Bhoomi Agarwal+Project

REPORT ON THE PROJECT: SDG 5 for Gender Equality in L’Oréal

The cosmetics industry has traditionally catered to the needs of women. It is due to this reason, I decided to find out about the gender equality status in L’Oréal - the world’s largest cosmetic manufacturer and seller. It has operations across the world and is headquartered in France. While gender inequality is usually noticed in most industries against women, the beauty industry begs to differ. Through my research (that I will explain as we go forward), I have discovered that women dominate the offices in beauty products. In order to maintain gender neutrality, L’Oréal does focus on hiring men. One of the major reasons men will be needed is that men are getting into grooming themselves over the past few years. The male beauty industry has become very active and the products are flying off the shelves.

As per my research through Wikirate, L’Oréal employed 82,881 employees in the year 2015 (given in the annual report). As per the Diversity and Inclusion report filed in 2015, women made up 70% of the workforce. This means that the gender ratio in L’Oréal is highly skewed in favor of women. L’Oréal is now taking steps to prove that it is not just a company selling make-up but also has roles for research and development, manufacturing, operations, managing a multinational company, distribution network etc. Given the steps being taken, it now has advertisements that feature men working in laboratories. Also, they are aiming at having a balanced workforce. This is because men and women think differently and being able to combine their thoughts into ideas by working together will result in better decision making.

However, one can see that when one moves higher up the ladder, men get promoted faster. Even though women constitute 70% of the workforce, only 33% are a part of the executive committee and 48% are a part of the management committee. The international brand managers consist of 58% women. So, in case of management and executive positions, L’Oréal conducts regular training programs. On account of this, L’Oréal has a much more balanced Board of Directors in terms of gender compared to most other multinational companies. Also, women promotions for their career development are as high as 66% as per the; Diversity and Inclusion report' filed by L’Oréal in 2015. The CEO is a man named Jean-Paul Agon. However, this is not a negative point for the company because we have seen that they are not biased towards women. They focus on the merit of the individual rather than the gender. Also, they are looking to have a gender balance in the company in order to improve efficiency and generate newer ideas.

L’Oréal also calls a French organization called INED to conduct a yearly pay analysis to ensure that women are not being paid less than men for the same amount of work. L’Oréal also launched a program called EVE for mentoring its male and female employees. This means that L’Oréal is providing all persons an equal opportunity to succeed. As L’Oréal is undertaking such steps, it is proving to be an example for other companies and becoming one of the most coveted places to work.

Also, L’Oréal has operations across the globe and it ensures that gender equality is followed in all of its locations. Due to this, the overall ratings for the entire company as a whole is very high which is also reflected in their revenues.

The percentage of female and male employees in positions other than management were not found in the data. However looking at the percentage of the female workforce in general and in the managerial positions, we can conclude that there are more women than men in non-management positions.

This project helped me get perspective in to the fact that gender inequality is not only against women. Also, every company should focus on being gender balanced in order to improve operations.