India: Starbucks announces it has achieved gender pay equity and will continue to raise the female employee participation rate

On 05 November 2019, Tata Starbucks, a 50/50 joint-venture between Tata Global Beverages and the Californian Starbucks company announced in a statement (here in English) that its female participation rate had risen by 15 percentage points and that it had achieved its gender pay equity objective. Although female labor participation rates are falling in India, at Tata Starbucks, ‘women now make up 29 percent of its workforce (Ed. note: this percentage was 14% in 2014), a key gender diversity milestone toward its goal to achieve 40 percent gender diversity by 2022.’ In the sales division the female percentage is 35%. India is the fourth country in which Starbucks ‘partner’ staff can now enjoy gender pay equity, the other three being the USA, as of 2018, and both Canada and China, as of March 2019. Starbucks currently has 150 sales outlets in India, employing roughly 2,000.