L’Oréal received the Grand Prize for Gender Diversity in the CAC 40 Category, as well as the Gender Diversity Award in the Consumer Goods and Services category, at the 1st Gender Diversity Awards, held on 30 January at the Palais Bourbon by the Ethics & Boards Observatory and the Institut du Capitalisme Responsable (Institute for Responsible Capitalism).

Gender diversity is a strategic priority for L’Oréal

Jean-Paul Agon

Jean-Paul Agon, Chairman and CEO of L’Oréal, said: “Gender diversity is a strategic priority for our group as it is a source of creativity, innovation and performance. These two awards recognise L’Oréal’s long-standing commitment to equality between men and women at all levels of the company. They encourage us to further accelerate our efforts to advance gender diversity in our company and in society.”

The inauguration of the Gender Diversity in Business Index, or Zimmermann Index

Marie-Jo Zimmermann

The Awards ceremony was held as part of the inauguration of the Gender Diversity in Business Index, or Zimmermann Index, under the patronage of Marie-Jo Zimmermann, Deputy of the French National Assembly. This new index, directly inspired by the Copé-Zimmermann Law, will create an independent and objective annual measurement of gender diversity of SBF 120 companies’ Boards and executives.

The index is structured around 6 business sectors based on the MSCI (Modern Index Strategy Indexes) classification, and will be extended to all of Europe in 2018. The Zimmermann index takes three areas into account:

1) Board gender diversity

2) Gender diversity of the executive management committees

3) women’s representation within the company.

The L’Oréal Group has a long-standing commitment to workplace gender equality

In the L’Oréal Group, women represent 70% of the company’s 89,331 employees worldwide, 33.3% of the Group’s Executive Committee and 46% of the Board of Directors (7 out of 15 members) (as of 31/12/2016).

The L’Oréal Group has a long-standing commitment to workplace gender equality, and aims to ensure equal job classifications and pay for equal skills. In France, where the Group has worked with the French national institute for demographic studies (INED) to analyse the pay gap since 2007, the gender-based pay gap on a like-for-like basis was under 4% in 2015 for management and non-existent for other categories of employees.

In recognition of its progress on workplace gender equality, L’Oréal has received both the GEEIS (Gender Equality European and International Standard) and EDGE (The Global Business Certification Standard for Gender Equality) certifications in 30 countries.