#ConquerTheDivide: Celebrating International Women’s Day 2018

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To mark this year’s International Women’s Day and with the gender pay gap rising fast up the agenda, Dentsu Aegis Network is launching a global campaign to continue to #ConquerTheDivide when it comes to gender equality in the workplace.

In 2017, 28 leaders from across the network made their personal pledges to strive for better equality in the workplace and to #ConquerTheDivide in our industry. This year, we’ve received more than 60 pledges from all levels of the business around the world, as the network acknowledges that now more than ever is the time for action.

In 14 of our top 20 markets, more than 50% of our workforce is female. That includes some of our very biggest markets, including US, China, Australia and Germany (the UK is close with a 48/52 split). Around 1/3 of our most senior leadership roles are held by women, leading our business in key markets including Canada, Brazil, Germany and China and Africa. 

Meanwhile, our strongest future talent programme called #Route500, comprising of 850 individuals across our global markets, has an almost equal gender split with 49% female and 51% male. Talent searches must also provide gender balanced shortlists and we interview equal numbers of male and female candidates, while there is no pay gap for entry-level and more junior positions, where the balance of men and women is even.

We’re also proud to have launched powerful initiatives designed to empower women at every level in the industry, including:

  • The Female Foundry in Asia Pacific: designed to educate, mentor and provide funding to leading female-founded start-ups in the region
  • #HearHerVoice: an ongoing study on the emergence of female entrepreneurs in Southeast Asia, looking at the technology impact for female-founded ventures.
  • &PROUD: our first LGBT+ employee network in the UK

Though we’ve made significant progress at Dentsu Aegis Network, we recognise that there is a way to go still. We acknowledge that we have more men in senior roles, which creates a gender pay gap in the organisation, but we are dedicated to change

Our business is built on understanding and engaging with consumers – ALL of them. You simply cannot succeed in that if your own workforce is one dimensional.