Category: News

Investors given tool to boost gender equity in net zero race

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The Women in Finance Climate Action Group has developed a framework to help financial institutions support women in the net zero transition and limit the negative impact of climate change on women.

The 30% Club is delighted to support the rollout of this first-of-its-kind framework specifically for private investors and the key role they play in financing net zero.

Integrating a gender lens into climate investments is important to value women as key stakeholders in solutions, to ensure not only a better path, a more ‘Just Transition’, but also a shorter one, unleashing the potential of women as changemakers, in finance and in who and what is being financed.

 

Women remain under-represented in climate finance

 

The Women in Finance Climate Group argues that whilst climate change disproportionately impacts women, women remain seriously under-represented in climate policy, climate decision-making and climate finance.

The Action Framework, created in collaboration with the Oliver Wyman Forum and 2X Global, is available to download here.

The Women in Finance Climate Action Group comprises women leaders from business, the public sector and civil society and includes Tanya Steele, CEO of WWF-UK and Sarah Breeden, Executive Director at the Bank of England.

 

Amanda Blanc, Aviva’s Group CEO, said: “Private capital is key to mobilising the trillions of dollars required over the next three decades to limit warming to 1.5 degrees. And yet the global private finance sector does not currently have the tools or incentives in place to evaluate and improve the impact of climate finance on gender equality.

“We need more data to measure the impact of specific climate investments or project financing on women and girls. We hope this Framework will give financial institutions what they need to begin to measure and deliver greater gender equality when taking action on net zero.”

Rupal Kantaria, Partner, Oliver Wyman Forum and head of climate for the 30% Club, added: “This first-of-its-kind Action Framework for investors embeds gender considerations into climate investment decisions. Both are critical for financing a faster and more just climate transition.”

 

 

 

Read THE FULL REPORT
Amanda Blanc and Rupal Kantaria

Where we are

The 30% Club has come a long way from when it was set up in the UK in 2010.We now span six continents and more than 20 countries. We’re actively expanding into more G20 countries

Find out more

French investors reveal gains for women’s leadership

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Screenshot 2023-01-16 at 12.56.17

According to the 30% Club France Investor Group’s annual report, gender diversity is improving in the SBF 120 but there is still a long way to go.

The 30% Club France Investor Group is pleased to announce the publication of its second annual report. In its second year of the campaign, the 30% Club France Investor Group conducted a wide variety of activities to engage with corporates, stakeholders, and experts, enabling us to develop key observations regarding gender diversity in France.

The 30% Club France Investor Group are stewards of France’s investee companies. Part of that responsibility includes the assessment of their executive management teams. Since 2017, listed companies in France must have a minimum of 40% of women on the Board of Directors under the Copé Zimmermann law. The Rixain Law adopted in 2021 also enforces that Executive Committees have 30% female representation by 2027 and 40% by 2030. 

 

Last year, the Investor group conducted 18 in-person engagement meetings and conversations and observed that:

– Compared to last year, companies are both more open to engaging with us and more prepared. 

– There is positive momentum emerging in the form of action plans and targeted goals, but these targets as well as their scopes (i.e., the executive body targeted) and time horizons lack homogeneity, making it difficult to work towards the goal of 30% female representation at the highest levels of management.

– Two opposite trends are coming into play. The COVID-19 crisis had a disproportionately negative impact on women in attracting, retaining, and promoting talent while the enforcement of the Rixain Law acted as an accelerator of awareness for the importance of gender diversity.

 

Read THE FULL REPORT
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Member of the French Parliament, Marie-Pierre Rixain said:

By making equality between women and men the great concern of his five-year term, President Emmanuel Macron has helped accelerate the march of history. Indeed, a certain number of blockages in our collective organization still constrain women’s economic room to maneuver and lead to a cascade of consequences. With this in mind, I drafted a bill in 2021 that enshrines new economic rights for women thus allowing them to conquer their status as free and autonomous economic actors.

The number of requests I receive proves that this issue is on the table for all companies now more than ever. Finally, our country is thinking about how to make half of the working population a source of value creation, wealth, and jobs. 

I believe that an increasingly significant proportion of large companies have taken measures for the challenge of gender diversity. In this respect, the law that I introduced – which marks a major change in the management and retention of corporate talent – will accelerate this dynamic by imposing ambitious but achievable targets for the players concerned.

