Sustainability progress report 2017 - 2020

Key Initiatives

Advocating Diversity & Gender Parity

Diversity and equal opportunity are key to Kering’s culture. That’s why we offer all our employees a working environment that is inclusive, open and stimulating. With nearly 35,000 employees around the globe, diversity is part and parcel of every day life at Kering.

Across our Group, we believe that an inclusive company culture provides us with a rich source of creation and innovation. So, in 2004, Kering became a pioneer for workplace diversity in France as we committed to a Group-wide inclusive hiring policy, engaging every employee to support diversity and condemning all forms of workplace discrimination.

That’s not all. With our 2025 sustainability strategy and long-term vision, the Group introduced a series of commitments to achieve gender parity, promoting equal opportunities for men and women at every level of the Group and launching a global mentoring program for women.

Achieve gender parity at all levels.
55%

Women in managerial positions

in 2019
63%

Of the total workforce

in 2019
33%

of our Executive Committee members

in 2019
60%

of our Directors

in 2019

…making Kering one of the CAC 40 companies with the highest proportion of women in senior management positions.

Here are some achievements and steps in the right direction we’ve made:

  • To evaluate effectiveness of our gender equality over recent years and identify new ways of thinking for the future, we are engaged in the GEEIS (Gender Equality European & International Standard) certification process. GEEIS is the leading support fund for gender equality at work in Europe and worldwide and is based on rigorous evaluation methodology audited by Bureau Veritas. So, in 2016, the Kering Corporate structures in France, Italy and the United Kingdom, as well as the Group’s overall diversity policy, were reviewed in the light of this global standard. Auditing our management tools, human resources and managerial practices and the overall impact of gender equality policies, we received the GEEIS label in September 2016, reaffirming our commitment to advocating a shared vision of workplace equality within the Group. And we didn’t stop there. An interim audit was followed up in June 2018, once again recognizing the Group’s commitment to gender equality and enabling three of the audited entities (Group, Corporate France and Corporate United Kingdom) to move up the GEEIS scale.
  • In 2019, we created a Chief Diversity, Inclusion and Talent Officer role, which was a new stage in our determination to support of diversity. The appointment highlighted our belief that diversity (gender, culture, origin, sexual orientation, identity or disability) is both valuable and a source of collective intelligence. A number of our Houses have also created similar roles.
  • In 2018, Kering ranked 7th out of 7,000 international companies in the Thomson Reuters Diversity & Inclusion Index (D&I) and among the top 3 in the 2018 Equileap ranking, which recognizes companies that lead the way in achieving gender equality.
  • In November 2018, we won the “Most Feminine Board of Directors” award in the European Gender Diversity Index published by the European Women on Boards (EWoB) and Ethics & Boards organizations.
  • The Group is in the Bloomberg Gender Equality Index, which was launched in 2018 as the world’s first cross-industry index for companies with the best performance in gender diversity and equality.
  • Kering ranked 10th out of 7,000 companies in the Refinitiv Diversity & Inclusion Index in 2019.
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