Opinion: In the pursuit of gender equality

In this opinion piece, De Beers Group CEO Bruce Cleaver outlines the diamond miner's approach to creating a more inclusive world for all.

For more than a century, International Women's Day has been celebrated annually on March 8 to recognise the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women around the world. The day also marks a call to action for accelerating gender parity.

It provides an opportunity for all of us to celebrate the progress that has been made globally towards greater gender equality, to reflect on how much further as a society we have to go and to consider what role – both individually and as organisations – we will play in the pursuit of equality of opportunity for all.

When I became CEO of De Beers Group in 2016, I committed to being bolder in the advancement of women and girls because I firmly believe that the world can become a better place if everyone – women and men – has the opportunity to stand on a level playing field.

It is a commitment that I have driven across the company, not only because I believe this is the right thing to do to help create a fairer world, but also because it is the right thing to do for our business.

Repeatedly, research has shown that diverse teams enable a better understanding of customers and a more productive, innovative and resilient business, while investing in women and girls also has an exponential impact on socioeconomic development.

It is also an intuitive area for De Beers Group to take a stand, with more than 90% of our consumers being women, and it is an area where we have the potential to make a real difference within our partner countries, through the link between women’s advancement and poverty reduction.

With this in mind, we agreed that, to support progress towards achieving the United Nations' (UN's) Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 5 on gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls, we needed to be proactive and to accelerate our actions.

We wanted to encourage a deeper dialogue around inclusion and diversity, and make the journey itself inclusive of everyone within our business. In September 2017, De Beers Group committed to UN Women’s HeForShe movement, and I personally became a HeForShe Thematic Champion.

HeForShe provides a platform for all genders to stand shoulder to shoulder, to work towards solutions for gender equality and to commit to take action for the benefit of everyone. As a HeForShe partner, De Beers Group made a number of commitments.

The first was to achieve parity in the appointment of women and men into senior leadership by 2020. Although we still have a long way to go, I am pleased to say that one significant result of our work so far has been that the appointment rate for women into senior roles has already doubled and that we are on track to meeting our commitment.

The second was to invest in women micro-entrepreneurs and science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) students in our diamond producing partner countries of Botswana, Canada, Namibia and South Africa.

To date, we have launched micro-entrepreneur training programmes in South Africa and Namibia, and have completed baseline studies in Botswana ahead of a launch later this year. By the end of 2020, we aim to have trained more than 1 200 women entrepreneurs across Southern Africa and, in Canada, to have sponsored more than 40 university scholarships with a focus on supporting young indigenous women to study STEM subjects.

Finally, we committed to ensuring our consumer brands begin to serve as a positive force for the promotion of gender equality through our marketing campaigns, something we are underpinning with recently launched inclusive marketing guidelines for our teams producing consumer-facing content.

I know that a more inclusive and diverse culture within De Beers Group is not something we can achieve overnight, but we are making progress.

We have launched a number of internal initiatives to ensure equal opportunities for men and women to advance and thrive, including identifying gender champions and establishing employee-led working groups across the business; launching an executive committee-led reciprocal mentoring programme; and running pilot workshops to engage male and female employees on gender equality. 

While we are still early in our journey, we are starting to feel and see the positive impacts of our commitments – changes that are long overdue. I encourage everyone who wants to be a part of this journey to show their commitment by signing up for HeForShe at www.heforshe.org/en/commit/debeers.

It is only by moving forward together that can we create a fairer and more inclusive world for all.