Leah Haygood (BuzzWord Sustainable Reporting and Strategy, USA) shares how gender reporting is an important area for a lot of her clients, but that ultimately convincing companies of the business case will drive change.

I am Leah Haygood, a woman entrepreneur. My company is called "BuzzWord" and we work with companies on their sustainability reporting and strategies and have done a lot of GRI Reporting. I am here to learn about some of the emerging issues that will be reflected in reporting in the future and to have some influence on that.

My own view is that strengthening and adding indicators to the existing GRI framework may indeed be useful, but that alone will not drive change. It is necessary to get the attention of people within the company and to let them know that stakeholders care about these issue and to make the business case to show how this is 'not only the right thing to do', but that it is good for business. That is what will ultimately drive change. And the reporting process can be part of that cycle of a company looking at its own performance and improving performance.