AB of December 31, 2017 nearly 40 percent of our global workforce was female, and 30% of women held senior positions. While we recognize the challenges we face in improving our gender mix, we are committed to the principle of equal pay for equal work. 

To support our commitment, we have a framework for annually examining pay practices. All roles in our organization are reviewed and benchmarked to the external market on an annual basis. We also assess compensation decisions for potential pay disparities by gender, among other things. If disparities are foup.d and not explained in an acceptable manner, appropriate responsive action is taken. Furthermore, we offer employees multiple channels to raise pay disparity concerns, such as the employee's manager, our Ethics Helpline, our Employee Relations team or the Law Department. This year, to further support and enhance our process, we have also retained a third party to validate our assessments, and this will become a part of our annual process. 

Following the conclusion of our assessment and validation process, globally, women at our company earn $0.991 to every $1.000 earned by men for equal performance at the same level. As part of this year's compensation cycle, we are taking appropriate actions to help close the gap for women.

Gender equality is the foundational core of our commitment to building an inclusive, high­performing culture at the company, so we remain dedicated to maintaining practices designed to ensure there is equal pay for equal performance at the same levels.