Article 16: Right to marry and found a family; free and full consent; the family entitled to protection
Helpful
Owners voting their values help. Others must carry most of it.
Why shareholder democracy is helpful
The right to marry and have a family protected is decided by marriage law and constitutional courts, as when the U.S. Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage in Obergefell v. Hodges. Hundreds of companies, including Goldman Sachs and Levi Strauss, filed amicus briefs backing marriage equality, but that support followed rather than created the legal change. Where companies matter more directly is in benefits. For years, investors including Trillium Asset Management brought recurring shareholder proposals to ExxonMobil seeking equal health benefits and nondiscrimination protections for LGBT employees and their families. The Human Rights Campaign presented on behalf of a coalition of advocacy groups. Investors have also filed at retailers like Starbucks over unequal parental leave between corporate and hourly staff. Separately, business associations including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce spent over a decade actively lobbying against federal paid-family-leave mandates, a real but partial obstacle to family protection that only recently began to soften.
How this was scoredHelpful
Helpful. Owners voting their values help. Others must carry most of it.
Employer decisions on spousal health benefits and parental leave help families function day to day, but the legal right to marry and have that marriage recognized is set by legislatures and courts, not by any company's conduct.
Documented, decade-long business-lobby opposition to federal paid-family-leave mandates (led by groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce) has slowed, though not blocked, family-supporting policy, while on marriage equality itself corporations were broadly supportive rather than obstructive.
1 and 1, higher of the two, gives Helpful
Every rating is the higher of two answers, one for what companies do and one for what they spend to stop the outcome, because the same vote reaches both. See the full method.
Sources
- Record Number Of ExxonMobil Shareholders Vote For Non-Discrimination Policy, Human Rights Campaign, 2007
- Dramatic Increase in Support for Sexual Orientation Nondiscrimination Proposal at ExxonMobil, Trillium Asset Management (archive), 2001-05-31
- ExxonMobil Offers Benefits to all Employees' Spouses, Human Rights Campaign, 2013-09-27
- An investor asks why baristas get less parental leave than Starbucks corporate employees, Quartz, 2017
- Business Lobby Shifts Paid-Leave Stance, Sensing Action in 2021, Bloomberg Law, 2021
What civil society organizations are helping owners on this
Presented the recurring shareholder proposal at ExxonMobil's annual meetings (as part of a 21-organization coalition) asking the company to add sexual orientation and gender identity to its nondiscrimination policy and extend spousal benefits.
Co-sponsored and presented the ExxonMobil sexual-orientation nondiscrimination shareholder proposal starting in the late 1990s.
Led business-community lobbying opposing federal paid-family-leave mandates for over a decade, before beginning to soften its position around 2020-2021.
Business Lobby Shifts Paid-Leave Stance, Sensing Action in 2021, Bloomberg Law, 2021
3 campaigns on record
Explain and address the disparity in paid parental leave between corporate employees (12-18 weeks) and store employees (6 weeks, birth/adoptive parents only)
Result: We found no documented vote result in the sources reviewed
We found no documented change directly tied to this proposal; Starbucks did substantially expand store-employee parental leave in December 2024, but the company attributed that change to general employee feedback and a leadership turnaround strategy, not to this resolution.
An investor asks why baristas get less parental leave than Starbucks corporate employees, Quartz
Add sexual orientation and gender identity to the company's written nondiscrimination policy and extend equal benefits to same-sex spouses/partners
With Trillium Asset Management
Result: 37.8% of shares voted in favor, then the highest support the proposal had received
ExxonMobil did not change its nondiscrimination policy at the time; the company began recognizing same-sex marriages for benefits purposes only in 2013, following the Supreme Court's Windsor decision, not as a direct result of the shareholder vote.
Record Number Of ExxonMobil Shareholders Vote For Non-Discrimination Policy, HRC
Add sexual orientation to the company's nondiscrimination policy
Result: 13% of votes in favor, up from 8% the prior year, the highest-supported of eight resolutions on the ballot that year
We found no documented policy change by ExxonMobil in direct response to this vote; the company continued to decline to add the protection for several more years.
How this rating was made
Every item on every one of our maps is read against one question: how far does this depend on the people who own companies voting their values? We answer it twice, once for what companies do and once for what they spend to stop the outcome, and take whichever answer is higher, since the same vote reaches both. The score carries its reasoning and its sources so that a reader can check it rather than take it.
- Pivotal. Owners voting their values can deliver most of the outcome.
- Necessary. Owners remove an obstacle nothing else removes, and others must also act.
- Helpful. Owners voting their values help, and others carry most of it.
- Independent. This moves without owners. Other levers carry it.
The advocacy record on this page holds only what a source we opened says happened. Where we searched and found nothing, the page says so rather than leaving a silence. Where a campaign names a filer the source does not name, it says that too. Ratings are ours; the list of subjects is Universal Declaration of Human Rights's, and we link to their original.
How we score dependency, in full.