What if you discovered that there were no women on the executive board of the company that makes your favorite nail polish (seriously, none), or that your go-to grocery with the friendly cashier didn’t have any women in leadership positions? If your favorite brand didn’t care about gender equality, would you still choose to be a loyal customer?
It comes down to how important gender equality is to you.
The fastest way to identify whether your favorite brands endorse and support diversity on their boards and executive teams is through a new website launched by Ledbetter, a research group that runs a database and application that showcases the number of women in leadership positions at the world’s top consumer brands and companies.
The site features the LedBetter Gender Equality Index, a list that reveals a company’s stats, rankings, and scores with regard to the number of women in leadership roles. The site was created to empower and educate consumers, policymakers, leaders, journalists, and others about the companies they support and cover, and improve the public’s understanding of which companies promote gender equality in leadership — and which do not.
Tweet: The true test to see how committed you really are to gender equality.
Below are a couple of highlights that might surprise you:
- H&M leads the list with 58 percent representation of women on its board and 41 percent on its executive team.
- Ann Taylor, a company that caters specifically to women, has no women represented on their executive team; however, the company’s board is made up of 40 percent women.
Which company sits at the bottom of the list? Samsung, with zero women represented on its board and executive team.
In the United States, women account for 85 percent of all consumer purchasing decisions. It only makes sense that an organization’s leadership reflects the marketplace, as well as the consumers who make the majority of the purchasing decisions.
In fact, women account for 85% of overall consumer spending, including everything from autos to healthcare:
Cars 65%, Computers 66%, Healthcare 80%, New Homes 91%, Food/Groceries 93%
One thing most of us can agree on is that money talks. In fact, it speaks louder and gets more attention than most forms of activism. What if the most effective form of activism for gender equality is letting your dollar speak for you?
Knowledge is power, and information on your favorite brands’ diversity numbers is a click away. So the question is, how willing are you to give up comfort and convenience to support companies that support gender equality?
