(L-R) Tine Ngo, P&A Grant Thornton Assistant Manager-Academe and Events; Rhia Dee, P&A Grant Thornton Director-People and Culture Group; Romualdo V. Murcia III, P&A Grant Thornton Chairman and Managing Partner; Ma. Aurora Geotina-Garcia, PhilWEN Founding Chairperson & President and PBCWE Governing Council Chairperson; Julia Abad, PBCWE Executive Director; and Maya Juwita, Investing in Women Workplace Gender Equality Director.
26 July 2023 – Punongbayan & Araullo (P&A) Grant Thornton, one of the leading professional services firms, officially joins the Philippine Business Coalition for Women Empowerment (PBCWE). P&A is a Philippine member firm of Grant Thornton International Ltd. (GTIL), one of the world’s leading organisations of independently owned and managed accounting and consulting firms.
PBCWE was launched in 2017 through a partnership between the Philippine Women’s Economic Network (PhilWEN) and Investing in Women, an initiative of the Australian Government. To date, the Coalition has 40 member companies that are all large and influential in their respective industries.
“We proudly welcome P&A in the PBCWE thriving membership circle. As one of our newest member companies this 2023, we look forward to forging a path of growth and collaboration towards genuine diversity, equity, and inclusion in the workplace,” said Ma. Aurora “Boots” Geotina-Garcia, PhilWEN Founding Chairperson & President and PBCWE Governing Council Chairperson.
Recognising that a diverse, inclusive, and gender-equal workforce is crucial to improve business performance and sustainability, P&A will undergo the Gender Equality Assessment, Results and Strategies (GEARS). GEARS is PBCWE’s flagship tool developed in 2020 by Investing in Women based on Australia’s Workplace Gender Equality Agency. GEARS is a step in a company’s workplace gender equality (WGE) journey, drawing on an analysis of human resources (HR) statistical data such as gender composition of the workforce, occupational mix, employee career progression, and policies and practices that are known to promote WGE.
In 2023, Grant Thornton’s latest Women in Business (WIB) Report shows that gender parity within businesses has accelerated over the past years. A significant number of women now hold senior leadership roles – 28% of mid-market businesses have a female chief executive officer or managing director compared to 15% in 2019.
“During the pandemic, we have seen the versatility of women in a phenomenon that experts called the ‘double shift’, where female staff juggled office work alongside their essential roles at home. It is interesting to see that more businesses are making significant changes to their organizational policies as they recover and adapt to the demands of the post-pandemic normal,” said Romualdo V. Murcia III, P&A Grant Thornton Chairman and Managing Partner.