Global Head Sustainable & Impact Investment, Allianz Global Investors, Matt Christensen said: 

“In the two years since the initiative’s launch, I’m pleased to see that the importance of gender diversity is increasingly acknowledged within French companies and that encouraging progress in terms of female representation on executive leadership teams is visible.

Nevertheless, there is still a long way to go. By pooling our efforts under the 30% Club France, we as investors can help move the lines faster to drive genuine and sustainable change by looking not only at the executive committee but also at how companies build a gender-diverse talent pipeline. The 30% by 2025 is the floor, not the ceiling. The Rixain Law on economic and professional equity for women sets 40% by 2030 as the next frontier. We are willing to do our part!”

Where we are

The 30% Club has come a long way from when it was set up in the UK in 2010.We now span six continents and more than 20 countries. We’re actively expanding into more G20 countries

Find out more

More women rising to the top in France across the SBF 120

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Paris, 16 January 2023. The 30% Club France Investor Group announces today the publication of its second annual report, revealing the latest trends and data on gender diversity at 120 companies part of the SBF 120 Index in France.

Launched in November 2020 by six French asset managers with the objective to promote better gender diversity within the SBF 120 companies’ executive management teams by 2025, the investor group has today 16 members representing over €6 trillion of assets under management, 5 having joined this year.

 

Core activity

 

In its second year of the campaign, the 30% Club France Investor Group conducted a wide variety of activities to engage with corporates, stakeholders, and experts, enabling the Club to develop key observations regarding gender diversity in France:

 

– Compared to last year, companies are both more open to engaging and more prepared. The refusal to engage is more the exception than the rule. However, the 30% Club France Investor Group faced some refusals under the pretext of “we already have 30% of women on our Executive Committee”, although the goal is to look beyond the percentage of women on that committee.

 

– Most companies are convinced of the value of gender diversity. A positive momentum has been emerging in the form of action plans and targeted goals. But these targets, as well as their scopes (i.e., the executive body targeted) and time horizons, lack homogeneity, making it difficult to work towards the goal of 30% female representation at the highest levels of management.

 

– Two opposite trends are coming into play. The COVID-19 crisis had a disproportionately negative impact on women in attracting, retaining, and promoting talent while the enforcement of the Rixain Law (1) acted as an accelerator of awareness for the importance of gender diversity. The issue is more acute in some sectors, particularly industrial and STEM activities, making the competition for attracting female talent more intense. The generalization of remote working may accentuate the recruitment problem for those companies where this will not be possible due to the nature of the jobs. 

 

– Sectors with high female employment rates (i.e. Financial Services and Insurance, Consumers) still have obvious glass ceilings. While there are targets and strategies, these sectors have a long way to go and changed very little compared to last year. 

 

– The notion of gender pay gap was discussed at length. There is some confusion between equal pay gap and gender pay gap. Closing the gender pay gap requires measures to break the glass ceiling through adequate, supportive, and relevant HR policies.

 

Building on a strong foundation

 

Continuing the efforts from 2021, the 30% Club France Investor Group collaborated with policymakers and experts seeking to address the secular question of gender diversity.

 

As chair of the 30% Club France Investor Group for the 2022 engagement season, Marie-Sybille Connan from Allianz Global Investors declares: “the 30% Club France Investor Group has a solid foundation to lead into year three of the group. Our roadmap for 2023 is set and articulated around:

 

– Moving the needle further and continuing to engage with SBF120 constituents

 

– Collaborating with Mercer on their Global Talent Trends survey including gender diversity practices to get more consistent and actionable data

 

– Advocating for the creation of the CEO & Chair pillar to have a complete 30% Club Chapter in France. France is the latest country where an investor group has been established but still needs the CEO & Chair pillar that will be instrumental in driving awareness on gender diversity in the corporate world. We invite any CEO or Chair who wants to act and drive gender equality to reach out to us.”

 

New leadership structure

 

In order to ensure proper onboarding and transfer in knowledge among members, the 30% Club France Investor Group is implementing a co-chairing of the initiative over a two-year mandate.

 

In 2023, Candriam AM will be co-chairing the 30% Club France Investor Group alongside Allianz Global Investor.

 

Theany Bazet, Co-Chair of  the 30% Club France Investor Group  and Fund Manager at Candriam, said: “I am honoured to join Marie-Sybille as Co-Chair to continue building bridges with corporations via active engagement and constructive dialogue together with our community of 16 responsible engaged investors.

 

“It is only by sharing best practices and bringing to light any issues that we can advance gender diversity and drive systemic change.

