The Gender Equality Project - What Gets Measured, Gets Done

Written by Jan Jaben-Eilon Wednesday, January 25 2012

At last year’s World Economic Forum a Swiss-based foundation announced a ground-breaking assessment methodology for gender equality in the workplace. Called the Gender Equality Project, it was expected to serve as a basis for the first global certification system and standard in gender equality.

The Gender Equality Project was co-founded by Aniela Unguresan and Nicole Schwab, daughter of World Economic Forum founder Peter Schwab. According to Unguresan, the methodology was designed to provide a clear picture of a company’s progress on gender equality as measured in terms of equal pay for equivalent work, recruitment and promotion, training and mentoring, work-life balance and the company culture.

The methodology provides a roadmap for mulitnational organizations to chart their progress as they strive to accelerate the pace of change toward gender equality.

In 2011, The Gender Equality Project launched an online self-assessment tool. It provides companies with a detailed understanding of their progress both in terms of gender equality outcomes and related to the implementation of key drivers of change in this area. The organization also launched a community of companies committed to fostering gender equality and engaged in applying the self-assessment tool, benchmarking against their peers anonymously and sharing best practices.

Corporations have talked about gender equality in the workplace for years, but little has actually been accomplished. According to Unguresan, it is often said that what gets measured, gets done.

In each of the five areas on which the assessment tool focuses, The Gender Equality Project seeks to capture not only outcomes, but also the policies and practices that have proven to be effective in fostering equal opportunities between men and women in the workplace. Companies are scored on these quantitative and qualitative measures.

According to a study published by the World Economic Forum just over a year ago, 72 percent of the companies surveyed, covering the largest companies in 20 OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries, reported that they did not monitor the potential salary gaps between women and men in their companies. Similarly, 12 percent of those companies did not measure how many women occupy their entry-level management positions.

Unguresan explained that there are three major components of the certification process. The first is the assessment methodology; the second is the standard that should be met for a company to be certified; and the actual certification process, which will be conducted by a third party auditor.

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Check out these other stories on gender parity:

Women Flexing Leadership Muscles

2011 Global Gender Balance Scorecard

Out with Command and Control Leadership

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Jan Jaben-Eilon was a founding staff writer of the Atlanta Business Chronicle. Since then, she has been the international editor of Advertising Age magazine and has written for such publications as The New York Times, International Herald Tribune, Washington Journalism Review, and Consumer Reports. She is the author of soon-to-be-published (There is) Life After Cancer. Jan and her husband have homes in Atlanta and Jerusalem.