L’Oréal doing it for the women: gender equality award win

28-Jun-2017 - Last updated on 29-Jun-2017 at 11:16 GMT

In a sign that the major global employer is working towards a strong profile on internal gender equality, L’Oréal has received Equileap’s award for the issue.

The beauty giant secured the top spot in Equileap’s 2017 Global Gender Equality ranking, picked out from over 3000 companies across 23 countries.

Equileap is an organisation that uses investments, grants and knowledge to drive gender equality in hte workplace, and its ranking rates companies across 19 criteria relating to equality. These include remuneration, leadership opportunities, balance between work and private life, and paid parental leave.

The information was drawn from public sources and manually researched in collaboration with the Sustainable Finance Group of Maastricht University.

This is not the first organisation to acknowledge L’Oréal is doing well on equality: the beauty player has also received the GEEIS (Gender Equality European and International Standard) certification in 23 countries and the EDGE (The Global Business Certification Standard for Gender Equality) certifications in 7 countries.

‘Continuous effort’

Jean-Claude Le Grand, L’Oréal Senior VP Talent Development and Chief Diversity Officer, received the award at a ceremony held in Amsterdam. He stated that it comes as recognition not only of recent progress, but of a longer term focus by L’Oréal on the issue of internal equality.

“This recognition makes us very proud. It is the result of over 10 years of continuous efforts and a firm conviction that gender equality is a strategic lever to increase wellbeing at work, fuel creativity and innovation, and boost performance and growth,” the diversity leader said.

“Being recognized as the champion of gender equality among over 3000 companies worldwide is a great honor and an encouragement to go further.”

Not just right, smart

Equileap’s founder is very clear on the business sense that offering a gender equal workplace, which she pits as just as important as ethical considerations.

“Gender diversity is not only the right thing to do, it is also the smart thing to do, with a significant number of research papers indicating that it tends to lead to higher returns and lower risk,” says Diana van Maasdijk, co-founder and CEO of the organisation.

“Today, Equileap honors L’Oréal with an award as the number one company in its gender equality ranking. I hope that this recognition encourages L’Oréal and other companies to go further to speed up the achievements of gender equality worldwide.”