Gender equality: closing the corporate gap between commitment and practice 

Every year, many companies reaffirm their intent to advance gender equality, pledging zero-tolerance on violence and harassment and fostering inclusive workplaces. Yet the finish line for global gender parity remains far from reach.

According to the World Economic Forum, it will take another 123 years to close the global gender gap. Deep within supply chains, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) notes that women in sectors like garment manufacturing and agriculture are disproportionately trapped in precarious, low-paid roles and face systemic exploitation. 

As the world accelerates towards a green economy, transitions must be grounded in social equity for them to be truly “just.” Companies are also failing to track who bears the brunt of structural shifts—for example, shifting economic landscapes can impact men and women differently, with pre-existing inequalities and unequal care burdens often exacerbating these impacts. Without gender-disaggregated data, company actions on reskilling, upskilling and job security remain blind to reality and the green economy risks leaving half the workforce behind.

Amid companies’ stated intent to close the gender gap, a critical question remains: are boardroom promises actually translating into tangible practices that respect the rights and promote the equality of the women? And do these promises reach all women who keep global value chains running?

To understand this disconnect between commitment and practice, we must look beyond policies to examine concrete data.

At the World Benchmarking Alliance (WBA), we evaluate corporate disclosures to assess how businesses impact people and the planet—a mission that will evolve as we transition to the Integrated Transition Assessment (ITA) in 2027. Within this framework, systematically embedding a gender lens remains central to our approach to driving progress from corporate accountability to real-world impact. Crucially, taking a look at 2,000 of the world’s most influential companies on their efforts to promote gender equality for our 2026 Gender Insights Report reveals a sobering reality: the average score is only 18.9 out of 100.

This profoundly low figure highlights two distinct challenges. First, companies face a massive "implementation gap," where stated gender policies fail to translate into practice. Second, corporate support remains highly fragmented – fundamental rights often depend entirely on a worker's geographic location. Together, these gaps mean the daily hardships experienced by women workers remain largely unchanged.

Policies without protection: the implementation gap

Nowhere is this implementation gap more glaring than in workplace safety. As recognised globally, including by ILO Convention 190, violence and harassment incidents remain pervasive occupational hazards, severely limiting women’s economic participation. Encouragingly, our assessment found that 71% of companies now have a policy prohibiting violence and harassment in the workplace.

However, a policy alone does not equate to a safe working environment. When an incident occurs, these paper commitments often act as a false safety net—leaving help-seeking workers vulnerable to retaliation and further trauma. Only 3% of companies translate policies into practice by providing survivor-centred support—such as psychological counselling or paid time off. Furthermore, a mere 7% outline specific disciplinary actions for perpetrators. Among companies that fail to provide survivor-centred support or disclose clear consequences for perpetrators, roughly 70% also do not have an effective grievance mechanism to report violence and harassment incidents.

This exposes a critical failure in human rights due diligence. Under the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, identifying a risk is only the first step; companies must actively prevent, mitigate, and remediate harm. Without robust, survivor-centred recovery mechanisms, companies fail to provide effective remedy.

The geographic lottery: fragmented corporate support

Returning to the issue of highly fragmented corporate policies, fewer than 5% of the 2,000 companies meet the ILO maternity leave mandate—which requires offering at least 14 weeks and two-thirds pay—to all employees across all their operations.

Women perform over three-quarters of all unpaid care work (ILO); however, corporate support for working parents remains wildly inconsistent. This creates a two-tiered system where maternity protection is determined by a geographic lottery. 

Women in jurisdictions with weaker national labour protections face a significant disadvantage compared to peers within the exact same company, forcing them to disproportionately shoulder the economic penalties of care work alone, or leave the workforce entirely.

The supply chain reality: looking beyond direct operations

Corporate accountability becomes even more complex deep within global supply chains, where corporate visibility and oversight are typically the weakest. 

When we examined 105 high-risk companies in the apparel and food and agriculture sectors, a fascinating divergence on supply chain performance emerged. While disclosed performance in the direct operations of both sectors is quite similar (meeting 18% of requirements on average), the apparel sector significantly outperforms food and agriculture in the supply chain (meeting 24% of the requirements on average compared to just 14%).

This outperformance is most notable in fundamental rights such as freedom of association and collective bargaining. Our data shows apparel companies are significantly more likely to explicitly require their supply chain partners to respect trade union rights and prohibit retaliation. This highlights the profound impact of over a decade of intense public scrutiny following tragedies like Rana Plaza, which fatally exposed that without empowering workers to organise and collectively advocate for their rights, genuine protection in the supply chain is impossible. It suggests that sustained external pressure can push companies to extend human rights expectations deep into highly-fragmented factory networks.

Moving forward: what needs to be done?

To close the disconnect between promises and reality, corporate action must move beyond high-level policies to measurable implementation. Based on our 2026 benchmark, here are the critical next steps for practitioners:

• First, businesses must design implementation pathways that work in reality. A policy on paper is merely the starting point. Companies must establish survivor-centred recovery mechanisms and systematically track grievance data. Our research shows that companies tracking these grievances are 20 times more likely to provide actual survivor support. Furthermore, businesses must stop treating the climate transition as a gender-neutral issue by explicitly including women in dialogues and tracking sex-disaggregated data, such as involuntary turnover rates, to design targeted reskilling pathways.
• Second, investors must use their leverage to accelerate action. As companies face competing pressures and trade-offs, investors play a critical role in ensuring that gender equality remains an integral part of corporate strategy. Coordinated stewardship works: our benchmark tracking showed that companies engaged by the investor-led Collective Impact Coalition improved 2.5 times faster than their peers. Investors must continue to demand that companies set time-bound targets and close the implementation gap.
• Third, policymakers must raise the global baseline. Voluntary corporate action has reached its limits, as evidenced by the fact that fewer than 5% of companies meet the ILO mandate for maternity leave globally. We need an enabling regulatory environment—such as mandatory human rights due diligence—that lifts the minimum standards and designs frameworks that protect women where they live and work, ensuring expectations are pushed to all parts of the  supply chain with adequate support.

Conclusion: practice over promises

With the average score across the 2,000 companies sitting at just 18.9 points out of 100, the next era of corporate accountability must be defined not by what companies promise in their sustainability reports, but by what workers actually experience on the ground.

Gender equality cannot be a peripheral ESG topic; it is central to building resilient, ethical, and future-ready supply chains. It is time for the global business ecosystem to step up and choose practice over promises.

To explore the full data and insights, visit the WBA 2026 Gender Insights Report page.

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