The Business Imperative for Gender Diversity

I will start on this with a quote from Dr. Tsedale Melaku. " Women are not perceived as capable in ways that we have historically seen men"

I recently participated in a forum that emphasizes on gender diversity in corporations and imagining the inclusivity of companies in the future. Alongside various heads and stakeholders we shared different ideas on coming up with policies and collective measures to include more women represented in the workforce at all levels and types of industries.

Of coarse we are NOT excluding men in this, however we have many things we can do to make it more inclusive for women especially in the masculine stereotyped industries.

This comes as a result of various challenges facing different organizations today. As a Talent Acquisition Specialist over the years I have witnessed this through high turnovers, withheld applications from candidates, demotivated staff etc.

We need to first identify and work on advancing this agenda. From where I stand, what measures are in place as far as gender diversity is concerned?

For instance, how do I approach candidates for an open position, tone or language in these Job Descriptions, how do we Advertise?

Well, think about it, deep in cooperate companies or manufacturing industries, are women well represented?

Mind you, we are NOT doing this as a sympathetic measure to just include them in what we perceive to be male oriented roles and positions. In short we are not here with the "Let me give you a shot" mentality.

Statistics have previously shown that women get lost at the intersection as they advance in organizations. Very few women are represented up in the c-suite level positions. Think about it, do we balance our recruiting measures. We have many organizations that adhere to traditional thinking of considering placement of their employees. For example, do we only need more women in the marketing department or Sales and Admin positions as opposed to the Finance or IT department, let alone the more senior positions.

Unfortunately, most of us think that this is still diversity as organizations still balance the gender representation equally within the company.

Other than advancements of women in the organization, we need to identify measures that can enhance more women in the organization to be the best of themselves.

Dealing with Unconscious Bias, What do I do as a panel representative when a pregnant candidate comes in for our interview 10 minutes late?

Dealing with the issue of Pay Gaps. We have some organizations that consider women as less valuable especially in salary negotiations. A decision is made based on being a woman.

As leaders who manage performance some assume that women are held off from a growth opportunity at work due to what it comes with, more work hours, women are more emotional, hmm... Well, this false narrative stereotypes women hence limiting promotions.

We need to start coming up with measures that allow better representation of women in the workplace and consider a more inclusive angle towards this agenda. We also need to NOT see this as just a way of having them represented to make our companies look good from the outside.

Women have much to face in todays workplace environment from Sexism, discrimination and mostly the Unconscious Bias that comes from these similar stereotypes.

In conclusion, my next one will show more about the solutions we can come up with and measures put in place. Remember, men and women work better together hence leads to all greatness for a company from a Human Resource point of view.