Initiative

Gender Equality Practices

Summary of the initiative

PwC (PricewaterhouseCoopers) is a company that provides audit, tax and consulting services.

Equality for PwC means fostering a working environment that provides equal opportunities for people, irrespective of their gender, age and race, and based on their individual performance and potential to progress. Work-life balance for PwC means promoting increased flexibility in workers’ daily work practices.

The gender equality practice pillars of PwC are:

Addressing gender roles: using recruitment and selection analysis against gender mainstreaming and stereotypes. As part of the recruitment process, PwC monitors the number of applications received from male and female candidates. Once the selection of the appropriate candidates has been made, they monitor the selection percentages by gender. This helps validate that there is no gender bias in the recruitment and selection process.

Promoting women in decision-making positions by utilising gender diversity analysis and targets: as part of the annual business plan, PwC analyses gender diversity at the total staff population level and at the partner and director levels (decision-making levels). The gender targets (in percentages) for the upcoming years for the grades of Director and Partner are now included in the business plan. Additionally, a target has been set to work with Women in PwC on suggestions and initiatives to increase the level of gender diversity in the coming years.

On enhancing work-life balance, the following measures have been put in place:

• There is no official monitoring of working hours;
• The flexible working hours scheme is available for everyone: this scheme offers flexibility to all workers with regard to their arrival, lunch and departure times;
  Reduced and flexible working hours scheme for working mothers: allowing for flexible and reduced working hours for mothers with a child under the age of 18 or a child who is still at secondary school. The reduced hours scheme is optional and offers the possibility, to work fewer hours with a corresponding adjustment in the remuneration and annual holiday entitlement. The flexible working hours scheme is optional and offers the ability to choose the preferred working hours (within certain parameters) without affecting the remuneration. 

Women development programme: this programme was created by PwC to assist female workers to reflect and identify ways to deal with challenges faced in the work place which may have a gender-related perspective or angle. The aims of the programme are to explore the typical challenges for women (including social stereotypes), to recommend tools and strategies to support participants' development in the context of research (e.g. mentoring, networking, sponsorship), to enhance awareness of strategies to manage work-life balance and to help participants think through and build their personal strategy and development/career plan.