Frequently Asked Questions

The City Ratings provide businesses with a holistic view into which cities are open for business, both inclusive and competitive. They can help business leaders craft a more effective strategy for advancing LGBTQ+ inclusion, both within their workforce and in the societies in which they operate. More specifically, the City Ratings can help business leaders take action on LGBTQ+ inclusion across the below three areas.

• Business leaders can use the City Ratings to help inform where they open new or expand existing operations.

  Businesses consider a number of factors when deciding where to open new or expand existing operations. Most factors focus on a location’s geographic and economic characteristics, such as its access to major markets, infrastructure, tax rate, and regulatory environment. An increasingly important, and often overlooked, set of factors is LGBTQ+ inclusion and the foundational governance practices that support it.
  
  The City Ratings provide two main benefits to businesses considering these factors. First, they can help businesses understand where they can most likely see the full benefits of an inclusive workplace. As previous Open For Business reports have established, there are strong business benefits that companies can derive from being LGBTQ+ inclusive. And companies that operate in more LGBTQ+ inclusive locations are more likely to take actions to create inclusive workplaces.
  
  For example, in Open For Business’s New Global Champions report, we found that 60% of high-growth emerging market companies headquartered in cities with high City Ratings openly supported LGBTQ+ inclusion. The same was true for only 30% of companies headquartered in cities with low ratings.
  
  Another benefit of the City Ratings is that they can help businesses understand their exposure to locations or governments that could lead to reputational and regulatory risks, which other ratings can miss. A low rating can signify that a city lacks a strong rule of law, has high corruption, or cracks down on civil liberties. Additionally, actions against the LGBTQ+ community tend to be “canaries in the coal mine” that mark the beginning of a more illiberal or authoritarian government.
  
  Understanding how these locations and their governments can expose a company to regulatory and reputational risks, which other ratings might not adequately capture, is important. For example, when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, foreign companies that had significant investments in Russia suddenly found themselves under immense regulatory and public pressure to divest. Many of these companies were taken by surprise, not because Russia’s corruption and human rights abuses were unknown, but because many prominent ESG ratings, which companies rely on to gauge these risks, did not adequately capture these risks. For example, one study found that companies with substantial investment in Russia had higher ESG scores on average than those that were not invested in Russia.lxix
  
  Given their focus on LGBTQ+ inclusion and supporting governance indicators, the City Ratings can be a useful tool for businesses assessing their exposure to similar situations. Moscow and St. Petersburg both received a DD rating, a clear indication that both cities are and have been closed for business.

• Business leaders can use the City Ratings to more effectively support LGBTQ+ workers.

  The City Ratings can help business leaders more effectively support workers in locations they already operate in. There are three categories of workers for whom business leaders can use the City Ratings to consider the best way to create an inclusive environment:

  1. LGBTQ+ workers based in their home offices: The City Ratings can help business leaders allocate resources to create an inclusive environment for LGBTQ+ workers in their home offices. For instance, cities with low ratings may require more time and attention from diversity, equity, and inclusion professionals to create a safe environment due to a lack of an LGBTQ+ inclusive environment outside of the office.

  2. LGBTQ+ workers traveling on international assignments: The City Ratings can help business leaders understand how to best support LGBTQ+ workers who are on international assignments. For example, if an LGBTQ+ worker is relocating or traveling to a city with a rating considered closed for business, the business can provide them with important legal and cultural information to help them navigate the new environment. Open For Business’s report Working Globally provides a framework for how companies can support these workers.

  3. LGBTQ+ workers in the company’s supply chains: The City Ratings can also help business leaders understand where LGBTQ+ workers in their supply chains may be more likely to face discrimination at work. For example, if an apparel company works with large factories in a city that is not open for business, such as Addis Ababa or Dhaka, it could ensure LGBTQ+ policies are included in its factory audits or work with factory leadership to implement LGBTQ+ inclusive policies.

• Business leaders can use the City Ratings to inform their advocacy for LGBTQ+ rights in the public sphere.

  Finally, the City Ratings can help business leaders effectively advocate for LGBTQ+ rights in the public sphere. There are several channels and stakeholders that business leaders can engage on LGBTQ+ rights, summarized in the graphic below from Open For Business’ Channel of Influence Report. Some strategies are more effective and appropriate in cities which are open for business, including featuring positive images of LGBTQ+ people in public advertisements, publicly advocating for inclusion with policymakers, and working with chambers of commerce and trade unions on LGBTQ+ inclusion. Other strategies are more effective in cities that are not open for business, including working with suppliers, privately engaging policymakers, providing safe space for civil society organizations, and incorporating LGBTQ+ inclusion in investment decisions.

The Open For Business City Ratings are determined by a combination of 27 metrics from a number of well-respected sources. Each city receives a final score, which corresponds to a rating (AAA through E). In this report, we only include a city’s rating rather than its score in an effort to focus on which cities are broadly doing well and which have room for improvement. The final score is comprised of two categories: Economic Competitiveness and LGBTQ+ Inclusiveness. Both categories are comprised of a variety of sub-categories, which are in turn comprised of individual data points, listed below. Please see the Methodology page for a full explanation of data sources, weights and methodology.

The acronym LGBTQ+ is used throughout this report to refer to communities and individuals with diverse sexual orientations, gender identities, and gender expressions. The term stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer, followed by a “+” which encompasses individuals in the community not adequately defined by these terms, such as intersex individuals. Increasingly, the term LGBTIQ is used by a number of organizations and businesses. It explicitly adds intersex to the acronym. We have opted not to use it in this report as there is even less data on intersex people around the world than there is on LGBTQ+ individuals. However, we fully intend to include intersex people in the “+” of LGBTQ+, and we hope there to be more data collected on these communities to explicitly include them in future City Ratings.