IWD 2022: We mustn't confuse activity with results

If you work in the women empowerment sector, March is akin to what December is for event planners and caterers- busy!

But as I reflected on IWD events from previous years, I felt a certain level of jadedness.

Every year, IWD events get larger, the digital marketing campaigns are grander, prettier and receive more press. While this certainly forges positive visibility for women, I wonder if it goes far enough.

Looking at the scale of the problem, we must begin to question how these events, in any way, attempt to change the status quo.

For example, according to the World Economic Forum, Global Gender Report 2021, on average, in Nigeria, for every $1 a man earns, a woman earns 58 cents. Women are also underrepresented in senior positions, only 30% of managers and 13.9% of firms have female top managers.?

The IFC’s Gender Gap Assessment report of 30 leading companies on the Nigerian Stock Exchange further elucidates the under representation of women in the workplace. According to the report, women make up 23% of Board member roles, 20% of executive roles, 27% of senior management and 33% of the general workforce. The report also notes that none of the companies featured had both a female CEO and CFO.

In addition, the Mckinsey, Power of Parity, 2019 report, notes that since 2015, progress on increasing women’s presence in middle-management roles has actually regressed and is declining by 1% every year.?

These figures are beyond worrisome.

When we delve further into issues such as maternal mortality rates, challenges faced by women in the informal sector, and women’s participation in politics, the picture is stark.

So, how can we make IWD more meaningful? Here are a few suggestions:

Corporate Organizations

1. Devote reasonable budgets to improving the leadership capabilities of women. Multiple research findings have revealed the business case for doing so and the measurable return on investment.
2. Build a funnel for your female leadership and talent management pipeline, especially for senior leadership succession planning.
3. Build transparency around your hiring practices and structures to help eliminate unconscious bias.?
4. Create feedback loops, between the organization’s women networks [if there is one] and senior management, to promote interventions that lead to real change in corporate structures and create an environment for women to thrive.

Women Empowerment Networks

We must move from talkshops and inspiration to action, implementation, and measurement. The real edge would be to tailor our programs to not only inspire but to create actionable change that can be documented and measured.?

1. For each event, we must ask ourselves, how does this shift the dial when it comes to breaking the bias and elevating more women into senior leadership roles.
2. We must also continue to create actionable research that shows real time business outcomes.
3. Work with organizations to plug gaps in the female leadership pipeline and to create programes with actionable results?

Regulatory bodies?

Central Bank of Nigeria, Nigerian Exchange Limited and other bodies have real opportunities to push for gender parity in the corporate world and they have already begun to take some action in this regard. The next steps would be transparency on results for the actions already taken and then, a ‘carrot and stick’ approach to elicit more participation.??

Female professionals and leaders

Do more to show up and open doors for other women. There is no doubt what we bring value to the table, but if we want to be seen and heard, we need to act.??

The next generation of female professionals are counting on you to create pathways of success that they can follow. This could be our opportunity to build a corporate legacy with lasting results.

What other ways can we make International Women’s Day more meaningful?