Gender Equality - Sadly, Not In Our Lifetime

In March this year, I wrote a blog calling out the ridiculously low percentage of women in Board and management positions in the utilities industry almost a year ago, and making clear, in the written word, both my opinions on it and what I intended to do about it.  

The latest World Economic Forum report on the Global Gender Gap is out.  While the outcomes range in different countries, overall it will be an average of 170 years before there is gender parity on income, economic participation, education, health and survival, and political empowerment.  On health outcomes, we are at 96% parity globally already but on economic grounds, the gaps remains at 59%.  This is the lowest since 2008, and getting worse.  Politically, only 23% of the gap has been closed. 

Globally today, men and women entering the workforce have almost identical levels of educational qualifications. The Report shows that there is near parity in primary school education, and only a 7% gap in tertiary education.  In 95 countries, tertiary education gaps have been completely closed.  While there remain considerable gaps in STEM subjects, which provide a grave concern for the future given the rate of automation and technological advancement already underway, efforts in educational parity overall are paying off.  The United States, for example, has since 2006 closed its educational gap, as has Iceland, Canada, and Botswana among others. 

Educational gains do not however translate to economic gains for women – the Report states that even though there is near gender parity in employment for professional and technical workers, reflecting in part the equal education and skills levels among women and men with tertiary education, women hold less than a third of senior roles.  Average female representation on boards is 14% and only in five countries is it above 30%.  As well as this, there continues to be a persistent wage gap, with average earning around half of men.  With the current rates of change, the amount of time anticipated to be taken for countries to close the economic gender gap ranges from 47 years in Western Europe to a staggering 1951 years in South Asia.  In this context, an average of 170 years simply loses its meaning. 

Confronting?  Perhaps.  But corporate meetings, C suite strategy days and Board meetings globally reflect these statistics every day.  Most of the industry or financial meetings I attend range between zero and 10% females.  Were the numbers any different five years ago? 

Change your micro-decisions and change the world

Converting education parity to economic parity is complex, because it reaches into the way in which corporates and societies really work.  This is because gender bias happens second by second, micro-decision by micro-decision, in the those moments when fast thinking occurs; whether in decisions around pay increases based on the loudest person coming to your office, in decisions around whether a candidate will have family priorities to worry about, in decisions around who seems the most confident, or the hungriest.  It happens when you design position descriptions using masculine language, when you schedule the meetings at 3.30pm and exclude working mums, and when you performance rate someone down to allow “room to grow”.  And, importantly, it happens when you eliminate from the decision matrix the fact that positive discrimination is probably ok when only 14% of the Board and C suite positions are held by a particular gender. 

But knowing there is a problem doesn’t help change it, of course.  Change involves doing things differently – not by structuring a rule or a milestone, but all of the time.  It involves consciously trying to understand what being a minority means in terms of the architecture of power, the communities and factions that work above and beyond the written rules to make decisions in a workplace, and how hard it is to win a game where the rules are not really written down. It means pausing more, and asking genuine questions about whether we really want to change and how we are going to achieve it.  

I spent the last few days attending the EY Senior Managers Milestone event in Kuala Lumpur, facilitating sessions to our new Senior Managers and Associate Directors. Half of the room was female, striking a positive benchmark for the future leaders of the firm and a stark contrast to the numbers we see in industry generally.  Yet the challenge starts here – ensuring that this array of incredible talent is identified, invested in, understood, challenged and supported will determine how the story ends.  One thing is clear and certain however.  We simply cannot allow the hidden currents within society to determine the trajectory, the speed or the destination of this journey. We must intervene and empower others to do the same.  If we don’t, then nothing will change. 

So I am refining my commitment. I’m going to see if, without being forced to, and without making a fuss, I can make daily micro decisions that move the dial forward for a bunch of people that are smart enough, hungry enough and committed enough to add value to business, politics and boardrooms. I’m going to engage with intelligent women and I’m going to invest in them differentially, providing stretch opportunities, client engagement opportunities and coaching. I’m going to pause, reflect and listen to how I can help open pathways to advancement. I’m going to be known for having a point of view on the issue of parity, and to be judged on it. Overall, I’m committed to fast forward the winding of that 170 year clock to the extremity of the position that my privilege has afforded. For no other reason than as a humanist who supports the right of all beings to exist in relative equality filtered only by our own abilities and commitment, I both ask and implore you to do the same. Let’s intervene, make change and embrace the notion of Women Fast Forward.

Go to www.ey.com/womenfastforward for more information on what we are doing as a firm in this space and to be part of the movement.

The views reflected in this article are the views of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the global EY organization or its member firms.