 

“We will notably thrive to developing the CEO/Chair pillar of the 30% campaign to have in France a full 30% chapter.

 

“Doing so will strengthen the commitment of improving gender diversity in the higher ranks of companies and increase the chances of success.”

 

The full report, including key figures, case studies and the KPIs list, is available here.

ENDS

 

Notes to editors

 

[1] On December 24, 2021, France adopted a new law to promote gender equality in the workplace and in the economy at large. This law, referred to as the Loi Rixain (Rixain Law), after the bill’s main sponsor in the French parliament, Marie-Pierre Rixain, imposes quotas for the representation of women in the leadership positions of large corporations, defined as corporations of 1,000 or more employees. By March 1, 2027, at least 30% of managerial positions in these companies, as well as 30% of the seats on these corporations’ governing bodies, will have to be filled by women. By March 1, 2030, these quotas will be raised to 40% for both managerial positions and governing bodies.

 

About the 30% Club France Investor Group

 

The 30% Club is a global campaign taking action to increase gender diversity at board and senior management levels. In 2010, the campaign was launched in the UK and it now has chapters around the world, with some backed by dedicated investor groups. In November 2020, six investment institutions decided to create an investor group in France.

The 30% Club France Investor Group now includes 16 members representing around €6 trillion AUM. Its focus is to engage with the investee companies and push for at least 30% of executive committee seats to be filled with women by 2025. It also aims to increase disclosure expectations around the topic of gender diversity. The group believes gender balance on boards and senior management encourages better leadership and governance, diversity and inclusion contribute to all-round board performance and, ultimately, increase corporate performance for companies and their shareholders.

 

Contacts

 

Steele & Holt

Servane Taslé
+33 (0)6 66 58 84 28
servane@steeleandholt.com

Anais Miegeville
+33 (0) 6 33 73 85 16 

 

Allianz Global Investors

Marion Leblanc-Wohrer
+33 (0) 1 73 05 77 91 / +33 (0) 6 85 15 74 54
Marion.LeblancWohrer@allianzgi.com

 

Candriam
Isabelle Lieven
+32 2 509 61 69
media_relations@candriam.com

 

Przewodnik Diversity, Equity & Inclusion

Posted on by 30club-Poland

Przedstawiamy Państwu nasz autorski Przewodnik Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI) pełen narzędzi, pomysłów i inspiracji, jak zwiększać różnorodność i jak budować inkluzywną kulturę organizacyjną, przydatny dla firm niezależnie od ich poziomu zaawansowania.

 

Chociaż płeć jest naszym punktem wyjścia, w pełni zdajemy sobie sprawę, że wiek, niepełnosprawność, rasa, pochodzenie etniczne, narodowość, orientacja psychoseksualna, tożsamość płciowa oraz inne przesłanki narażające na zachowania dyskryminacyjne są częścią tej podróży. Dlatego zestaw narzędzi nie skupia się wyłącznie na płci, ale pozwala zbudować holistyczny plan DEI.

 

Przewodnik DEI został zaprojektowany tak, by był źródłem pomysłów i inspiracji dla wszystkich organizacji, bez względu na ich rozmiar czy aktualny poziom zaawansowania w obszarze DEI. Większe organizacje zachęcamy do skorzystania z pełnego Planu działania na rzecz różnorodności, równych szans i włączenia (DEI) – może on pomóc przy diagnozie aktualnej sytuacji oraz identyfikacji obszarów wymagających działań. Firmy mniejsze i te skoncentrowane na konkretnych aspektach DEI (np. przyciąganie czy rozwijanie talentów) mogą przejść do odpowiedniego obszaru w poszukiwaniu pomysłów, najlepszych praktyk i celów.

 

Przewodnik DEI jest dostępny dla wszystkich – nie tylko dla firm współpracujących z 30% Club Poland. Wierzymy, że działania zwiększające różnorodność i włączenie są ważne i korzystne dla całego społeczeństwa i gospodarki. Dlatego Przewodnik został zaprojektowany tak, aby można było z niego swobodnie korzystać i dzielić się jego treścią, ale zawsze przy wskazaniu 30% Club Poland jako źródła.

 

Planujemy regularnie aktualizować Przewodnik. Jeśli masz sugestie, pomysły oraz case studies, które mogą uatrakcyjnić jego treść i przekaz, zapraszamy do kontaktu!

