Reframing Gender Issues in Corporations

Companies with a gender-balanced leadership team are way ahead of those that are not.

Worldwide, sixty percent of university graduates are women.  In the United States, women under the age of thirty out earn their male counterparts.  As a result, forty percent of American households can label the woman as their main source of income; therefore, it is unsurprising that women are often the decision maker on purchasing consumer goods.  Despite all of these statistics, women remain underrepresented in senior level positions in corporate America, according to an article recently completed by the Harvard Business Review.

There is a decided split to be addressed—women’s potential on the one hand, and their relative absence from the highest levels of business on the other. As a result, it can be the easy approach to continue to insist that the process is unfair and unequal, that women are simply disregarded in the process of hiring for senior levels.  This can often lead to the assumption that women who don’t make it to the top must be doing something wrong.

The article offers a solution to this assumption and conflict0.  Instead of focusing on the issue as a lingering women’s problem or an issue of equality, choose instead to view the issue as a massive business opportunity.  Don’t fester on the problem; seek solutions instead, such as roadmaps to businesses that are better balanced, arguments that help companies and managers understand and benefit from shifting global gender balances.  As a result, the discussion will veer away from what is wrong with women who didn’t make it to the top to focus on analyzing what is right with companies and leaders that do build gender balanced leadership teams.

Focusing on these teams will draw attention to the healthy mode of competition that results to a properly gender balanced leadership team.  According to the article, gender balance delivers better and more sustainable performance.  Research shows that companies with more gender-balanced leadership teams out-perform those with less.  Essentially, seeking gender balance in leadership teams will put a company decades ahead of its competition; while skeptics will spend another decade resisting this fact, the best leaders will charge forward, armed with the information.

 

from Lohra Miller| Women in Leadership http://ift.tt/1wAjMUi