Making great strides in support of the UN’s HeForShe movement
When UN Women launched HeForShe in late 2014, PwC was quick to support the movement, becoming one of the first of 10 businesses worldwide to sign on as a HeForShe IMPACT champion – a position also held by 10 heads of government and 10 university presidents.
HeForShe aims to mobilise one billion men and boys in support of gender equality. When PwC agreed to champion the movement globally, we committed to take three strategic actions to advance gender equality in the workplace. In FY 2017 we made great strides on all three.
PwC's first action was to work together to show our commitment to change, and get 80,000 PwC men to make the HeForShe commitment. By the end of September, over 66,000 PwC partners and staff had committed to HeForShe, including more than 30,900 PwC men, and a major drive for more male commitments is planned for FY 2018. This year we’ve also launched our HeForShe Ally network, with 80 male PwC members advocating for gender equality in 10 countries.
Our second action was to engage men with HeForShe through an innovative training programme. We launched the course called Building gender IQ in seven languages in September 2016, and it’s already been completed by 8,000 employees in 105 countries. The training is so effective that it’s also being used by the UN and several large corporations.
“Taking this course is an eye opener that broadens the stereotypical ways people usually look at gender. We see this course as a way to spark new conversations, whether in corporate boardrooms or student classrooms or in the houses of governments.”
Our third action is advancing women in leadership in PwC's organisation – and here we’ve made great progress. Using people data from firms across PwC's network, we've recently completed PwC's fourth annual global evaluation of PwC's leadership and workforce pipeline at PwC. This forms a unique ‘Inclusion Index’ that measures the progression of diversity and inclusion in each territory, providing a basis for tailored actions to increase female progression.
Globally, female partner admissions at PwC have increased from 23% in 2013 to 27% in 2017, and female representation in the partnership has gradually increased from 17% in 2013 to 19% this year. We’ve also achieved gender balance on our Global Leadership Team. See our diversity and inclusion progress.
This September, HeForShe celebrated its third anniversary and PwC Global Chairman Bob Moritz joined heads of state, global CEOs and university presidents from across the world, providing remarks at the New York anniversary event. Watch a recording of the livestream.
“The initiative’s dynamism springs from its unique blend of cultural and tactical change. The cultural space is often quite hard to measure, but HeForShe is also very tactical. The UN holds 30 of the world’s most powerful men to 90 measurable commitments for gender equality. The combination of action and awareness makes this initiative distinctly impactful.”
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