Article 2: Equal rights without discrimination
Necessary
Owners remove an obstacle nothing else removes. Others must also act.
Why shareholder democracy is necessary
Equal treatment without discrimination depends heavily on what large employers, retailers and technology companies do inside their own operations, alongside the civil-rights laws governments enforce. Investors have used the shareholder vote to win disclosure. Arjuna Capital's pay-equity campaign made Citigroup the first major US bank to publish and commit to closing its gender and race pay gaps. A 58 percent vote won the same disclosure from Lowe's, though a near-identical 51 percent vote at Kroger produced no public data. Conservative filers use the same tool in reverse. The National Center for Public Policy Research's Free Enterprise Project asked Costco to audit the risk of its diversity programs, and shareholders rejected it by a 98 percent margin. Industry lobbying has also slowed Europe's pay-transparency directive, and in 2025 technology companies pushed for a federal freeze on state AI laws that would have preempted emerging state rules against algorithmic hiring and lending discrimination.
How this was scoredNecessary
Necessary. Owners remove an obstacle nothing else removes. Others must also act.
Ending discrimination in pay, hiring, promotion and access to services requires large employers, retailers and technology vendors to change concrete practices such as pay-setting and applicant screening. Civil-rights statutes, courts and enforcement agencies also have to act, so corporate change alone does not complete the picture.
Corporate lobbying pulls in both directions: industry pressure has slowed pay-transparency and algorithmic-fairness rules, but many large employers have also lobbied against discriminatory state bills, so business political activity narrows progress at the margins rather than blocking it outright.
2 and 1, higher of the two, gives Necessary
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
- Citi Is First U.S. Bank To Respond To Shareholder Pressure To Close Gender Pay Gap, Arjuna Capital via PR Newswire, 2018-01-15
- Following Majority Shareholder Vote, Lowe's Releases Racial and Gender Pay Gap Data, Arjuna Capital via Business Wire, 2022-12-14
- Kroger Investors Vote for Racial, Gender Pay Equity Proposal at Annual Meeting, Progressive Grocer, 2023-06
- Costco shareholders reject an anti-DEI measure, after Walmart and others end diversity programs, CBS News, 2025-01-23
- Big Tech AI Regulation Blocked: How Lobbying Won in 2025, Nemko Digital, 2025
What civil society organizations are helping owners on this
Filed pay-equity shareholder proposals at Citigroup, Lowe's and Kroger asking for disclosure of gender and racial pay gaps.
Co-filed the 2023 pay-equity proposal at Kroger with Arjuna Capital, backed by union local UFCW 3000.
Union local that supported the Arjuna Capital and Proxy Impact pay-equity proposal at Kroger.
Filed a shareholder proposal asking Costco to audit the legal and financial risks of its diversity, equity and inclusion programs.
2 campaigns on record
Report on the legal, reputational and competitive risks of the company's diversity, equity and inclusion programs.
Result: Rejected, over 98% against
we found no documented change: Costco's board unanimously opposed the proposal and reaffirmed its existing diversity commitments without alteration.
Publish a report on the pay gap between male and female employees across race and ethnicity, including base, bonus and equity pay, and set targets to close it.
Result: Withdrawn after company commitment
Citi became the first major US bank to disclose gender and ethnicity wage data and pledged to close the identified gaps.
Related subjects on other maps
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.