PRZECZYTAJ PRZEWODNIK DEI

NEW: 30% Club Podcast – Episode 2 featuring Penny James & Nimesh Patel

Posted on by Aba Wilson-Sam

More episodes coming soon!
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Coming Soon: 30% Club Podcast

Stay tuned for the new 30% Club podcast, exclusively hosted by Ann Cairns, Chair of 30% Club and Executive Vice Chair of Mastercard. She’ll be meeting some of the leading women.

Read More »
October 11, 2021 No Comments

30% Club MENA: We need more female leaders in the fight against climate change

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Female leadership

As governments and private companies gear up to tackle climate issues and make it part of the agenda of C-Suite executives and leadership teams, improving gender equity in boardrooms and decision-making tables cannot be an afterthought when drafting climate policy or sustainability efforts. 

Women’s leadership is crucial in tackling climate change. More so in the Middle East and North Africa region, where gender imbalance in leadership is significant.

These are the principle points raised in a White Paper commissioned by Arab Petroleum Investments Corporation (APICORP) on gender diversity and sustainability in partnership with the 30% Club MENA, Arabian Business and the American University in Cairo to mark Gender Day at COP27. 

  • Key highlights from the report include:

  • COP27 is a perfect platform to continue pushing for change and inform firms on the need to implement policies that encourage more women to rise to leadership roles and have their voice heard.

  • For now, men are overrepresented on constituted bodies and government delegations, which remains an issue of concern. Equal and meaningful participation and leadership of women is vital to achieve climate goals.

  • Gender equality and women’s leadership can no longer be an afterthought when drafting climate policy. The time to act and accelerate change is now.
 
Read THE REPORT
Deloitte web post graphic (6)

30% Club global chair and Mastercard executive vice chair Ann Cairns said: 

 

“Business is at its best when it brings together all the brightest minds, sharing their thoughts, ideas, and concerns.

“The 30% Club has been campaigning for greater gender diversity in corporate boardrooms since 2010 — a time when there were just 12.5 per cent women serving on the boards of Britain’s biggest companies, the FTSE 100.

“Our argument has always been that diversity of thought in senior leadership makes business better.”

Where we are

The 30% Club has come a long way from when it was set up in the UK in 2010.We now span six continents and more than 20 countries. We’re actively expanding into more G20 countries

Find out more

Ann Cairns pays tribute to Queen Elizabeth II

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London, UK, 09 September 2022: What an amazing woman we’ve lost. A queen who started her reign as a working mum in the 1950s – a role far outside the social norm in Britain at the time.

She also had a status above her husband in what was very much a man’s world.

She worked tirelessly until the end, welcoming another Liz as the new prime minister just days ago.

She gave 70 years to us as our Queen. She lived a life like no other with an incredible sense of duty and discipline.

She is a shining example of leadership at its very best.

Her former prime ministers say she became very knowledgeable and wise as the years went by. She was a great listener and sage counsellor. But many have also remarked on how she retained a great sense of humour. If you doubt it, then think of the James Bond stunt at the 2012 Olympics, which she simply loved!

The last time I saw her in public was at the Platinum jubilee when she came onto the balcony at Buckingham Palace. It was a wonderful moment which lit up the crowd and we all felt it might be the last time.

How sad that it was and how much we will all miss her.

Ann

30% Club pays tribute to former chair Brenda Trenowden

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London, UK, 30 August 2022: It is with great sadness the 30% Club has learned of the death of Brenda Trenowden, CBE, a former chair of our global campaign.

 

She was actively involved with the 30% Club since its launch in 2010 and became chair of the UK chapter in 2015. She was an executive at ANZ at the time.

 

In 2019, while working for PWC UK as a partner, she became global co-chair, alongside Mastercard executive vice chair Ann Cairns. She stepped down from the campaign in 2020 but supported Ann during the transition to the role of sole global chair.  

 

During her involvement with the 30% Club, Brenda launched many successful activities to help promote gender balance in the workplace.

 

She set a deadline for our campaign’s initial aim of 30% women on the boards of the FTSE 100 by 2020. Building on the Club’s initial focus on chairs as members and improving the share of women on boards, she brought scores of new CEO members into the Club to set voluntary targets for the share of women in senior leadership. She also engaged with many more existing members to help achieve the board target and was delighted when it was achieved early in September 2019.

 

Since then, there has been acceleration in female representation at board level and there are now almost 40% women on board in the FTSE 100, according to data from BoardEx. The 30% Club hopes this will reach parity in the next few years.  

