The Business Case for Gender Equality
Creating a better workplace for the next generation, by design
Eventually, there comes a point where you can’t just rally and explain away all the behavior as creepy exceptions or pin the blame on yourself … You see patterns, systemic problems, and it doesn’t matter where you are or what industry you pursue.
— Ellen Pao, sued her former employer, the venture-capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, for gender discrimination
Considering the mass of gender inequality crimes in our world, be they honor killings, childhood marriages, human trafficking victims (of which 80% are female and half are children) — one would expect that the modern workplace in first world climate of United States of America could do better.
Yet there is still much much more ground to cover.
Americans have long been hammered with the stats. Consider the men and women negotiating for higher pay in one famous 2005 report. They used the same words, but the men were seen as confident, while the women came off as pushy. There’s still stigma against female leadership even if the individual is on par or even above the necessary qualifications for the role.
Or the biology students in a 2016 study: The male students were ranked by their peers as the most knowledgeable, while the female students with the same grades were largely overlooked.
Women with full-time jobs still earn only about 77 percent of their male counterparts’ earnings.
— Institute for Women’s Policy Research
The pay gap has barely budged in a decade. At the current rate, the gap won’t close for more than 100 years.
And worse still, the effect of the gap is magnified for mothers and women of color, and this is prevalent in nearly every occupation.
Even with workplace trainings in place for unconscious bias, #ilooklikeanengineer, Women Who Code organizations and other similar groups who encourage and inspire young women in occupations where women are lacking, along companies from Netflix to Goldman Sachs sought to make their paid-leave programs more equitable — I believe we are ready to do better.
Today, I will speak to the business case for gender equality. Unless we create workplaces in the future that provide equal pay for women and men for work of equal or comparable value, we hinder the success of our own company, our own companies and the progression of the world.
I believe in the removal of barriers to the full and equal participation of women in the workforce as well as full access to all occupations and industries, including leadership roles, for women and men.
Achieving gender equality should be the number one priority for workplaces not only because it’s ‘the right thing to do’, it is also crucial to the bottom line of a business and the productivity of our world.
Saving and Creating Business Value
A workplace that is equally appealing for women and men will provide employers with access to the entire talent pool. As women are increasingly more highly educated than men, a workplace that is not attractive to women risks losing the best talent to competitors.
Replacing a departing employee can cost 75% or more of their annual wage. As both women and men are more likely to remain with an organization they view as fair, employee turnover for an organization offering gender equality can be reduced, thereby decreasing the high expense of recruitment.
Higher Productivity and Economic Growth
Companies with gender equality perform better. While there are a range of reasons to explain this link, one factor is that diversity brings together varied perspectives, produces a more holistic analysis of the issues an organization faces and spurs greater effort, leading to improved decision-making.
Gender equality improves national productivity and competitiveness
The World Economic Forum has found a strong correlation between a country’s competitiveness and how it educates and uses its female talent.
…empowering women means a more efficient use of a nation’s human talent endowment and… reducing gender inequality enhances productivity and economic growth. Over time, therefore, a nation’s competitiveness depends, among other things, on whether and how it educates and utilizes its female talent.
— The World Economic Forum
Takeaway
For individuals, the steps for increasing equality may be as simple as doing something. Whether it is starting a conversation about diversity/gender ratios at your workplace or learning negotiations techniques for females, every small action counts.
For companies, start with data on what actually works. Whether the bias can be changed via a change in workforce education, training programs, fair/equal pay or hiring practices in your group, take note of the data and track changes over time.
