Will innovation drive gender equality or will gender equality drive innovation?

There was widespread exuberance and revelry across the country when India launched its first Mars Orbiter Mission, Mangalyaan, in 2013. As India’s first interplanetary endeavor and a stellar example of frugal innovation, it showcased a paradigm-shifting possibility for the space research world. At least 27% of the project’s key executive positions were held by women. The Indian Space Research Organization bettered its own feat six years later with Chandrayan II ? a space project led by two women.

Despite the benefits of women participation in business and economy, they continue to be under-represented across the society and at the workplace. Per the annual report by the World Economic Forum Global Gender Gap Report 2020, it will take a massive 257 years to achieve global gender equality on the dimension of economic participation and opportunity. In many ways, the women-centric team of India’s latest space missions, was about celebrating diversity and equality in the backdrop of the wide gender gap that exists. There are multiple factors which lead to this disparity including socio-cultural norms, conscious and unconscious biases, among others.

In today’s fast-paced disruptive world, innovation is the fundamental enabler for not only competitive advantage but also to progress into the future. Effective innovation requires diversity of thoughts, experience and skills. It demands diverse people to solve complex problems, spark better questions, challenge old practices and collaborate meaningfully.

Progressive organizations are increasingly recognizing that women bring in diversity in experiences, perspectives and backgrounds, which are crucial to innovation. They acknowledge that they are an inevitable component of the consumer mix too. Inclusion of women’s perspectives in designing and developing products/services, therefore, are helping organizations achieve unprecedented breakthroughs.

As organizations aim to bridge the existing gender gap, it’s critical to identify the future growth areas and work towards building greater gender diversity in such roles. In this transformation era, technology will continue to dramatically challenge and drive business models, significantly shaping organizations’ decisions on attracting, hiring and retaining diverse talent. Of the 4.5 million jobs of 2022, 10-20% would be in new emerging areas of data analytics, Artificial Intelligence (AI) research, among others (EY Future of Jobs study 2018). However, according to a recent study, only 26% women are in technical roles among Indian corporates. Globally too, less than one-third of the world’s technical workforce are women. In the field of cloud computing and AI, women constitute just 12% and 26% respectively of the overall profession.

We, at EY, are giving special emphasis to this issue and actively working to provide more women with the opportunity to enter, remain and thrive in technology roles. However, we will achieve true success only when we take necessary actions to expand a gender-equal talent pool in technology. According to National Task Force 2018 on Women in Science report, only 15% of the Indian research and development workforce are women, while the global average is 30%. To reduce the gender gap, we need to encourage more women to pursue a career in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). Only when girls can see the possibilities for their future and get access to education, we can achieve gender parity in the field of technology.

In September 2019, we launched a mobile platform in India, EY STEM Tribe, to help girls in the 13-18 years age group engage in STEM curriculum and pursue high-growth careers. Developed in collaboration with Tribal Planet, India is the first country to launch the global initiative that will provide an entertaining and gamified STEM learning experience to over 6,000 girls in Delhi NCR. The initiative is also a part of EY’s global Women in Technology movement, aimed at accelerating gender parity in the technology space and reinforcing our purpose of building a better working world.

Creating a talent pool and hiring is one part of the challenge. The other is retaining and developing women for leadership. Due to socio-cultural factors, many female workers drop out from the workforce or stop pursuing managerial and leadership roles. To address some of these challenges, we are creating internal and external programs focused on women’s empowerment around the world. One of our practices which have helped in strengthening gender diversity is recruitHER; our focused intervention to advance women hiring across roles and levels, fair representation in all development opportunities, pay parity audits to ensure fair pay, and a strong sponsorship from the leadership. Another initiative is ‘I stand with her’, a movement which invited all our male colleagues to come forward as champions for change.

The future growth for any organization will largely rest upon its ability to leverage the power of diversity coupled with innovation. It is critical that gender diversity is established as part of the business strategy and everyone is committed to taking affirmative actions to drive the change in a focused, synchronized and deliberate manner.

When will you move long-term value from ambition to action? Join EY to discuss pressing economic and social issues as we look to the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2020 – from 21-24 January. Join the conversation via ey.com/wef and using #WEF20 and #BetterWorkingWorld