Improving gender equity in our supply chain
e—throughout our company and across our extended supply chain—because gender inequality is a pervasive, global issue that prevents women from having the opportunity to reach their full potential in their communities and in their careers. We also know that gender diverse businesses perform better than their non-diverse peers and have a positive impact on workers including more effectively attracting and retaining talent. [1,2]
Gender equity is particularly important in our manufacturing supply chain, where more than 70% of the workforce are women, yet female representation decreases significantly with the move into leadership ranks. We work with suppliers who share our values of inclusivity and equality, and provide them with support to help address some of the biggest challenges women face in the workplace.
To achieve a gender equitable manufacturing supply chain, we set a 2025 gender equity target to have 100% of strategic suppliers increase access to career opportunities and upward mobility for women employed in their facilities.
[1] Diversity wins: how inclusion matters. McKinsey & Company.
[2] Women's empowerment in global value chains. Business for social responsibility.
Our approach to supporting gender equity begins with close collaboration with suppliers. We work with them to gain an understanding of their workplace culture, then help them build strong capabilities to advance gender equity with a specific focus on representation of women in leadership and skilled roles, while measuring progress throughout.
How it works:
For suppliers to identify their strengths and areas of improvement across gender equity, we worked with the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW) to co-create a self-diagnostic tool to measure gender equity in footwear and apparel manufacturing. Each year, suppliers use the self-diagnostic tool to assess various aspects of their business that have an outsized impact on gender equity—such as facility policies and processes, support for working parents, and recruitment and hiring practices.
Then, we leverage relationships with global gender experts, including the International Finance Corporation (IFC), to help suppliers address low-scoring areas and develop long-term action plans to advance equity within their organisation. We encourage suppliers to develop long-term gender equitable practices and policies and support them in improving the lines of communication between workers and management by aligning with our engagement and well-being work. This helps them get a more accurate understanding of their workplace culture.
Based on data, we know men advance into the first rung of leadership at over three times the rate of women. This disparity in advancement exacerbates the under-representation of women across all leadership levels. In response, we created a Women's Leadership Accelerator programme in Vietnam in collaboration with IFC and a local research organisation, Mekong Development Research Institute. The programme has a focus on high-potential female employees in strategic suppliers' facilities in Vietnam to strengthen women's career advancement.
The programme provides culturally and professionally relevant hard and soft skills for women over a six-month leadership course. The goal of the course is to provide participants with the skills, confidence and network they need to move into leadership roles to help close the representation gap. Managers nominate their direct reports for the programme and are engaged throughout the course to enable the participants to bring their new skills into their roles. The first pilot cohort saw 21% of participants receive promotions within three months of graduation from the programme and 100% of participants rate it as relevant to their next position.
Given the appetite for this bespoke training programme, we have launched a second cohort in Vietnam with lessons learnt from the pilot. The new cohort saw increased registration representing at least one facility from each strategic supplier group in Vietnam including participation from our NIKE-owned-and-operated Air MI facility in Vietnam. We look forward to expanding the scope of this programme in areas where it can have the most meaningful impact and have begun initial landscaping for future expansion in Indonesia.