Alive, Capable and Accepted - Its Time for Parity

It is a year since the 2016 World Economic Forum Report on the Gender Gap was released, reporting that income parity would be achieved in an appalling 170 years. That day, after reading the report in detail, I wrote a blog. In it, I pledged to open my eyes wider, to see more clearly, and to make micro-decisions in favour of eliminating the gender gap, to counter the “hidden currents” in our society, those guide rails ushering us to an inequitable and ultimately unfair destination.  

I was not alone. Millions of people including so many in the organisation I work for, pledged similarly. We did so in in a unique, challenging and critical time in history for those seeking fairness, respect and equality for minorities. Together, we made change, but not enough. Today the 2017 World Economic Forum Report was released. It will be 217 years until men and women achieve economic parity, 47 years longer than last year which was, in turn, 52 years longer than the year before.  We are going backwards.

Alive, Capable and Accepted

There are three historical drivers to income parity between the genders – health, education and culture, which I roughly translate to being alive, being capable, and being accepted. On health, we are at near parity with 96%. While female mortality exceeded male mortality for all of our recorded history, a reversal occurring from 1900 such that female life expectancy now exceeds male life expectancy in most countries. On an education basis, parity has almost been achieved and only a 5% gap remains. 

In 1986 when Hymowitz and Schellhardt coined the term “glass ceiling” – the invisible barrier where promotion seemed within grasp but impossible to attain – it opened the doors to an acknowledgement and a call to action to the problem of near zero representation of women at leadership levels. Diversity, albeit slowly, had begun its journey to the mainstream of corporate and social vernacular. With health and education goals nearly achieved, however, we must now embrace the fact that only culture reconciles the gap between expressed support for diversity and equality and the reality of a 217 year wait for economic parity.

Awareness is not enough, we must respond 

Making change requires awareness and response, the former of which has been my greatest learning over the course of this year. Awareness of the small numbers of women in meetings that I attend. Awareness that females are judged more harshly by society on almost every front. Awareness of the reactions, coping mechanisms, and of the second and third derivative activities that are consequent to these judgements and minority status. While I have been a strong, unyielding and positive advocate for fairness, within an organisation that holds these values eminent among its leadership, there are two matters we must acknowledge within the broader corporate world and our society.  Firstly, the playing field is not equal; even the most cursory review of available research extinguishes counter arguments to the existence and impact of bias on success and progression.  Secondly, and as a consequence, we must acknowledge the roles played by both pipeline and selection bias, and to focus as much attention on the former as we do the latter. Only by (a) unearthing and ensuring the identification of a pipeline of diverse candidates for roles, and (b) ensuring adequate and transparent consideration of the diverse candidates in that pipeline, can we start to move the dial.

My challenge this year is different – I pledge to do more around diversity at lower levels; to continue my push for those capable to take leadership positions, but to spend an equal or greater time unearthing, investing, developing, guiding, our talent across our minority groups; to use my position, influence and privilege to inform, to explain and to shine a light on the hidden doors that can take years off the journey for those walking the hallways to progression; and to place accountability on those who do not. Success has both a locational and a timing component, being in the right place at the right time. Knowing the right choices that one should make in order to be there, and then, is the key. 

These aren't quick fixes.  We need to overcome a global environment where culture remains prime and the status quo stands tall like a champion accepting all comers. Only by acknowledging the issue can we widen the circle, make transparent the path, and achieve the benefits that diversity brings. As Mary Anne Cross, the real identity of author George Eliot, wrote in 1871, “what light is there but knowledge”?  #PressforProgress