A large number of Pride Amsterdam’s sponsors and partners have policies in the workplace that benefit LGBTIQ+ people to a greater or lesser extent. This is apparent from a tour of NU.nl. Of the 74 companies contacted, 39 responded. Eight of them have no concrete policy.
In the past, companies that volunteered to sponsor or participated in Pride have been accused of pinkwashing. This term is used when companies raise the rainbow flag, but are otherwise not concerned with LGBTQ+ rights within their organization.
For example, Shell came under fire a few years ago. The company carried the rainbow colors at its gas station, but made no further contributions to the LGBTQ+ community. Uber also took part in the boat parade during Pride after a company driver refused to take a drag queen.
Primark was even refused several years in a row because the clothing was produced in LGBTQ+-unfriendly countries.
Transitional leave and gender neutral toilets
That seems less the case this year. 31 companies have even included certain lgbtiq+ rights in their personnel policy. This concerns, for example, adoption leave that lasts as long as maternity leave, which is not the case by law. It also concerns transitional leave for transgender people who want to go into transition.
A number of companies have the latter specifically in their collective labor agreement. For others, this falls under special leave or can be chosen in consultation.
It can also concern gender-neutral toilets or include language use in the workplace. In a number of companies, people can also choose their pronouns in IT systems.
And it goes further than just the Netherlands. For example, Heineken helped eight hundred Brazilian transgender people register with their chosen name last year. “We are now looking at whether this can also be rolled out in other countries, but that is not yet complete,” said a spokesperson.
But it doesn’t just have to be about personnel policy. Hotel chain Accor, for example, helps LGBTQ+ people who live on the street because they have been evicted from their home and work because of their sexual orientation.
Small businesses don’t have the resources
Eight of the companies contacted have no specific policy or initiatives regarding LGBTIQ+ persons. Four of them are small businesses, which do not always have the resources to implement such schemes.
However, there are also large multinationals among those companies. They do have lhbtiq+ networks where people talk about the theme, but they don’t do much more. A few companies also give money to LGBTQ+ organizations.
What does NU.nl owner DPG Media actually do?
- DPG Media does not have a concrete LGBTQ+ policy.
- “We allow all our employees the space to register as m/f/x and apply all policies to this equally. Furthermore, we do not have a distinctive policy,” a spokesperson told NU.nl.
- The spokesperson emphasizes that DPG Media is not a sponsor of Pride Amsterdam and therefore does not want to profile itself as such.
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