Pushing gender diversity at work: do we really need to?

It's International Women's Day, which means somewhere out there there are executives and managers who will be scrambling to make a statement about the importance of gender diversity. For some organizations, gender diversity isn't really a priority: it's one of the 'culture' issues that you need to attend to periodically. Some people will make jokes today. Some will raise larger questions about equality of opportunity and claim interventions aimed at increasing diversity actually do more harm than good, especially in private enterprise where market forces are at work.

Let's just make this a simple case then.

1. Diversity is not just good for business, it's better for business.

Do even a cursory search online and you will find numerous studies from serious consulting firms showing clear evidence that genuine diversity, that is inclusion of women, minorities, or foreign-born people in meaningful numbers at all levels of the organization, yields better outcomes. Here's just one from Boston Consulting Group on the connection between diversity and innovation.

2. Market forces won't get us to the solution.

The first thing you learn if you study economics is that markets function to yield efficient outcomes. Great. But markets are not effective systems for allocating investment or production resources or sending price signals for certain goods and services. Markets don't provide for public defense, or clean water. Without intervention, typically by governments, these things don't exist. Let's be equally clear about rights as well. In my country of birth, without government intervention, there would still be a market for slaves. Without government intervention, women would not be able to vote.

It takes broad collective action by people with different beliefs to make changes of this magnitude, and that's especially hard in our times. In a work context, this is easier. Work isn't a democracy, which is actually quite helpful for creating impetus. You don't need to mobilize millions, either. You just need a few.

3. Equality is not a zero-sum game.

This is the part that, either through active malignant opposition or benign fear, that is the hardest to change. How did we get to a place where people believe that rights are a zero-sum game, that someone getting more rights means someone getting less? Nonsense.

If you believe in a level playing field then that means equality for everyone. It also, by definition, means that you are obliged to recognize and fix those fields that are tilted. It typically doesn't take but a little data to shine a light on the issue. In a country where women and men are in roughly equal proportion, there shouldn't be systematic underrepresentation at conferences, in executive suites or in the board room. Understanding the reasons is important for finding solutions, but the reasons are ultimately immaterial to simply prove something is off.

Do we need to push for gender diversity (or any sort of diversity) at the workplace? Hell yeah. We've got the data. Something is off. It doesn't matter if you are motivated by greater profit or by a commitment to essential dignity: fixing it gets you both.