AMID the sluggish outlook of the glove industry stemming from a decline in average selling price (ASP), Top Glove Corp Bhd has found something to cheer – the world’s largest glove maker earned another feather in its cap on its sustainability journey.

This follows the company’s inclusion in the recently announced 2022 Bloomberg Gender Equality Index (GEI) for having demonstrated outstanding performance in the area of gender reporting and measures to advance gender equality in the workplace.

The entry marks the first year that Top Glove has been named in the index as it aims to continue providing enhanced value to its employees, stakeholders and the communities it serves by leveraging diversity and inclusion.

Top Glove is one of three Malaysian companies which made the Index and among 20 companies worldwide under the ‘industrials’ sector. The other three Malaysian companies are Bursa Malaysia Bhd, Malayan Banking Bhd (Maybank) and DiGi.Com Bhd.

Internationally, Top Glove is among 418 reputable organisations across 45 countries and regions from 11 sectors, namely communications, consumer discretionary; consumer staples; energy; financials; healthcare; industrials; materials; real estate; technology; and utilities in this year’s GEI.

This recognition follows another distinction the company received recently when it capped its 30th anniversary in 2021 with a stronger commitment to its environmental, social and governance (ESG) practices.

In November 2021, Top Glove was named among the top 10% companies globally on the Dow Jones Sustainability Indices (DJSI) under the Emerging Markets category.

This represents a commendable increase from 2020 when it stood among the top 19% of its peers and is the third year running the company has been included on the prestigious index as of the score date of Nov 12, 2021.

Established since 2016, the GEI is a modified market capitalisation weighted index that aims to track the performance of public listed companies committed to transparency in gender data reporting.

It measures companies against five criteria: female leadership and talent pipeline; equal pay and gender pay parity; inclusive culture; anti sexual harassment policies; and pro-women brand.

At 10.15am, Top Glove was down 4 sen or 1.92% to RM2.04 with 1.95 million shares traded, thus valuing the company at RM16.74 bil. – Jan 27, 2022