Approach

Gender parity is a cornerstone of our robust Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) agenda. Bringing together unique experiences, perspectives and skills helps fuel our innovation, strengthen our reputation and drive positive change in the communities we serve.

Our efforts to advance our overall DEI agenda is the responsibility of everyone within our organization. Achieving our DEI goals are measured as part of our annual performance reviews for people managers, including our most senior leaders. Actions taken globally ladder into an overarching framework designed by the Global DEI function.

As part of our Positive Value Chain ambition, we aim to achieve 50% women in managerial roles globally by 2025. The key to achieving our goal is supporting women to build successful and fulfilling careers, while providing continued support through different stages of their lives and career paths. We aim to drive this agenda forward by doing the following:

Provide greater flexibility through our benefits & policies:

• Childcare: We provide on- or near-site childcare at select locations around the world; care is provided by highly trained and reputable third-party providers. Back-up childcare services are available through third-party providers when a regular care provider is unavailable.
• Facilities: In many of our locations worldwide with 500 or more employees, we have either dedicated mother’s rooms, wellness rooms or alternate space available for nursing mothers.
• Caregivers: For our North American mothers and fathers under increased economic pressure during the pandemic, we enhanced work flexibility, educational support (virtual tutoring) and dependent care reimbursement.
• Parental Leave: In the U.S., PepsiCo offers 6 weeks paid parental leave for parents, plus 10 weeks of paid medical leave for the birthing parent, totaling a potential for 16 weeks of paid leave associated with the birth of a child. In other countries, we provide parental leave in line with local policy and regulations.
• Flexibility: Navigating our new normal means providing employees the flexibility in where and how they work. And with our new program, Work That Works, we've done exactly that. Work That Works is about greater flexibility in where and how work happens. It's about working in a way that makes sense for a given employee's role, responsibilities and whole life.

Development and retention trainings:

• Our Transformational Leadership Program (TLP) is a unique program designed to equip women with the tools they need to elevate their business impact and achieve career fulfillment. By providing participants with the knowledge and skills to navigate a global matrix organization and increase their effectiveness and influence, TLP helps propel high-performing teams, individuals and innovation at PepsiCo. TLP is active in the U.S., Europe, Asia, Middle East and North Africa across multiple functions and levels.
• Pinnacle Group is a program designed to increase retention of female sales talent, while strengthening and diversifying our future leadership pipeline. The program selects female sales associates with strong performance records and provides them with career development, leadership training and mentoring opportunities with senior sales leaders.
• In Latin America, our INSPIRA talent development program is a multi-year program aimed at building a female talent pipeline, driving engagement and reducing turnover by offering manager and executive women tools, knowledge and experiences to accelerate their growth. It also prepares men and women to act as change agents who intentionally eliminate barriers and shape a culture of inclusivity. 

Building resilient women-owned businesses:

• PepsiCo sponsors The Women’s Business Enterprise National Council pitch competition, which gives women-owned business enterprises a stage to pitch for funding and highly-valued mentorship with PepsiCo leaders.
• Staying true to the roots as a female-founded brand, Stacy’s Pita Chips has committed to empowering and supporting women entrepreneurs on their paths to establishing a successful business. To further its mission, Stacy’s launched the Rise Project, a program dedicated to helping women grow their businesses through funding, mentorship and community. To date, Stacy’s has invested more than $1 million to #HelpWomenRise.

Mentorship and workforce readiness programs:

• Founded in 2014 in partnership with PepsiCo, Million Women Mentors is a program that leverages mentorship as a means of inspiring, developing and retaining women who seek to work in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) fields. PepsiCo STEM employees have pledged many hours of mentoring since 2014 across global chapters, including in Texas, New York, Illinois, Florida, Canada, Ireland, U.K., Mexico, Turkey and Hyderabad.
• Launched on International Women's Day 2022, She Works Wonders is a collaboration between PepsiCo Egypt, nonprofit INJAZ Egypt and the Ministry of Higher Education, to boost women's access to careers in male-dominated fields. The program aims to increase female representation in these fields through training, mentorship and learning bootcamps. In 2022, 50 women completed the She Works Program which earned them an internship with PepsiCo with the potential of being converted to a full-time hire at the conclusion of the internship.

Empowering women in our agricultural supply chain:

As part of our Positive Agriculture ambition, we aim to economically empower women in communities within our agricultural supply chain. To meet this goal, we will strive to provide hundreds of thousands of women with essential resources for workforce readiness, focusing particularly on the food system and farming. Women farmers account for more than half the world's crop production, but often don't have the infrastructure and resources to support their work. We aim to combat systemic inequality in farming and agriculture through the following initiatives:

• Globally, women in agriculture and farming are facing extraordinary hardships. In partnership with CARE, PepsiCo supports She Feeds the World, a program that trains female farmers around the world in everything from increasing crop yield to providing nutrition resources so they can be successful. She Feeds the World's grassroots structure creates a support system during emergencies and shocks like the COVID-19 pandemic.
• In 2020, PepsiCo announced a five-year partnership with U.S. Agency for International Development to make agriculture more inclusive and empower female farmers, women-owned enterprises and women-led suppliers, especially during the pandemic. As part of PepsiCo’s efforts to make agriculture more inclusive, the partnership is designed to empower female farmers, women-owned small- and medium-enterprises, rural communities and women-led PepsiCo suppliers to improve the sustainability and resilience of rural farming communities.

As we work to achieve gender parity across our organization, we have made progress but face challenges along the way.

While we have made progress on gender parity in managerial roles, manufacturing remains male-dominated, partially due to societal bias, workplace culture and physical demands of roles. Operational management lags behind our gender parity targets compared to corporate management. We are working to combat unconscious bias and societal stereotypes that may prevent women from seeking out roles in manufacturing.

In 2022, 44% of management roles were held by women, up from 37% when we set our goal in 2015. Senior leadership roles held by women include our Latin America CEO; Chief Consumer and Marketing Officer and Chief Growth Officer, International Foods; Controller; President of Global Foodservice; Chief Strategy and Transformation Officer; and Global Chief Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Officer. 33% of our Board of Directors are women²; 25% of our Senior Executives³ are women; 40% of our Executives are women⁴; and 27% of all of our employees are women⁴.

In 2020, the DEI team launched a mandatory Inclusive Leadership and Unconscious Bias Training for our U.S. executives — the first digital learning installment under the Global Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Team’s Inclusive Leadership training suite. The training offers lessons about the science behind unconscious bias, bias awareness, as well as mitigation tips, strategies, and success stories. As of January 2022, 100% of the required population completed the Inclusive Leadership and Unconscious Bias program. 

With the launch of pep+, we introduced a new goal to improve the livelihoods of more than 250,000 people in our agricultural supply chain and communities, including by economically empowering women. This goal is the evolution of our previous commitment to support women's workforce development in the food system. 

What's next?

After reaching all of our initial target audience for the Inclusive Leadership and Unconscious Bias program, we are expanding the program globally.

We created a Global Female Sponsorship Taskforce with an aim to build a framework and toolkit that will enable our global leadership teams to accelerate key female talent. It will also enable leaders to better identify and remove bias to deliver organizational change.