#WomensDay: Nestlé sets goals to get more women in top roles

A Kitkat chocolate bar is pictured in the supermarket of Nestle headquarters in Vevey

A Kitkat chocolate bar is pictured in the supermarket of Nestle headquarters in Vevey

Published Mar 8, 2017

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Zurich - Swiss firms from food and

beverage giant Nestlé and banking groups UBS

and Credit Suisse pledged new goals on Tuesday to

support and promote women.

While Switzerland has Europe's second-highest proportion of

women in the workforce, it trails global standards on gender

diversity in boardrooms and in management positions.

Consultancies EY, Deloitte and PwC and staffing agency

Adecco all committed to increase female leadership in

their Swiss businesses to between 20 and 35 percent by 2020.

This follows a recent survey by EY which found Swiss firms

with at least 20 percent women in top management rated their

financial situation as better, while studies by UBS have found

companies with greater gender diversity consistently outperform.

Women represent just 6.7 percent of Swiss executives,

according to Credit Suisse, compared to a global average of 13.8

percent and European average of 12.6 percent. They occupy one

out of eight board seats, half the European average.

Read also:  New Nestlé boss tackles a daunting task

Swiss women-in-business initiative Advance has spearheaded

the move, with Credit Suisse's domestic business saying it would

strive for equal hiring in campus recruitment, while Nestlé

committed to grow the proportion of women in management

positions worldwide every year.

Siemens Switzerland pledged to reach equal pay in

the next three years, while IKEA Switzerland improved its paid

paternity leave to two months.

Switzerland was the second-to-last European country to

embrace women's suffrage in 1971, more than half a century after

Norway, Germany, Canada and the United States. And it took two

decades more for the Swiss supreme court to force one canton to

let women take part in local votes in 1990.

Change the system

IKEA Switzerland head Simona Scarpaleggia, one of

just four female CEOs out of 78 in Credit Suisse's study, helped

found Advance in 2013 and says the Swiss system needs to change

to make things more straightforward for working mothers.

"Either you give up your time - which happens most often -

or you get private support, which is very expensive. It wouldn't

be so complicated to change this system, as many other countries

are doing," Scarpaleggia, who also co-chairs the UN High-Level

Panel on Women's Economic Empowerment, said.

The Swiss government hopes women will help fill a growing

shortfall of skilled labour, but eschews many policies - like

quotas and more parental leave -- that promote women elsewhere.

It is among the handful of developed countries that give new

fathers no time off, meaning infant care falls largely on women.

High daycare costs mean many new mothers opt out of their

professions or return part-time, generally working part-time

until children reach the age of nine, statistics show.

Many women step off the ladder later in their careers, tired

of being pigeonholed and passed over for promotions.

"Companies are surprised that, if they look at the

statistics, it's often women between 45 and 50 who are leaving,"

Nia Joynson-Romanzina, who left UBS in 2015 to found consultancy

iCubed, said.

The Advance initiative is seeking to "change Switzerland one

company at a time," Citi Country Officer Kristine Braden said.

"I'm quite optimistic because, despite the conservative

approach, Swiss people are very pragmatic," Scarpaleggia said.

REUTERS

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