Today (8 March) is International Women's Day, and to mark this year's occasion, ESM: European Supermarket Magazine has reached out to the European grocery retail trade to discover what programmes are in place to ensure women can achieve executive-level positions in the industry.
We asked a number of leading retailers two questions: a) whether they think that women are underrepresented at senior executive level in the industry, and b) what they are doing to get more women onto their executive and management boards.
Gender Diversity
Many of the retailers we spoke to said that gender representation remains an issue in the industry, and that they are working to resolve this.
Petra Albuschus, chief HR officer of ICA Gruppen, said diversity is "high on the agenda" at the Swedish retail group.
"We know that women are underrepresented in executive positions in the retail and consumer goods industries in general, and that is something that we all need to work on," she said.
She noted that currently 40% of the company's executives are female, and the retailer recently introduced a new initiative, 'ICA 50/50', which aims to promote more female managers to leadership positions.
Both ICA and Germany's Metro AG cited the publication last year's gender diversity scorecard by the LEAD Network (Leading Executives Advancing Diversity), which measured the number of women holding executive positions in the retail and consumer goods industries in Europe.
"The recent gender scorecard done by LEAD confirms that there is long way to go in the retail industry in order to reach gender parity," Veronika Pountcheva, Metro's senior vice president for corporate responsibility, told ESM.
"The 2017 study among the C Suite of 13 European retailers confirmed that there is a gap in the senior management level which the retail industry wants to work on."
For this year's International Women's Day, the German retailer announced the launch of its 'Own Business Girl' campaign to promote female entrepreneurship, offering €2,000 of starting capital to every girl born in Düsseldorf today.
"There are still too many barriers that keep women from realising their business ideas," said Heiko Hutmacher, chief human resources officer at Metro AG. "With our campaign we want to motivate the next generation of female entrepreneurs."
Elsewhere, Ahold Delhaize added that diversity and inclusion as a whole is 'critical' for its organisation, and although it has made incremental progress to improve representation in senior positions over the past two years, there is still more work to be done.
"As a large international retailer, we have a responsibility to set a high standard," a representative from the company told ESM.
Equal Representation
Some retailers, however, are more positive about the position of women in their organisations.
Spain's Eroski said that gender equality is applied in all its policies to guarantee equal opportunities for its employees.
The retailer highlighted that its board of directors is comprised of three women and three men, and that women make up 68% of managerial positions in the company.
Meanwhile, Russian retailer Dixy Group says that it does not think there is an issue when it comes to female representation in the industry.
"In our company, many women occupy top positions," a Dixy representative told ESM. "We create equal opportunities for men and women to develop their careers."
Gender Pay Gap
The topic of gender representation is currently front and centre for many UK retailers, ahead of a government deadline next month, which requires all organisations in the country with over 250 employees to publish data on their gender pay and bonus gaps.
The gender pay gap measures the difference between men and women's earnings across a business by expressing women's pay as a percentage of men's pay. The current UK average is 17.4%, according to the Office of National Statistics.
Marks & Spencer revealed last week that its average pay gap is currently 12.3%, with the disparity arising from the lack of women in senior positions. Although 72% of the retailer's workforce are women, only 42.7% of senior managers are female, and 30% of the group's board is female.
Looking ahead, M&S plans to reduce its non-demographic gender pay gap in the UK by at least 10% by 2020, and by 25% by 2025. It also aims to have 50% female representation on its board by 2022.
"Our customers come from a wide range of backgrounds, and in order for us to understand them, our workforce needs to reflect them," said Simmone Haywood, head of talent at M&S. "Ensuring we are inclusive and having a diverse workforce is vital to our success."
A number of other major retailers have also published their average gender pay gap figures, including Tesco (12%), Asda (12.5%), and Aldi (11.5%).
The consensus from these companies seems to be that although the retail industry is performing better than the national average, there is still more work to be done, especially with regards to having higher numbers of women occupying senior leadership positions.
© 2018 European Supermarket Magazine – your source for the latest retail news. Article by Sarah Harford. Click subscribe to sign up to ESM: The European Supermarket Magazine.
