
flexible work options, family leave, dependent care, wellness programs,
and workforce exit and reentry opportunities.
- Support access to childcare either by providing
childcare services or by providing information and resources regarding
childcare services.
- Provide gender equitable opportunities for and access
to literacy training, education, and certified vocational and information
technology training.
- Provide professional development opportunities that
include formal or informal networking, client development activities, and
mentoring programs that include women at all levels, including those women
working in non-traditional fields.
3. HEALTH, SAFETY, AND FREEDOM FROM VIOLENCE
Corporations will take concrete steps to attain gender equality by adopting
and implementing policies to secure the health, safety, and well-being of women
workers.
Key elements of this principle include:
Prohibit and prevent all forms of violence in
the workplace, including verbal, physical, or sexual harassment.
- Ensure the safety of female employees in the workplace,
in travel to and from the workplace, and on company-related business, and
ensure the safety of vendors in the workplace.
- Provide and promote policies and programs addressing
domestic violence.
- Eliminate and disclose unsafe working conditions and
provide protection from exposure to hazardous or toxic chemicals in the
workplace, particularly when those substances have known or suspected
adverse effects on the health of women, including reproductive health.
- Allow time-off from work for employees seeking medical
care or treatment, for themselves or their dependents, including family
planning, counseling, and reproductive health care, and support return to
positions of equal pay and status.
- Prohibit discrimination in hiring and employment based
on health status, such as individuals with HIV/AIDS positive status or
persons with disabilities.
- Strive to provide gender equitable health services and
insurance.
4. MANAGEMENT AND GOVERNANCE
Corporations will take concrete steps to attain gender equality by adopting
and implementing policies to ensure equitable participation in management and
governance.
Key elements of this principle include:
- Establish policies and undertake proactive efforts to
recruit and appoint women to managerial positions and to the corporate
board of directors.
- Establish policies and undertake proactive efforts to
assure participation by women in decision-making and governance at all
levels and in all areas of the business, including budgetary
decision-making.
- Include gender equality as a factor in performance
measures, strategic planning goals and objectives, and budgetary
decisions.
5. BUSINESS, SUPPLY CHAIN, AND MARKETING
PRACTICES
Corporations will take concrete steps to attain gender equality by adopting
and implementing non-discriminatory business, supply chain, contracting, and
marketing policies and practices.
Key elements of this principle include:
- Maintain ethical marketing standards by respecting the
dignity of women in all sales, promotional and advertising materials, and
excluding any form of gender or sexual exploitation in marketing and
advertising campaigns.
- Encourage and support women's entrepreneurship, and
seek to enter into contractual and other business relationships with
women-owned businesses and vendors, including micro-enterprises, and work
with them to arrange fair credit and lending terms.
- Clearly forbid business-related activities that condone,
support, or otherwise participate in trafficking, including for labor or
sexual exploitation.
- Ensure that these Principles are observed not only with
respect to employees, but also in relation to business partners such as
independent contractors, sub-contractors, home-based workers, vendors, and
suppliers.
- Take these Principles into consideration in product and
service development and major business decisions, such as mergers,
acquisitions, joint venture partnerships, and financing.
6. CIVIC AND COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT
Corporations will take concrete steps to attain gender equality by adopting
and implementing policies to promote equitable participation in civic life and
eliminate all forms of discrimination and exploitation.
Key elements of this principle include:
- Encourage philanthropic foundations associated with the
entity to adhere to these Principles through their donations,
grant-making, programmatic initiatives, and investments.
- Encourage women and girls to enter non-traditional
fields by providing accessible career information and training programs
designed specifically for them.
- Respect female employees’ rights to participate in
legal, civic, and political affairs —including time off to vote—without
interference or fear of repercussion or retaliation in the workplace.
- Respect employees' voluntary freedom of association,
including the voluntary freedom of association of female employees.
- Work with governments and communities where the company
does business to eliminate gender-based discrimination and improve
educational and other opportunities for women and girls in those
communities, including support for women's non-governmental organizations
and other community groups working for the advancement of women.
- Exercise proactive leadership in its sphere of
influence to protect women from sexual harassment, violence, mutilation,
intimidation, retaliation, or other denial of their basic human rights by
host governments or non-governmental actors and refuse to tolerate
situations where cultural differences or customs are used to deny the
basic human rights of women and girls.
7. TRANSPARENCY AND ACCOUNTABILITY
Corporations will take concrete steps to attain gender equality in
operations and in business and stakeholder relationships by adopting and
implementing policies that are publicly disclosed, monitored, and enforced.
Key elements of this principle include:
- Publicize commitment to these Principles through a CEO
statement or comparably prominent means, and prominently display them in
the workplace and/or make them available to all employees in a readily
accessible and understandable form.
- Develop and implement company policies, procedures,
training, and internal reporting processes to ensure observance and
implementation of these Principles throughout the organization.
- Establish benchmarks to measure and monitor progress
toward gender equality and report results publicly.
- Conduct periodic self-evaluations through data
collection and analysis, audits, public disclosure, and reporting on
status and progress made in the implementation of these Principles.
- Establish a clear, unbiased, non-retaliatory grievance
policy allowing employees to make comments, recommendations, reports, or
complaints concerning their treatment in the workplace.
- Engage in constructive dialogue with stakeholder
groups, including employees, non-governmental or non-profit organizations,
business associations, investors, customers, and the media on progress in
implementing the Principles.
- Be transparent in the implementation of these
Principles, and promote their endorsement and implementation by
affiliates, vendors, suppliers, customers and others with whom it does
business.
- Strive to ensure that government relations and
corporate political spending policies and practices incorporate these
Principles.
Calvert wishes to thank the
many women leaders, corporate representatives, representatives of labor, human
rights, women’s advocacy and other non-governmental organizations, and others
who were kind enough to provide valuable counsel and advice during the drafting
of these Principles.