De Beers Group has extended its partnership with UN Women for five more years as it works to achieve gender parity across its workforce by 2030.
The company first partnered with UN Women in 2017, with the goal of increasing female representation in its workforce. Its first milestone was to increase the number of women in senior leadership positions.
By 2020, the female appointment rate increased from 22 percent to 40 percent, with the number of women in senior leadership positions overall rising from 17 percent to 30 percent.
Now, De Beers said it is focusing on achieving gender parity across its entire workforce. (The company uses the International Women’s Forum definition of gender parity, which is anywhere from 40 to 60 percent.)
It’s a member of the newly formed HeForShe Alliance, which brings together global leaders from government, corporations and civil society to develop and share solutions to gender equality’s biggest challenges.
Within the alliance, De Beers is focused specifically on addressing barriers to entry in the workforce for women, and creating a more diverse STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) talent pool, where women have been underrepresented historically.
In the next five years, De Beers said it will enhance its talent development and succession programs, focus on training to encourage dialogue and challenge stereotypes, review its progress regularly, and help to increase access to STEM careers and education.
De Beers Group CEO and UN Women HeForShe Champion Bruce Cleaver said in a press release: “Achieving gender parity across our workforce is a business-critical priority for De Beers Group—not only is it the right thing to do, it’s the only way we will access the full talent pool and achieve our full potential.
“Now more than ever we have a societal imperative to keep working toward gender equality, as the COVID-19 pandemic has brought new challenges and we must work hard for sustainable change.”
Senior Vice President, Sustainable Impact, Katie Fergusson, added: “We’ve made really meaningful progress on increasing the representation of women in leadership roles in our business during the past three years, but now we want to accelerate this momentum with a particular focus on technical roles, where women remain underrepresented globally.”
There’s more to De Beers commitment to UN Women.
Kemmonye Bakupi, a senior diamond sorter, is seen here analyzing rough diamonds with a loupe in Botswana. De Beers Group is outlining its plan to increase female representation in its workforce by 2030. © De Beers.
