By Lucy Bennetto | International Women's Day, 8 March 2026

International Women's Day is a moment to shine a light on the women who are so often at the centre of an industry, yet so rarely at the centre of the story. In chocolate, that gap is striking. Women contribute around 45% of the labour in cocoa farming globally, yet they remain underrepresented in ownership, leadership, and income.

The women behind every bar

Having visited farms in Peru and the Dominican Republic, I saw this firsthand. It wasn't
that men weren't present, but it was women who were clearly at the forefront of the work
and decision-making. Harvesting, fermenting, drying, sorting. It was evident, and it was
striking. Even though the statistics suggest women perform just less than half of cocoa
labour globally, what I witnessed felt like much more. Fortunately, we only work with
Fairtrade-certified cooperatives, where protections and standards for women are built into the certification. But across the broader industry, the picture is far less equitable.
In the wider community outside of Fairtrade, women in cocoa-growing communities are
frequently excluded from cooperative membership and decision-making, and agricultural
training is still too often directed only at men. Studies show a gender income gap of 25 to
35% in cocoa-producing regions, with women often performing unpaid labour on farms.
This matters beyond fairness. When women are economically empowered, households
invest more in children's education and health. Gender equality and sustainable supply chains are deeply connected, and you cannot have one without working toward the other.

What we're doing about it in our own supply chain

All of our cocoa is Fairtrade certified and 100% physically traceable to specific cooperatives in Ecuador, Peru, Madagascar, and the Dominican Republic. Through our manufacturing partner, we work with cooperatives that actively support women, including programmes that prioritise women when selecting farmer trainers. Fairtrade certification also requires non-discrimination, zero tolerance for sexual harassment, and fair working conditions across the supply chain.

Starting from this year, we have committed to collecting gender-disaggregated
data across our supply chain, on cooperative membership, leadership roles, training
participation, and income distribution. This year we're beginning that reporting process, to publish our first public report on women's leadership in our supply chain bythe 
end of 2027.

We've formalised all of this in our new Gender Strategy for Cocoa Sourcing and Supply
Chain Operations, which you can read in full on our website. It marks a genuine
commitment to doing the work.

Closer to home

Bennetto is female-founded, we're an accredited Living Wage Employer with what
happened to be an all-woman team of superstars, and we hold ourselves to the same
standards we ask of our supply chain partners. Gender equality isn't just a sourcing
commitment for us, it's part of how we operate every day.

Lucy

Read our full Gender Strategy for Cocoa Sourcing and Supply Chain Operations on the Bennetto website.