March 5, 2009: Calvert recently updated the Calvert Women’s Principles to address salient emerging issues and to incorporate the most progressive business policies and best practices
Since their launch in 2004, the Calvert Women’s Principles (CWP) have heightened awareness of workplace issues affecting women and called attention to the role of companies in ensuring women’s rights. While the response to the CWP has been strong and positive, the corporate diversity landscape has shifted in the years since the original text was written. Accordingly, Calvert recognized the need to update the CWP to address salient emerging issues, and incorporate some of the most progressive contemporary policies and best practices.
As part of this process, during 2008 Calvert again consulted with a range of stakeholders including Verité, the San Francisco Department on the Status of Women, the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), gender advocacy experts and human rights, legal, and diversity professionals.
The most significant change was adding work-life balance to the top-line Principles. Work-life balance was identified as essential to the attainment of gender equality in the workplace and the one issue most noticeably absent from the original version.
Calvert has begun the process of translating the Principles into practical policies, guidelines, indicators and other performance tools that companies can use to implement these standards.
#8821 (3/09)