2020 Gender Pay Scorecard (GPS): Navigating Corporate Gender and Racial Pay Disclosures

From Arjuna Capital and Proxy Impact. For Equal Pay Day 2020, Arjuna Capital and Proxy Impact compiled the third quantitative accounting of current pay disclosures, performance, and commitments among corporate leaders and laggards in four industries: finance, technology/communications, consumer, and healthcare.

The Gender Pay Scorecard (GPS) offers a template through which to view corporate best practice, ranking companies on quantitative disclosures (not qualitative assurances), commitments to report numbers annually, global coverage, and goals to close the gender pay gap. The companies in the ranking have all been engaged by investors through the shareholder proposal process and asked to improve their public pay equity disclosures.

The GPS looks at 50 major U.S. companies, only three of which–Starbucks, Mastercard, and Citigroup–receive an “A” grade. A failing grade of “F” is awarded to half—25—of the total group of companies, including Goldman Sachs, Oracle, McDonalds, and Walmart. Ten companies (in order of rank) —Nike, Bank of New York Mellon, Progressive Insurance, Apple, Pfizer, JP Morgan, Wells Fargo, American Express, Intel, and Bank of America, Reinsurance Group—garnered a “B” grade for their efforts to disclose and act on their gender and racial pay gaps.