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De Beers extends women empowerment initiative in drive for equality

3rd June 2021

By: Donna Slater

Features Deputy Editor and Chief Photographer

     

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On International Women’s Day (March 8), diamond miner De Beers Group extended its global partnership with United Nations (UN) Women for a further five years, thereby joining the newly-formed HeForShe Alliance and committing the company to increasing representation of women in technical and leadership roles.

De Beers Group has been a UN Women partner since 2017 when it announced its initial commitment to accelerate the advancement of women across its organisation by achieving parity in the appointment of women and men into senior leadership by 2020.

Having achieved this, with the appointment rate having increased from 22% to 40% over the three-year period, De Beers is now focused on achieving gender parity across its full workforce.

These steps were taken as the miner works towards achieving gender parity across its workforce by 2030 as part of its “building forever” sustainability goals.

The HeForShe Alliance brings together leaders from across government, the corporate world and civil society to develop the largest set of scalable and sharable solutions for pressing gender equality challenges.

De Beers’ five-year commitment is focused on overcoming some of the historic barriers to women entering and advancing in the fields of science and technology, as well as fostering a more diverse talent pipeline within its business.

The commitment will also enhance De Beers’ talent development and succession programmes, extend training and awareness activities to encourage dialogue and challenge stereotypes, conduct regular reviews based on metrics and ongoing feedback, and enable access to science, technology, engineering and mathematics careers and education.

Since 2017, the representation of women in senior leadership overall within De Beers increased from 17% to 30%.

KEY FOCUS

De Beers Group CEO and UN Women HeForShe champion Bruce Cleaver says that achieving gender parity across the company’s workforce is a business-critical priority for De Beers.

“Not only is it the right thing to do, it is the only way we will access the full talent pool and achieve our full potential. Now more than ever we have a societal imperative to keep working toward gender equality, as the Covid-19 pandemic has brought new challenges and we must work hard for sustainable change.”

HeForShe global head Edward Wageni says the organisation is excited to continue and deepen its partnership with De Beers and is grateful for Cleaver’s ongoing commitment to address some of the current and most pressing gender issues.

“We are positive that his leadership on this topic will inspire others to also take action.”

De Beers sustainable impact senior VP Katie Fergusson, meanwhile, says the company has made “really meaningful progress” on increasing the representation of women in leadership roles in its business during the past three years.

“But now we want to accelerate this momentum with a particular focus on technical roles, where women remain underrepresented globally.”

As part of the extended partnership, De Beers will also invest an additional $3-million to extend the Accelerating Women-Owned Micro-Enterprises programme in Southern Africa, which was launched in 2017 in partnership with UN Women.

The programme has provided tailored business training and mentorship to more than 1 000 women entrepreneurs in Botswana, Namibia and South Africa to date, as well as qualifying over 50 local trainers to ensure the programme’s sustainable future.

As part of its Building Forever 2030 Goals, De Beers has committed to supporting 10 000 women micro-entrepreneurs by 2030.

The additional funding builds on the $3-million De Beers has already committed, and will focus on the next three years, where the priority will be to continue expanding the programme’s reach and impact, particularly in light of the Covid-19 pandemic, which slowed progress throughout 2020.

“Our commitments announced today to continue our journey toward gender parity in our workforce and to invest an additional $3-million to continue supporting women entrepreneurs in our host countries in Southern Africa, are a further demonstration of our resolve to be a positive force for progress and for change.

“We look forward to continuing to work with UN Women and our fellow HeForShe Alliance peers to share learnings, scale impact and accelerate progress over the next five years,” Cleaver says.

Edited by Chanel de Bruyn
Creamer Media Senior Deputy Editor Online

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