Washington – Today, in recognition of International Women’s Day and Women’s History Month, Business Roundtable and the Women Business Collaborative (WBC) partnered to highlight the progress companies have made and their future commitments to advance gender equity and diversity.
“Business Roundtable CEOs welcome the opportunity to team up with the Women Business Collaborative (WBC) to put a spotlight on the importance of gender equity and diversity and commit to continued efforts to make great strides,” said Business Roundtable Chair Mary Barra, Chair and CEO of General Motors. “America’s workforce, from the entry level to the C-Suite, should reflect the great diversity of our country. Large employers are leading efforts in their companies and industries to promote greater inclusion and close gender equity gaps. Through these actions, we can broaden economic opportunity and upward mobility across America.”
In June 2021, Business Roundtable launched an initiative to promote increased transparency of corporate diversity by companies voluntarily disclosing their diversity metrics. To date, over 100 Roundtable member companies are participating in this commitment to transparency. Business Roundtable has called on U.S. public companies to support, as a leading practice, voluntary public disclosure of key diversity metrics at least annually, including board diversity, senior executive diversity, workforce diversity and supplier diversity.
As unjustified disparities in compensation are one of the drivers of gender- and race-based wealth and income inequality, the Roundtable has also called on companies to conduct periodic pay equity reviews and regular pay equity analyses and to implement processes to review and close gaps.
“Business Roundtable companies are creating opportunities for careers for people of all backgrounds across our economy. Diversity is about giving people opportunity. Economic opportunity will make more change in our country than any other policy that we can implement, and it’s the right thing to do,” said Scott Kirby, CEO of United Airlines and Chair of the Business Roundtable Education and Workforce Committee. “We have a moral imperative and a business imperative to ensure workforce diversity and gender equity. Every employee should have a fair shot at climbing the career ladder.”
The Roundtable is proud to support the mission of the WBC, the leading alliance in the U.S. working to advance equal position, pay and power for all women in business. The WBC brings together over 67+ women business organizations and more than 500 individual senior executives, corporations, entrepreneurs and business leaders.
WBC CEO Edie Fraser shares, “We are proud to salute our partnership with Business Roundtable and its leaders such as Mary Barra, Chair of the Roundtable and one of our WBC Gender and Diversity CEO awardees. We commend the CEOs of BRT for their championship and voluntary commitment to disclose important data about the diversity of their boards, leadership, workforce and suppliers.”
Last fall, WBC released its “Women CEOs in America Report,” which showed 8.2% of Fortune 500 CEOs are women, a total of 41 in 2021. The updated 2022 “Women CEOs in America Report,” produced by WBC with partners Ascend, C200 and Catalyst, will be released at the September WBC Annual Summit. WBC is similarly working on a fall 2022 “Women Corporate Technology Executives Report,” which will highlight the leading technology executive roles which drive profitable, purposeful and inclusive business.
To propel women forward, WBC collaborates with its organizational partners and champions to attain immediate and long-term results around Nine Action Initiatives, including more women CEOs, in the C-Suite and on boards, a demand for gender and pay parity and increasing capital for women entrepreneurs, among others.
WBC’s January 2022 “Women Joining Public Boards Report” shows that women made up 40% of board appointments to public companies in the month of January, with 30% identifying as diverse. The average for the past year has been 42% women joining boards and more than 50% first-time board members, with self-declared diversity averaging 30%.
For more information on Business Roundtable Diversity and Inclusion efforts, click here.
For more information on the Women Business Collaborative, click here.