Building inclusive futures for women: leading organizations on myGwork

Women continue to make strides in the global workforce, yet genuine inclusion, where women can show up as their full selves, advance on equal footing, and thrive in leadership, remains an ongoing project. The gap between policy and practice is often where ambition gets stuck. Representation at entry level rarely translates to representation in the boardroom, and intersectional experiences, for LGBTQ+ women, women of colour, disabled women and mothers, reveal just how much work is still needed.

The good news: a growing number of employers partnered with myGwork are demonstrating that inclusion is not a campaign, it's a culture. From robust parental leave to women-led employee resource groups (ERGs), transparent pay practices to intersectional career programmes, these companies are setting the benchmark for what workplaces should look like for women in 2026 and beyond.

Here are some of the standout employers on the myGwork network that are consistently recognised for their commitment to gender equity and women's inclusion.

Accenture

Accenture has long been considered a gold standard for women's inclusion. The global professional services firm set a public commitment to achieving a gender-balanced workforce and has been transparent about tracking its progress against that goal year over year. Its comprehensive parental leave, return-to-work programmes for women re-entering the workforce, and dedicated mentoring and sponsorship pathways make Accenture a consistent favourite on women's workplace rankings.

What makes Accenture stand out is its intersectional lens: programmes specifically support women of colour, LGBTQ+ women, and women in tech, rather than treating "women" as a single homogeneous group.

MSD

Global healthcare company MSD (known as Merck & Co. in the US and Canada) has built a strong reputation for women's advancement in an industry where female representation in senior scientific and leadership roles has historically lagged. MSD invests in women's leadership development, global mentoring networks, and inclusive family and caregiving benefits. The company has been recognised with myGwork's "Inclusive Employer" certificate for going above and beyond to create environments where women, including LGBTQ+ women and women of colour, can thrive.

Santander

Santander has made women's advancement a core pillar of its global strategy, with public targets around women in senior leadership and transparent reporting on its gender pay gap. The bank runs extensive mentoring, leadership development, and returnship programmes, and has been widely recognised for its family-friendly policies. Santander UK in particular has been honoured with an "Inclusive Employer" certificate for its diversity efforts.

Clifford Chance

In the traditionally male-dominated world of global law, Clifford Chance has worked deliberately to change the picture. The firm has set ambitious gender targets for partnership and invests in sponsorship, flexible working and anti-bias hiring. It also champions intersectional inclusion, recognising that women of colour, LGBTQ+ women, and disabled women face compounded barriers in the legal profession.

Organon

Organon was founded with a stated mission to focus on women's health, and that ethos runs through its workplace culture too. The global healthcare company has invested in active employee resource groups, inclusive family-building and fertility benefits, and leadership development programmes that support women across its international operations. Organon has received myGwork's "Inclusive Employer" recognition for going beyond baseline policy to build a genuinely supportive culture.

The Coca-Cola Company

With more than 130 years of history and a global footprint spanning virtually every market in the world, Coca-Cola has made inclusion a stated strategic business priority, not a side project. The company's inclusion efforts span five dimensions: gender identity, culture and heritage, generation and life experience, LGBTQ+, and ability and wellness, and it tracks and measures progress against gender globally and against race and ethnicity in the US. Coca-Cola is also committed to increasing transparency and disclosure around its workforce data, an important step in holding itself accountable on women's representation at every level.

Warner Bros. Discovery

Media and entertainment has long faced scrutiny over how it represents and employs women, and Warner Bros. Discovery has responded with intentional programmes around women in leadership, women in technical and creative craft roles, and women of colour. The company's women's business resource groups are active globally, and its "Inclusive Employer" recognition reflects substantive work, not just symbolic gestures.

Colt Technology Services

Colt has built a reputation in the tech and telecoms sector for taking gender inclusion seriously at a structural level, pay transparency, flexible working as a default, and active recruitment of women into engineering and technology roles. The company is also a visible ally of women at the intersections of identity, particularly trans women and LGBTQ+ women.

ABB

Global engineering and technology leader ABB is tackling one of the hardest frontiers for gender inclusion: heavy industry and STEM. The company has introduced a gender-neutral parental leave programme, runs dedicated Women in STEM initiatives to drive gender diversity across its policies, programmes and career pathways, and operates active employee resource groups for women, LGBTQ+ colleagues, people with disabilities and more. ABB was named in the Financial Times' Europe's Diversity Leaders 2026 and is a signatory of the #EmbraceDifference pledge alongside more than 50 leading European companies, a clear signal that its inclusion work is substantive, not symbolic.

