Nordea's Three Stock Picks For Gender Equality

L'Oréal

L'Oréal is one of the biggest cosmetics companies in the world and has been a recognised leader in gender diversity and equality for many years. Last year, L'Oréal tied for first place in a global gender equality ranking of 3,206 companies.

Additionally, the company was included in the 2019 Bloomberg Gender-Equality Index, which recognises companies committed to transparency in gender reporting and advancing women’s equality in the workplace.

L'Oréal maintains strong business fundamentals, financial performance and corporate culture, as well as a solid ESG profile, with a AAA rating by MSCI ESG.

Marriott Group

The Marriott Group, a leading hotel chain present in more than 130 countries, has made placing women in leadership a part of the company's growth strategy. Marriott International has a proven track record of recognising talented women and helping them grow into senior leaders.

Roughly one in six of the company's general managers are female, while the number of women in general manager positions grew by 22% in Asia Pacific in 2017 alone.

The company has also publicly committed itself to UN SDG 5, with the goal of "achieving gender representation parity for global company leadership by 2025".

Visa

The global payments technology company is another large company committed to diversity and gender equality in the workplace.

A signatory of the Women in Finance Charter, the company has committed to target 38% of women in senior management by the end of Q3 2021 and to make its gender diversity statistics available to the public.

Visa’s 2017 Gender Pay Gap Report showed near parity on the proportion of eligible employees receiving a bonus, but also demonstrated a larger number of men than women in the upper quartile.

That said, the Gender Pay Gap Report itself is an important step toward gender equality. In 2016, Visa was named in the inaugural Bloomberg Gender-Equity Index.