Women’s Empowerment Principles

By signing the UN initiative, Lidl is setting a mark for gender equality in practice

Advocating gender equality is firmly enshrined in our company culture. To publicly underline this engagement, Lidl has signed the United Nations’ Women’s Empowerment Principles (WEPs).

• We aim to further increase the proportion of female executives at middle and senior management level.
• We work with standardised salary structures based on objective criteria such as professional experience, qualifications and skills.
• We demand and promote policies for equal opportunities also from our partners along the value chain.
• We champion the living wage in Ireland.

Equal opportunities for all – We’re already well on our way

Lidl Ireland is actively promoting gender equality in our own company and along the value chain. We’re convinced: Equal opportunities and diversity are core components of long-term success. Which is why we have enshrined it in our corporate principles and code of conduct.

In practice, this means:

• Increasing the proportion of women in executive positions: Our goal is to bring more women into leadership roles at middle and senior management level. This presents the particular challenge of creating a positive life balance, both for women and men: Here, Lidl takes proactive steps to ensure that all employees are informed about organisational solutions regarding pregnancy, maternity and parental leave.
• Equal career opportunities for all employees: Our standardised salary structures are based on objective criteria such as professional experience, qualifications and skills. In addition, we offer all employees equal access to training and development opportunities.
• Persons of trust for all employees: Independent and impartial contact persons have been designated. Employees can approach them both about general staff issues as well as complaints relating to diversity and gender equality issues.
• Equal opportunities in our supply chains: As part of our corporate responsibility, we also promote the principles of gender equality and equal opportunities from our supply chains: When it comes to our global partners, we expect and encourage equal opportunities and provide information about this in our extended position paper on corporate due diligence.

The United Nations’ Women’s Empowerment Principles

The WEPs were established in 2015 by UN Women and the UN Global Compact. They represent the first worldwide initiative to target the topic of promoting and strengthening the role of women in companies.

The following seven principles aim to offer guidance to companies in promoting gender equality:

1. Establishing an equality-friendly corporate leadership culture
2. Treating all women and men fairly at work – adhering to international human rights and non-discrimination
3. Guaranteeing the health, well-being and safety of all employees
4. Promoting the education, training and development of women
5. Promoting entrepreneurship among women, strengthening women’s participation in the procurement market, respecting the dignity of women in all marketing measures
6. Promoting gender equality through community initiatives and advocacy
7. Measuring and reporting all progress in the area of gender equality

The principles have been derived from business practice and are aimed at supporting companies in adapting existing regulations and programmes for the promotion of women or in introducing such new and necessary regulations and programmes.

Learn more about the Women’s Empowerment Principals here.