Gender Diversity Engagement Network (GDEN)
Gender Diversity Engagement Network GDEN initiative intends to be a matching platform for investors wishing to collectively engage with companies on gender diversity. It facilitates collaboration among institutional investors to drive positive outcomes in gender diversity within investee companies. Please refer to the FAQ and Terms of Reference.
Membership of the GDEN is restricted to PRI Signatories only. To join the GDEN, an investor needs to provide their email and contact details. This information will be used to facilitate communication and coordination within the initiative. Once the investor provides their email, Generali ("Coordinator") will contact them to welcome them to the initiative and to request their list of companies they wish to engage with
Investors that participate to the initiative share with the Coordinator the list of companies that they wish to engage collectively and further information to facilitate the formation of the engagement group.
For each engagement focus company, a company engagement group is established by the Coordinator on the basis of the above information.
The engagement groups are free to organize their governance. Ideally, they are made up of a Lead or two Co-Lead Investors, and Collaborating Investors. All investors within each engagement group are responsible for delivering the engagement strategy for each company and are responsible for engaging with companies on the expectations.
The objective of the Initiative is to advance gender diversity in investee companies through investor stewardship.
This Initiative primarily seeks change through investors’ use of influence with investee companies. Within the collaborative Initiative, investor engagement of other decision makers or on public policy is not considered.
This Initiative seeks to achieve the following expectations from investee companies:
Increase Representation of Women on Boards and Executive Roles: Engage companies that fall short of leading practices.
Enhance Gender Ratio in Senior Management: Promote the advancement of women in senior management, addressing systemic challenges such as education, hiring, career development, and continuous training. This requires clear and ambitious targets, especially in sectors with traditionally low diversity.
Reduce the Gender Pay Gap: Ensure equitable compensation for all employees. While many companies disclose gender pay gaps and engage in initiatives to address them, achieving full transparency and accountability remains a challenge that requires ongoing effort and innovative solutions.
Top Management Commitment: Secure commitment from top management by aligning executive incentives with the company's diversity strategy. Diversity targets should be material, challenging, quantitatively measured, and transparently communicated to the market.
The above represent the minimum expectations towards investee companies pursuant to this Initiative. However, Investors may bring within their engagements of investee companies other topics, aligned with key existing standards, frameworks and metrics relevant to gender equality and women’s empowerment, such as the World Benchmarking Alliance’s Gender Benchmark, the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, the Women’s Empowerment Principles Gender Gap Analysis Tool and the Global Reporting Initiative.
- 20241202_FAQ GDEN.pdf Download
- Social
- Diversity, equity & inclusion (DEI)
- 5 - Gender equality
- Global