More than 1,380 businesses participated in an annual corporate equality ranking conducted by the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), the group said Thursday, a record-shattering total that includes more than 400 Fortune 500 businesses.
More than 500 businesses that participated in this year’s Corporate Equality Index (CEI) received a perfect score, HRC said, despite a more robust scoring criteria compared with past years.
Participants this year were also much more likely to have policies in place that support transgender workers in what HRC described as “the most considerable progress measured over the 20-year history of the CEI.”
Roughly 94 percent of all CEI-rated businesses said they offer transgender-inclusive health insurance coverage, according to Thursday’s report, up from zero in 2002, when HRC first began tracking such policies.
Another 63 percent said they had enacted policies that provide “a safe and affirming experience” for transgender and nonbinary workers, including gender-neutral dress codes and procedures for changing names and pronouns throughout company-wide databases.
Seventy percent of CEI participants said they instituted gender transition guidelines with policies supportive of actively transitioning workers, according to Thursday’s report, and more than 60 percent currently offer diversity and inclusion programs that specifically include training on gender identity.
“The future workforce is more out and allied than ever before in our nation’s history, and this year’s CEI shows a business community looking for ways to further support LGBTQ+ workers and their families,” said Kelley Robinson, president of the Human Rights Campaign.
“Our updated Corporate Equality Index comes at a time when our community is under attack by fringe actors hoping to eradicate our identity and push us back in the closet, including in our workplaces and where we shop,” Robinson added. “But businesses aren’t buying it.”
Republicans this year criticized companies that featured LGBTQ people in advertisements and boycotted retailers including Target and Kohl’s over annual Pride month merchandise. And conservatives including former President Trump have long decried diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives as “divisive” and “anti-American.”
Trump, the front-runner for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination, in a 2020 executive order barred the federal government and its contractors from offering diversity training, which he said promotes “division and inefficiency.” A federal judge later blocked the order from taking effect.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), a rival of Trump’s in the 2024 GOP race, has described DEI programming as a “scam.”
“If you look at the way this has actually been implemented across the country, DEI is better viewed as standing for discrimination, exclusion and indoctrination,” DeSantis said during a May news conference at the New College of Florida, a public liberal arts college the governor’s administration has sought to transform into a conservative stronghold.
But consumer surveys paint a different picture, and more than 70 percent of non-LGBTQ people surveyed by the LGBTQ media advocacy group GLAAD in June indicated that businesses should publicly support LGBTQ people, including through hiring practices that prioritize equity and inclusion.
A 2022 report from GLAAD and the Edelman Trust Institute found that Americans are twice as likely to buy from a company that demonstrates a commitment to protecting LGBTQ rights.