Diversity and inclusion has to be more than skin deep
When I think about all the attention and focus that diversity and inclusion, and women empowerment are getting I am pleased; however, I see that for most part there is an element of tokenism that is used to project an aura that either the forum or organization is very inclusive and equitable.
When you dig deeper you realize there is not much to cheer yet. Let me elaborate.
Statistics
Starting from higher education to entering the corporate world, we see the percentage of women dropping from high thirties to high twenties across multiple industries.
It has been reported that “the percentage of female enrolment to total enrolment in India has increased from 45% in 2014–15 to around 49% in 2020–21”. (Source: Press Information Bureau (pib.gov.in).
Talking about the proportion of women employed in the organized sector, in the public sector they constitute only 14.5% and in the private sector 23.12% of the total workers. Some industries have a higher representation of women eg. IT where they constitute 36% of the workforce. In the unorganized sector it is noted that this percentage is around 52%.
The employability gender gap in India is 50.9%, with only 19.2% of women in the labour force overall compared to 70.1% of men, as per data from the International Labour Organisation (ILO). This is despite the fact that 52% of women in India express a desire to work.
Furthermore, in the senior levels in the organization the representation of women falls drastically. According to Deloitte Global’s ‘Women in the Boardroom’ report, women hold 17.1 percent of board seats in India. This means 83% call the shots leaving women as a minority in positions of power.
Such a scenario is hardly encouraging as this does not give women a platform to give voice to so many other aspiring women that are fighting battles either at home or at work or in the society at large.
Forbes research demonstrates that organisations with at least 30% women in leadership roles are 12 times more likely to be in the top 20% for financial performance.
Female leaders consistently outperform their male counterparts across management and age levels, as indicated by assessments with over 84,000+ leaders and 1.5 million ratings in a Leadership Circle study.
Remedial measures
A few ways to address this gender gap are:
· Ensuring equal access to job opportunities for women
· Supporting them with flexi-working to help them manage home and work-related time demands, providing maternity and paternity leave, childcare support etc
· Eliminating gender discrimination right from the job description, to cv filtering to interviews to hiring, bearing in mind women have been at a disadvantage due to the inequities carried forward over generations,
· Ensuring women are given equal consideration and opportunities for new roles and projects that will give them the opportunity to develop their technical and managerial skills.
· Fundamentally sensitizing male employees about the need to include and support women at work and help them overcome unconscious bias is essential.
Transformative Steps
At a more deeper level, I feel organizations need to become bold and brilliant, and give opportunities to capable and aspiring women to take up leadership roles by assessing their potential, passion and performance, rather than judging them entirely based on past experience; I say this because of the unequal place women come from — having been deprived of the right opportunities over decades resulting in very few women role models to get inspired by and emulate, especially in certain sectors which are male dominated. We have to start somewhere to drive this change and progress.
Let me give an example;
The French fashion house Chanel appointed Leena Nair as its global chief in 2021. At the time, she had no prior experience in fashion or as a CEO, but she did have several decades of leadership experience under her belt at consumer goods giant Unilever.
“If somebody told me I would have the chance to do what I’m doing today, I would not have believed them,” Nair said in an interview with the Wall Street Journal . How did that happen? Chanel was able to look beyond Leena’s past experience in the industry and noticed her strong leadership and people skills which they believed she could bring to bear to succeed as Chanel’s CEO. This is a great example of being bold and brilliant!
Traditional approaches of using the same yardstick for men and women will continue to give an advantage to men owing to this very factor.
Equally, women need to move out of their comfort zone to take up new challenges; take the case of Arundhathi Bhattacharya, who after heading SBI, India’s largest public sector bank and retiring, took up the role of India Head of Salesforce and architected its rapid growth and evolution. Women need to have self-belief and grab the opportunities that come their way.
Women have the passion and drive and will need a few allies to support them by way of removing the obstacles that all pervasive at the workplace. Conscious efforts will be needed to galvanize more allies in positions of influence to drive this change and create the well-deserved space for women at the top.
So, if there is a genuine desire to make workplaces at every level diverse and inclusive, organizations and people in decision-making positions need to take courageous steps to provide opportunities to women at all levels. Women have to overcome self doubt and take up those opportunities with courage and conviction, to truly make a difference and make diversity more visible at every level.
