The Bloomberg Gender-Equality Index: Transparency for a New Norm

By Kiersten Barnet, Deputy Chief of Staff to the Chairman, Bloomberg LP
Mar 12, 2018 5:25 PM ET

Originally posted on bloomberg.com

Anyone who watched this year’s Academy Awards knows that the real leading lady of the evening was gender equality. There were a lot of strong statements on Sunday, but one that has stuck with me was Jane Fonda’s confident declaration that “what was once considered groundbreaking is now the norm.”

She’s right. There is a new norm for gender equality and it’s based on transparency.

At Bloomberg transparency is one of our founding principles. We are bringing transparency to markets through access to information – and this includes gender equality data.

Since 2016 Bloomberg has provided investors with standardized, comparable social data that simply isn’t available in public filings through its first-of-its-kind Gender-Equality Index (GEI). This is a collaborative process. We work directly with companies to learn about what they are doing to move women through the pipeline, support the needs of working families, and support diverse customer bases and the communities in which they operate.

The essence of the Gender-Equality Index is that the information it provides helps to create more trust in the investment community. The link between transparency and trust as it relates to gender equality in the workplace was also the key theme of a panel I participated in this week.

Click here to read the full story. 

Click here to read more about the GEI.