Women in defence charter
Updated 18 October 2024
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A pledge for gender balance across defence
The UK’s defence sector is making a commitment to work together to build a more gender balanced environment by launching a Charter for Women.
The Ministry of Defence, the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy and the Government Equalities Office welcome the initiative that recognises more needs to be done to greater enhance the gender balance in the sector.
Organisations that sign up to this Charter are committing to be the very best at driving inclusion and diversity within their organisations and providing fair opportunities for women to succeed at all levels.
The charter reflects the aspiration to see women represented and succeeding at all levels across the defence enterprise. A balanced workforce is good for government and good for business, good for customers and consumers, for profitability and workplace culture, for promoting prosperity and stability, and for showing everyone matters in building stronger and more peaceful communities.
The Charter:
- commits organisations to supporting the progression of women into senior roles in the defence sector by focusing on the executive pipeline and the mid-tier level
- recognises the diversity of the sector and that organisations will have different starting points, each organisation should therefore set its own targets, where appropriate, and implement the right strategy for them
- requires organisations to publicly report on progress to deliver against any internal targets to support the transparency and accountability needed to drive change
- aims to enable women to thrive, enhancing the individual and collective impact of women across defence and in doing so, improving the overall output of defence.
My organisation commits to promote gender diversity and inclusion by:
- having 1 member of our senior executive team who is responsible and accountable for gender inclusion and diversity
- setting internal targets, where appropriate, for gender diversity in our senior management
- publishing progress annually against any targets in reports on our website
- having an intention to ensure the pay or the objectives of the senior executive team are linked to delivery of any internal targets on gender inclusion and diversity.