De Beers Group has extended its global partnership with UN Women for a further five years.
“Joining the newly-formed HeForShe Alliance, De Beers Group commits to increasing the representation of women in technical and leadership roles within its business, as it works towards achieving gender parity across its workforce by 2030 as part of its Building Forever sustainability goals,” the company said in a statement.
“The five-year commitment is focused on overcoming some of the historic barriers to women’s advancement in science and technology. De Beers Group will work to enhance talent development and succession programmes, extending training and awareness activities to encourage dialogue and challenge stereotypes, conducting regular reviews based on metrics and ongoing feedback, and enabling access to STEM careers and education,” the statement added.
Bruce Cleaver, CEO, De Beers Group and UN Women HeForShe Champion, said: “We are thrilled to be extending our partnership with UN Women for another five years and to be joining the newly-formed HeForShe Alliance. 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 a comprehensive range of talent 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 resulted in new challenges to address.”
Katie Fergusson, Senior Vice President, Sustainable Impact, De Beers Group, said: “We’ve made 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 particular focus on technical roles, where women remain underrepresented globally.”
As part of the partnership, De Beers Group will invest an additional US$3 million to extend the AWOME (Accelerating Women-Owned Micro-Enterprises) programme in southern Africa, building on the $3 million funding the Group had already committed to support women and girls in its producer partner countries.
“Our commitments announced today to continue our journey towards gender parity in our workforce and to invest an additional $3 million to continue supporting women entrepreneurs in our host countries in southern Africa are further demonstration of our resolve to be a positive force for progress. We look forward to continuing to work with UN Women and our fellow HeForShe Alliance peers to share learnings, scale impact and accelerate progress over the next five years.” Mr Cleaver said.
Arya has been a part of the Content & Research Team at Hrnxt.com. She is a keen observer of economic developments, emerging businesses, people in business and keeps a tab on latest happenings in the business environment.