Gender Ratio or Competency, On What Merit will you Hire?

Discrimination on the basis of Gender at workplace has become hot topic among modern day HR Professionals. Normally whenever Job descriptions are made they are accompanied with a section of Gender either Male or Female. Lot of Companies are backing their decisions providing logic that they are doing so to maintain Gender ratio among their company and maintain workforce diversity, but the question is is it the real logic behind them or just they are hiding real agenda behind maintaining Gender ratio.

Lets discuss and elaborate the concern stated above further with an example, An Organization with male dominant workforce has a vacant position and they advertise for that open position and also mentioning that they need to hire a female to maintain gender ratio in the organization. However there are so many male competent workers that are available in market to fill this open position. Will that be worth it to keep the doors shut for those male candidates? And keep looking for a female candidate to fill in for that position.

Let us take one more example that for an open position another organization is hiring from both male and female candidates as they have shortlisted a male and a female candidates and will hire among one of them. Lets suppose female is more competent candidate but they need to hire someone having masculine personality as he has to work in a male Predominate culture so they are going to prefer a male candidate in this situation. Aren't they shutting the doors to a competent person who might have performed the job better but just because of the culture demands or taking Gender ratio into consideration they are preferring a male candidate.

Gender Ratio can hurt both male and female candidates who are competent for the job still not selected might suffer for many syndromes. Inequality can lead to stressful situation for anyone who got rejected on the basis of gender ratio. Employment and Economic Security are the key factors that are involved in health conditions and if someone has faced gender discrimination it may lead to poor health conditions as well.

Although workforce diversity is very important but one cant let go off a potential candidate on the name of gender ratio as they only require to hire from a specific gender, and already have stereotyped that a specific gender will be a perfect fit within this role.

Then Point to ponder is that what is the right formula to keep gender ratio and competency both Hand to hand? This is the question to answer and many organization are failing to have a Perfect formula.

There are many things HR professionals can lawfully do to boost diversity, such as:

• Determining if the Gender included in a job posting is unnecessarily high and has an adverse impact on men or women.
• Circulating resumes without names so unconscious bias does not affect who is considered for an interview.
• Having mixed-gender teams interview candidates to reduce the likelihood that any one “like-me” bias a predisposition toward those who are similar to the interviewer will predominate.
• Creating opportunities for women to shine however, don’t accomplish that by reserving positions or conferring automatic advantages based on gender. Doing so could mean the difference between “laudable” and “unlawful.”

Looking forward to hear from Other Professionals that what techniques or formulas they are using to have a correct Gender ratio and having competent resource in their organizations. Moreover while hiring what they prefer "Competency" or "Gender requirement".