 

Another major contribution from Brenda was as a driving force behind the 30% Club’s Strategy Best Practices Working Group. She co-chaired the group from its inception in March 2019 to review how businesses should incorporate a diversity lens into enterprise-wide strategy development for customers, suppliers and other stakeholders.

 

In November 2019, Brenda opened the market at the London Stock Exchange to launch the working group’s report, Are You Missing Millions? The Commercial Imperative for Putting a Gender Lens on your Business, featuring case studies from the group’s participating firms. Since then, Brenda continued to work across multinationals gathering further case studies and best practices to evolve the thinking in this space.

 

Brenda’s work and dedication to promoting gender diversity in business is a rich legacy and was recognised in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List in 2018.

 

Of her appointment to Commander of the British Empire, Brenda said: “I have the privilege of working with talented and committed women and men as part of 30% Club to affect real change. Improving gender balance in the workplace is so important to driving business success and economic prosperity.”

 

Ann Cairns, global chair of the 30% Club, said: “Brenda’s passion for life and commitment to gender diversity will be sorely missed across the 30% Club and the business community globally. She worked tirelessly to open doors for women, and men, throughout her career and was adamant talent should never be held back because of a person’s gender, race or anything else. The 30% Club is thinking of Brenda’s family and friends at this saddest of times.” 

Where Diversity is the FACT, Inclusion is the ACT, why inclusion matters

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Cover image - Diversio press release (6)

By:  Diandra Soobiah, co-chair of the 30% Club UK investor group and head of responsible investment at NEST and Laura McGee, founder and CEO of Diversio.

New analysis by Diversio and the 30% Club makes one thing clear: it’s time to elevate inclusion in the conversation about diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I). If we don’t, UK companies risk losing talent and fail to reach equal representation at the senior-most levels.

The 30% Club has a long-standing goal of driving gender diversity and has recently prioritised racial and ethnic diversity as well. The primary tactic has been advocating for more women and ethnic minorities on boards of directors, in part because these are quantifiable metric and, as the saying goes, “what gets measured gets done”.

With that said, the 30% Club has always emphasised the need for strong talent pipelines and company cultures where all employees have the opportunity to contribute and advance – in other words, equity and inclusion. Until recently, the concept of inclusion has been difficult to measure. But advances in artificial intelligence (in particular, natural language processing) have changed this, with startups like Diversio using AI to measure, track and compare organisational inclusion at scale.

Late last year, Diversio and the 30% Club’s UK Investor Group teamed up to analyse FTSE 100 companies on three DE&I-related metrics: Board and Executive diversity, DE&I programmes and policies, and the prevalence of 27 “inclusion barriers” – measured by applying artificial intelligence to employee reviews. Our goal was to identify top (and bottom) performers, uncover key drivers of bias and exclusion, and enrich the conversation about DE&I.

The results indicated that UK investors’ efforts to increase Board gender diversity appear to be working. But Board diversity is not an end in itself: the idea was always that diverse Boards would influence Executive teams and help create organizational diversity that would in turn improve performance.

Judging from our numbers, that has not occurred.

Read the press release here
Cover image - Diversio press release (2)

Firstly, representation at the very highest level has not trickled down. There have been great strides toward gender diversity at the board level, with an average of 40% of board seats held by women. In contrast, only 14% of board seats are held by visible minorities. Just one-quarter of Executive positions are held by women, and less than 13% are held by visible minorities.

One might argue that it will take time for a strong talent pipeline to result in promotions to senior executive roles. This assumes that workplaces are fair and unbiased with equal opportunities to advance. Unfortunately, judging from our research, this does not appear to be true of many FTSE 100 companies. We believe that an inclusive corporate culture reinforces both diversity and equity by facilitating an environment in which employees can bring their full self to work which, in turn, attracts more diverse talent as this culture becomes embedded across the organisation.

According to Diversio’s dataset, UK employees face meaningful inclusion challenges at work. Among critical employee reviews left about FTSE 100 companies, an astounding 79% cite an inclusion barrier. Too many UK employees face harassment, recourse, exclusion, and lack of mentorship at work. According to them, this is affecting their ability to do their best work and causing them to look elsewhere for employment. (If you need more evidence, this recent study by Deloitte found that 23% of employees have already left their company for a more inclusive one).

Overall, the most commonly cited inclusion barrier centered on inclusive leadership.  For example, employees complained of a “very old school management style which is male, middle-age dominated”, where “domineering/bullying management styles tolerated” and the organisation is “highly political and full of silos”.

