One of the many positive impacts of the #MeToo conversation has been the focus on gender inequality in the workplace. Besides a handful of college majors where women earn more than men, by and large, the fact remains: on average, women earn more degrees than men and make up nearly half the labor force, and yet working women still earn less than men do (88 cents to $1 in the US) and women are less represented in management positions.
While the public conversation has changed a bit regarding this and many companies have signed public pledges to improve hiring, pay, retention and promotion of women employees, very few companies are actually close to gender parity among employees. And of course, there are the naysayers!
While companies such as Glassdoor and Pew Research regularly publish data regarding this topic, there’s still very little transparency into bigger companies and their performance on gender, with regard to hiring, pay, and other relevant factors. OpenInvest, a digital investment advisor for socially responsible investing, analyzed the S&P 500 (Standard & Poor’s 500) to find the best and worst companies for women in the workplace.
Their findings about the companies with the most and least gender parity, are a good starting point if you’re looking to apply to any of them.
The 6 companies that are the closest to gender parity are (in no particular order):
- Hewlett Packard Enterprise
- HP Inc
- Iron Mountain Inc
- Avery Dennison Corp
- Lockheed Martin
- Medtronic PLC
These companies are doing a bunch of things correctly, including:
- Employing women at all levels of the organization.
- Committed to improving their ratios (at least 20% of employees, managers, executives, and board members are women).
- No major public sex discrimination or harassment cases in the last 18 months.
- Set policies and targets for diversity among employees.
The 6 companies with the worst track record for women employees are:
- McDonald’s
- American Airlines
- Dollar General
- Walmart
- Twenty-First Century Fox
It’s not a surprising list – McDonald’s, American Airlines, Dollar General and Walmart have all faced repeated allegations of gender bias and/or sex discrimination in the last 18 months. And Twenty-First Century Fox settled a $90M sexual harassment case in late 2017 – unsurprisingly, its executive suite and board of directors is all-male, except for one woman!
The above lists specifically apply to the US. We’d love to see a similar list of the best and worst in an Australian context.