A Tool for Promoting Gender Equality
in the Workplace
GENDER EQUALITY PRINCIPLES
Based
on the Calvert Women’s Principles
Organizations will take concrete steps to attain
gender equality by adopting and implementing policies and practices in seven
key areas:
1. Employment and
compensation. Policies that eliminate gender discrimination in
areas such as recruitment, hiring, pay, and promotion.
2. Work-life
balance and career development. Policies that enable work-life
balance and support educational, career, and vocational development.
3. Health,
safety, and freedom from violence. Policies to secure the health,
safety, and well-being of female workers.
4. Management
and governance. Policies to ensure equitable participation in
management and governance.
5. Business,
supply chain, and marketing practices. Non-discriminatory
business, supply chain, contracting, and marketing policies.
6. Civic
and community engagement. Policies to promote equitable
participation in civic life and to eliminate all forms of discrimination and
exploitation.
7. Leadership,
transparency, and accountability. Policies that are publicly
disclosed, monitored, and enforced that display active commitment from top
leadership.
1. EMPLOYMENT AND COMPENSATION
Areas covered include:
- Pay the legal minimum wage and strive to pay a living
wage.
- Ensure fair and comparable wages, hours, and benefits
for comparable work for all employees.
- Undertake concrete, verifiable actions to recruit women
candidates and retain women employees from traditionally underrepresented
groups and for non-traditional positions.
- 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
activities or privileges, including wages, hours, benefits, job access,
and working conditions.
- Prohibit discrimination based on marital, parental,
reproductive, or health status (including HIV/AIDS) in all employment or
promotion decisions.
- Ensure job security by allowing for interruptions in
work for maternity leave, parental leave, and family-related
responsibilities.
- Implement equitable policies for non-salaried employees
conducting temporary and/or temporary work.
- Ensure equitable layoffs that do not disproportionately
affect women.
2.
WORK-LIFE BALANCE AND CAREER DEVELOPMENT
Areas covered include:
- Undertake concrete, verifiable actions to make
professional and private life more balanced by implementing and promoting
a variety of flexible work options, including workforce exit and re-entry
opportunities, and support women returning to positions of equal pay and
status.
- Promote the use of family leave, dependent care, and
wellness programs. Allow time-off from work for employees seeking
medical care or treatment, for themselves or their dependents, including
family planning and reproductive health care.
- Support access to childcare either by providing
childcare services, preferably on-site, or referrals.
- Provide equal opportunities and access for women to
education, including literacy, vocational, and information technology
training.
- Provide professional development opportunities that
include formal or informal networking, client development activities, and
mentoring programs for women at all levels, including women working in
non-traditional fields.
3.
HEALTH, SAFETY, AND FREEDOM FROM VIOLENCE
Areas covered include:
- Prohibit and prevent all forms of violence in the
workplace, including verbal, physical, or sexual harassment.
- Ensure the safety of female employees and vendors in
the workplace, including 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.
- Work to eliminate and disclose unsafe working
conditions by providing 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.
4.
MANAGEMENT AND GOVERNANCE
Areas covered 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 improving gender equality as a factor in
performance measures and provide resources to support gender initiatives.
5.
BUSINESS, SUPPLY CHAIN, AND MARKETING PRACTICES
Areas covered include:
- Maintain ethical marketing standards by respecting the
dignity of women in all sales, promotional, and advertising
materials. Minimize or eliminate any form of gender or sexual
exploitation in marketing and advertising campaigns.
- Encourage and support women's entrepreneurship.
Seek 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 labor
or sexual exploitation.
- Ensure that these Principles are observed not only with
respect to employees, but also 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
Areas covered include:
- Encourage philanthropic foundations associated with the
organization to promote gender equality through their 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 repercussions in the workplace.
- Respect freedom of association among all employees.
- Work with governments and communities where the
organization 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 community groups working for
the advancement of women.
- Exercise proactive leadership 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.
LEADERSHIP, TRANSPARENCY, AND ACCOUNTABILITY
Areas covered include:
- Commit to gender equality through a CEO statement or
comparably prominent means and prominently display the commitment in the
workplace and/or make it available to all employees in a readily
accessible form.
- Establish benchmarks to measure and monitor progress
toward gender equality and report results publicly.
- Develop and implement company policies, training, and
internal reporting processes to ensure implementation of gender equality
throughout the organization and conduct periodic self-evaluations through
data collection and analysis, audits, public disclosure, and reporting.
- Establish a clear, unbiased, non-retaliatory grievance
policy allowing employees to comment or complain about their treatment in
the workplace.
- Engage in constructive dialogue with stakeholder
groups, including employees, non-governmental organizations, business
associations, investors, customers, and the media on progress in
implementing the organization’s commitment to gender equality.
- Be transparent in the implementation of this commitment
and promote endorsement and implementation by affiliates, vendors,
suppliers, customers, and others with whom the organization does business.
- Ensure that government relations and corporate
political spending policies and practices incorporate the commitment to
gender equality.