Cover image - Diversio press release (7)

The next most prevalent barrier is adequate resourcing, for example: “Profit driven with constant cost cutting at the expense of everything”. Employees mentioned their race and gender affecting their ability to advocate for resources needed to do their jobs effectively.

The third is a lack of fairness in career development, with employees saying things like “[there are] limited promotional opportunities from within [and an] average pay Culture in upper management.” Many employees described an “old boys club” with advancement opportunities given based on who you know and what you look like.

All this begs the question – how should investors engage with companies on this topic, and where should corporate Executives begin?

The first step is to acknowledge inclusion as a material factor in the war for talent. Now more than ever, companies are struggling to retain talent with turnover at an all-time high and employees valuing culture more than ever. Companies that cultivate inclusion will have a significant advantage. Those that get it wrong face attrition and reputational harm.

The next step is to benchmark performance and measure progress. Though achieving gender and ethnic diversity at a Board level is important, if we are to make tangible progress on DE&I we must look to improve inclusivity in the work place. Inclusion can and should be measured. (Diversio has open-sourced its framework here.) Once a baseline is established, executives can start to prioritize interventions and hold leaders accountable for meeting specific targets.

Cover image - Diversio press release (13)

The third step is to continue to engage with non-government organizations and peer groups like the 30% Club and The Network of Networks. DE&I is an evolving and nuanced topic, and every company has some room for improvement. Sharing learnings will help all involved – not just what is working, but also what is not. This requires a healthy dose of humility and openness to learn.

In summary, our goal was to create a baseline for components of DE&I like racial and ethnic diversity, equity and inclusion. Our analysis provides a good foundation for improvement – if executives and investors seize the opportunity. We hope they do.

Black women least likely to be top earners

Posted on by Aba Wilson-Sam

Black women are under-represented and underpaid in executive roles and the least likely to be in the UK’s top 1% of earners. Black women continue to be underrepresented in leadership roles across the UK workforce.

The Inclusion Initiative at LSE, Mastercard and the 30% Club collaborated to undertake interviews with 44 Black women at various stages in their careers. The study was designed to  understand the headwinds and tailwinds that these women experienced throughout their career, with the view that firms interested in nurturing talented women could focus on augmenting the tailwinds that these women experience, as well as reducing their headwinds.

The analysis led to the creation of the TRANSPARENT framework, a new framework to create organisations that are inclusive of Black women in Finance, Professional Services and Big Technology. 

  • Key highlights from the report include:

     

  • 92% of the women we interviewed called for systemic change within their workplaces.
  •  
  • Black women also experience the largest pay gaps when compared to non-Black women and men, as well as Black men (Almeida et al. 2021).

  • The largest gaps are in finance, professional services, and big technology. 70% of Black women in these sectors believe they are being paid less than their comparable peers, with more than 10% of women reporting pay gaps as high as 30%.

     

    From the analysis, the researchers created the TRANSPARENT framework to create organisations that are inclusive of Black women in Finance, Professional Services and Big Technology.

 
Read THE REPORT
Diverse directors
Deloitte web post graphic (6)

30% Club global chair and Mastercard executive vice chair Ann Cairns said: 

 

“We were delighted to partner with the London School of Economics on this research, to better understand the barriers Black women face in the workplace. Anecdotally, we have been hearing that Black women experience the most negative impact when it comes to progression in the workplace, specifically in the areas in which we operate; technology, financial and professional services and we undertook this research to validate that.

This thought-provoking research and the TRANSPARENT framework will be used to inform our own future activities and policies going forward within Mastercard. I hope they will also be of use to many other companies wanting to leverage it and tackle the issue within their organisations.”

The Inclusion Initiative (TII) at the LSE, Mastercard and the 30% Club hope to inspire firms to adopt these actions. Moreover, it is envisioned that companies will evaluate the effectiveness of these actions, making transparent the evaluation results.

This transparency allows firms to learn together ‘what works’ for the fair inclusion of Black women in finance, professional services and big technology. Given that the pay gaps experienced by Black women are the largest in the sectors studied, making Black women the benchmark for real change within organisations is appropriate. 

Training, recruitment, operations, promotions, procurement, strategies, and policies should be evidently inclusive of Black women. The call for greater transparency through reporting, audits and monitoring of the progress of Black women will help ensure firms are on track.

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Where we are

The 30% Club has come a long way from when it was set up in the UK in 2010.We now span six continents and more than 20 countries. We’re actively expanding into more G20 countries

Find out more
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