It’s high time we closed the gender gap and eliminated the existing inequalities between genders. Goal 5 of the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is to achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls by 2030.
The EqualVoice United 2025 initiative aims to tackle this goal in the Swiss professional world and achieve it by 2025. In collaboration with EDGE, a global certification organisation for gender equality in business, Ringier has joined with nine other Swiss companies to embark on this journey: Bank Cler, eBay, Insel Gruppe, ISS, Mastercard, Migros, Oerlikon, Swiss Post, Sunrise/UPC, Ringier and Ringier Axel Springer Switzerland.
Photo: Michelle Frei
They have stated their commitment by signing a charter that sets out the four most important areas that the companies must address by 2025:
- rooting equal opportunities and equality within their organisations
- promoting a mindset of equality and integration
- communicating the benefits of equality to other companies and wider society
- establishing modern working conditions for all employees
Annabella Bassler, founder of the EqualVoice Initiative and CFO of Ringier AG: «According to the Global Gender Gap Report 2020, it will take another 99.5 years for us to achieve global gender equality. We don’t want to wait that long. We are delighted to have joined with nine other companies to create the EqualVoice United network, with the aim of achieving this goal in the Swiss professional world by 2025. Having EDGE on board ensures we have the necessary expertise.»
Ringier AG, Corporate Communications
About EqualVoice
The initiative was launched by CFO Annabella Bassler in November 2019, and is chaired by publisher Michael Ringier and CEO Marc Walder. Its aim is to advocate gender equality and improve the visibility of women in the media. The central element of the initiative is an indicator known as the EqualVoice factor. Further projects related to EqualVoice include the Female Experts List, Ringier’s internal tool for finding female experts, the EqualPyx photo challenge, aimed at generating images with more diversity, and the female experts workshop ‘Get Ready – Go Forward’, which supports women in making the most of their expertise. An international expansion of the EqualVoice factor to include other media brands is planned for the near future.