In a new report, the World Benchmarking Alliance (WBA) published insights from its 2026 Gender Assessment and Gender Benchmark (March 2026). The Gender Assessment analyses 2,000 of the world’s largest companies on five gender equality indicators, while the Gender Benchmark assesses six indicators across a narrower set of 100 companies in two sectors identified as having a significant positive and negative impact on gender equality: apparel, and food and agriculture.
Human Level’s Take:
- In its latest data, the World Benchmarking Alliance (WBA) shows that companies average just 19/100 on gender equality in 2026. While this reflects an improvement from two years ago (when the average score was 15), at least 10% of companies assessed still score zero and less than 10 companies score beyond 50.
- Progress is marginal and uneven, shaped by geography, sector, and operational focus. In addition, while many companies have policies in place to protect women in the workplace, few are managing to translate their policies into meaningful action. The numbers are even lower when it comes to companies that support their suppliers to put policies into practice.
- Gaps are especially seen in three areas: putting violence and harassment policies into practice; ensuring fair and consistent care policies across global workforces; and focusing on the impacts to women as a result of companies’ climate transition planning.
- The WBA suggests top actions for companies to tackle these topics. For one, violence and harassment policies need to be backed up by survivor-centred remediation processes, like mental health counselling, access to independent legal counsel, paid leave or physical separation from the accused.
- Companies can also do more to standardise their care policies (including maternity and paternity leave, flexible work and remote work) across global workforces and align with the ILO’s mandates on minimum leave (14 weeks) and minimum pay (two-thirds of a normal income).
- In addition, climate transition strategies will need to explicitly consider gendered impacts on women, built on meaningful engagement with women workers and sex-disaggregated data on layoffs. Training and development programmes linked to the transition can also be tailored to meet the specific needs of women workers.
- That said, advancing gender equality will require action beyond corporations alone, with investors, policymakers, and civil society all playing a critical role.
Some key takeaways:
- “Illusion of safety” in the workplace: Preventing workplace violence and harassment requires both a formal policy and effective remediation systems. Policy alone creates the illusion of safety without actually addressing violations or providing reparation. Almost 71% of companies assessed in the Gender Assessment have public policies in their own operations against violence and harassment, but only 3% provide survivor-centered support and remediation, for example, paid leave, psychological counselling, physical workspace separation during investigations, and access to independent legal counsel. Only 7% of companies disclose specific disciplinary actions, undermining effective enforcement. The WBA also took a closer look at the violence and harassment prevention approaches of 105 apparel and food and beverage companies, including in the supply chain. Of the 105, 88% require suppliers to have violence and harassment policies, but few companies are providing practical support to suppliers to uphold these in practice. For example, only one in ten of these companies requires suppliers to provide violence and harassment prevention training to workers and managers. WBA outlines a few priority measures for companies to go beyond policy and create a “remedy culture” in their operations and supply chains: create effective grievance channels, track and disclose incident data, and systematically engage workers on gender equality topics.
- Care policies are inconsistent and opaque: Companies are displaying weak efforts to relieve employees’ unpaid care burden and many companies are not transparent about the benefits provided to workers within their own operations. Sixty-five percent of the 2,000 companies assessed in the Gender Assessment do not disclose a maternity leave policy or do not state the amount of time offered. Of the 35% of companies that do disclose these benefits, the number of weeks offered varies significantly, from one to 148 weeks (although the average leave offered is 20 weeks, six beyond the 14-week leave period required by the ILO). Compounding the challenge for employees, companies are largely deferring to national legislation to determine the amount of leave provided, which results in uneven benefits across global workforces. Ten percent of companies have maternity benefits that apply uniformly at group level, but only 5% meet the ILO mandate of at least 14 weeks of leave at minimum two-thirds pay. When it comes to paternity leave, 9% have a uniform group-level policy, but less than 5% offer at least two-thirds pay globally. Companies are performing somewhat better when it comes to flexible work and childcare support, with 34% of the 2,000 companies enabling flexible work (55 more companies compared to two years ago). Forty-two percent of companies allow working remotely, however this has decreased: 46 companies have reduced their remote work benefits, primarily located in the United States.
- Company just transition efforts are missing gender: The climate transition risks deepening existing inequalities, particularly for women in informal, rural, and low-income contexts who face compounding pressures from decarbonisation and environmental degradation. A just transition is essential to ensure climate action delivers equity gains rather than entrenching disadvantage. Yet only 7% of the 2,000 companies are meaningfully engaging workers on just transition and fewer than 1% engage women as a separate stakeholder group. The WBA found that there are also gaps in job protection and reskilling for women. While 26% of the companies offer professional development programmes for women, only 10% of these link development to transition-related impacts. Only two companies actively promote gender equality through their programmes. There is also limited sex-disaggregated data on lay-offs and transition impacts, making it difficult to determine how many women are impacted and in what ways.
