Target 4.2: Early childhood development and pre-primary
By 2030, ensure that all girls and boys have access to quality early childhood development, care and pre-primary education so that they are ready for primary education
Owners voting their values help. Others must carry most of it.
Why shareholder democracy is helpful
Early childhood care and pre-primary education depend mainly on public provision and household support. The World Bank's Women, Business and the Law 2024 finds only 78 economies provide financial or tax support for parents with young children. It finds only 62 set quality standards for childcare services. Listed childcare operators are direct providers whose conduct sets quality. ASX-listed G8 Education cares for about 36,000 children across 395 centers. It announced 40 closures in April 2026 after a former employee was charged with more than 70 sex offenses against children under two. Its shares fell from about $1.28 to 18 cents. Proxy tools already reach the sector. Trillium Asset Management filed a workforce-composition disclosure proposal at Bright Horizons in December 2024. We found no shareholder resolution or corporate lobbying campaign directed at pre-primary access itself. The safety, quality and staffing conduct of chains such as G8 Education, KinderCare and Bright Horizons is shareholder-addressable. Access turns on public funding, so owners help at the margin and public policy remains decisive.
How this was scoredHelpful
Helpful. Owners voting their values help. Others must carry most of it.
We have not yet written down the two answers behind this rating. Recording them on every item, so a reader can check the reasoning and not only the conclusion, is work in progress.
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
- New Data Show Massive, Wider-than-Expected Global Gender Gap (Women, Business and the Law 2024), World Bank, 2024-03-04
- Childcare group G8 to close 40 centres after child abuse scandal, ABC News (Australia), 2026-04-29
- Bright Horizons Family Solutions, Inc.: Rule 14a-8 no-action correspondence on Trillium Asset Management workforce composition proposal, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, 2025-02-07
1 campaign on record
Enhance existing reporting to include a chart identifying employees by gender and race in each of the nine job categories the federal equal employment agency uses, giving numbers or percentages, together with quantitative and comprehensive workforce data and trend metrics on gender, race and ethnicity.
Result: Submitted on 17 December 2024 for the 2025 annual meeting. Bright Horizons asked the SEC on 31 January 2025 for leave to omit it, as ordinary business under Rule 14a-8(i)(7) and as substantially implemented under Rule 14a-8(i)(10). Trillium withdrew the proposal by email on 4 February 2025, the company withdrew its request the next day, and on 7 February 2025 the staff replied that the matter was moot and it would not comment. Shareholders never voted on it.
No commitment by the company is recorded. What the correspondence does record is the company's own account of why it thought the proposal already met: it told the staff it had fully implemented the first request by publishing its EEO-1 report on its investor relations website, and answered the second with the workforce data in its Form 10-K since the 2020 financial year and in its proxy statement since 2022. Whether that account persuaded Trillium, or something else did, the withdrawal email does not say.
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 UN Sustainable Development Goals's, and we link to their original.
How we score dependency, in full.