Issue 35 - June 2020
International Women´s Day
The world celebrated International Women´s Day last 8th March, and so did Dufry with a number of events and activities across many locations in the 65 countries where Dufry operates. With presentations and discussions across our different office locations, representatives of the group initiative Women@Dufry, an initiative aimed at unlocking the potential of women at Dufry and to help talented and ambitious women to further progress their careers within our company, sparked the conversation and assessed the progress made so far and joined a global day celebrating the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women.
In the context of the celebration, Dufry´s Lead Independent Director Heekyung Jo Min shared a special message with all Dufry employees through a video that can be visited here
A women´s company
22,654 of the 35,086 Dufry employees in 2019 are women (around 65%); and 33% of women are on management positions in our company. However, the issue does not (just) rely on numbers or quotas, but rather in identifying what Dufry can do to further ease their way to managerial positions. women@dufry.com, created in 2016 with the endorsement of Dufry´s CEO, Julián Díaz, aims to bring together female leaders across the business in a variety of functions and geographies and has the mission of ensuring women’s advancement at Dufry. It supports talented women rise to leadership positions within the company across all departments and levels of the organization (local, regional and global roles). With regular meetings – not just on International Women´s Day – the work of women@dufry is twofold: working with the company to ease women progression and giving visibility to prominent women in our business as a way of inspiring other male and women colleagues. Amongst many others, some of the initiatives sparked by women@dufry include many workshops hosted across our offices addressing key matters, including:
- helping employees to manage work, family and life-balance;
- how to become more “visible” in the organization;
- how to manage conflictual situations;
- how to overcome bias – touching the risk that artificial intelligence can play at this regard.
But there is more beyond women@dufry. From a company perspective, diversity and inclusion remains an area of focus for Dufry and there are a number of other corporate initiatives focused in building a culture of equal opportunities at all levels in the organization. The launch of the Women Leaders Program, aimed to develop future women leaders in Dufry by providing the necessary skills through training programs, or the constant revision of our HR policies and procedures, including the recruitment processes – which enforces all vacancies to be internally advertised to give equal opportunities and the encouragement to include women candidates in the process, are movements in the right direction.
Playing our part
#EachforEqual was the theme of this year´s International Women Day and is a campaign that will run all year long – not just for 8th March. The theme selected is a call for collective action and shared responsibility for driving gender equality. By individually challenging stereotypes, fighting bias, improving situations and celebrating women´s achievements, we will be collectively helping to create a gender equal world.
