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Gender

We’re on a longstanding mission to drive gender equality in our workplace and have a number of programmes, partnerships, and policies in place to support women within the company and to help break down any barriers to their recruitment, retention and development.

In the UK, we achieved 50/50 gender balance in managerial roles in 2017 and we achieved this globally in 2020. However, we know that we need to do more to improve representation at other levels of our business, especially in our senior and leadership roles, and in specific areas where we know men have traditionally held more roles such as finance and STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) roles.

An image linking to Unilever page dedicated to gender.

Here’s a few ways we’re working towards better gender equality:

  • Working with leading institutions we provide advanced leadership training to our senior female executives
  • For all senior appointments, when considering succession, we insist on a gender balanced list of candidates which includes at least one female and one male candidate, as part of our efforts to improve representation at senior level
  • We continue to boost investment in our outreach programmes, encouraging more young students to consider careers in STEM
  • We’ve launched annual parental webcasts which provide support to employees balancing work life and being a parent, helping them to do this with confidence

Emily Pittman

In the UK & Ireland our progress towards gender equality is championed by Emily Pittman, Head of Customer Development and Head of Unilever Ireland.

Image with text block - Emily Pittman
"Embracing diversity in all its forms is business critical for Unilever. The good news is that we have gender parity among our managers, globally. But this is not enough. We have to do more to improve the gender equality of our very top managers and leadership teams too. In Unilever we are driven to create the opportunity for women to succeed and be heard through our industry leading policies and programmes that build women up and helps create greater equity in the home."
Different women: one standing, looking at a computer, another looking into a VR and one in a wheelchair on the computer.

Our 2022 Gender Pay Report (PDF 1.42 MB)

As required by government regulation for gender pay reporting, we publish gender pay data from our two main employing entities in the UK. These are Unilever UK Limited, representing our UK specific operations, including factories, and Unilever UK Central Resources Limited, representing our global functions based in the UK.

In our report, we’ve also chosen to share overall ‘Unilever in the UK’ data looking at the combination of these reporting entities and our integrated companies in the UK, as this provides a more transparent and representative picture of our UK business and employment landscape.

In our reports we share our full data and analysis, as well as an update on the action and policies driving our gender strategy in the UK.

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