Deutsche Bank

Deutsche Bank has emerged as one of the most visible champions of gender equality in global banking. Deutsche Bank in the UK has been named in The Times Top 50 Employers for Gender Equality for six consecutive years, a track record that speaks to sustained, long-term commitment rather than one-off campaigns. The bank backs this up with flexible and hybrid working, active ERGs, comprehensive wellbeing programmes, and dedicated career development for women across its global businesses.

Booking.com

As one of the world's largest travel technology companies, Booking.com has used its scale to invest seriously in women's inclusion. The company has been a headline sponsor of myGwork's WorkPride conference for multiple years and runs extensive programmes to attract, develop and retain women across its technology, commercial and leadership functions. With a workforce drawn from more than 140 nationalities, Booking.com's approach to women's inclusion is deeply intersectional by design.

Canada Life UK

Canada Life UK is demonstrating that the insurance and pensions industry — long a male-dominated sector — can be reshaped through deliberate action. The company has been a day sponsor of myGwork's WorkPride conference and invests in active women's networks, flexible working, and inclusive leadership development. By sponsoring visible allyship events and building inclusive benefits, Canada Life UK signals a genuine commitment to women at all career stages.

RS Group

Global industrial and electronics distributor RS Group has made inclusion a strategic priority, reflected in public leadership from its Group Head of D&I on the importance of visible allyship. The company has been a consistent supporter of myGwork's WorkPride conference and operates global employee networks including its Spectrum LGBTQ+ network. RS Group's commitment to women spans recruitment into engineering and technical roles, leadership development, and genuinely inclusive benefits — important work in an industrial sector where women have historically been underrepresented.

Virgin Media O2

Virgin Media O2 is one of the UK's most visible corporate champions of women's inclusion, underpinned by its "All In" diversity, equity and inclusion strategy with public ambitions including driving forward gender parity across the organisation by 2027. The company's dedicated Women's Network focuses on making a measurable difference in gender equality, and Virgin Media O2 partners with Women in Data to help grow female representation in tech and data roles. Its best-in-class leave policies — including market-leading maternity, paternity, neonatal and carer's leave — were developed using Equity Sequence™ methodology to ensure they are inclusive for all employees. Virgin Media O2 is also a Menopause Friendly, Carer Confident and Disability Confident accredited employer, reflecting a genuinely intersectional approach to supporting women across different life stages.

Taylor Wessing

International law firm Taylor Wessing has established itself as a leader in gender inclusion within the legal sector. The firm has implemented comprehensive programmes focused on advancing women into partnership and senior leadership roles, backed by transparent diversity data and ambitious targets. Taylor Wessing's commitment extends to flexible working arrangements, active women's networks, and targeted support for women at different career stages. Taylor Wessing is supporting myGwork's WorkPride this year, sponsoring the event and helping to bring together LGBTQ+ professionals.

What These Employers Have in Common

Looking across this list, a pattern emerges. The employers making real progress on women's inclusion tend to share several characteristics:

Transparency. They publish their data, gender pay gaps, representation at each level, promotion rates, and hold themselves publicly accountable to improving it.

Sponsorship, not just mentorship. Women are often over-mentored and under-sponsored. The leading employers distinguish between the two and invest in senior leaders actively advocating for women at promotion time.

Intersectionality. The best programmes don't treat "women" as monolithic. They recognise that LGBTQ+ women, women of colour, disabled women, and working mothers each face specific, compounded challenges, and they design support accordingly.

Family-friendly policies that apply to everyone. Generous, gender-neutral parental leave helps break the cultural assumption that caregiving is "women's work," which in turn helps women advance.

ERGs with real power. Women's employee resource groups at these companies are funded, executive-sponsored and connected to business strategy, not relegated to organising networking lunches.

Why It Matters

Recent research continues to confirm what women in the workforce have long known: inclusive workplaces aren't just ethically right, they're commercially smarter. Employees are more productive, more engaged, and more likely to stay when they feel they belong. A widely cited finding is that a significant majority of employees would leave their current employer for one with a stronger commitment to diversity and inclusion.

For women evaluating where to build their careers and for employers trying to attract and retain the best talent, the message is the same: inclusion has to be real, measurable, and lived every day. The companies above show it's possible.

Find Your Inclusive Employer

myGwork's network of inclusive employers is a starting point for women seeking workplaces where they can thrive as their full selves. Whether you're early in your career, returning after a break, or considering your next leadership move, explore the employer profiles on myGwork to discover companies that are walking the talk on women's inclusion.

This article features a selection of myGwork partner employers widely recognised for their work on women's inclusion. Inclusion is an ongoing journey, and many more organisations in the myGwork network are doing excellent work in this space.