By Thais Compoint & Sun Xi
The gender gap has been a long standing topic around the world. According to the World Economic Forum, it could take 117 years, from now until 2133, to achieve global gender parity. In the business world, across regions and industries, the large majority of senior leadership positions are dominated by men. For example, only 4.4 per cent of S&P 500 CEOs are women.
In the Asia-Pacific region, the diversity gap is better. Its average percentage of women on boards in 10 regional markets increased from 9.4 per cent in 2013 to 10.2 per cent in 2014, but still lags well behind developed Western peers such as the United Kingdom (26.1 percent), the European Union (20.8 percent) and the United States (18.7 percent), according to the Asia Pacific Board Diversity Report 2016.
In South Korea, board diversity remained lowest among its Asia-Pacific peers, with women occupying only 2.6 per cent of board seats, far lagging Australia’s 21.9 per cent, New Zealand’s 13.4 percent, China’s 12.9, Malaysia’s 12.5 percent, Indonesia’s 11.1 per cent, Hong Kong’s 10.7 per cent, India’s 8.6 percent, Singapore’s 7.7 percent and Japan’s 3.3 percent. Clearly, South Korea has a quite long way to go.
Why gender diversity matters?
Simply speaking, gender diversity can help improve business performance and sustainability.
The Credit Suisse Research Institute's report reviewed 2,360 global companies and found that companies with women directors out performed companies without women directors in return on equity and average growth. McKenzie’s Diversity Matter report showed that companies with more women on top leadership positions are 15 per cent more likely to have financial returns above their respective national industry medians.
Broadly speaking, gender diversity is increasingly essential to robust decision-making, more informed risk management and stronger corporate governance. Why? Because gender balanced teams perform better than homogenous teams.
In the industrialized countries, women represent 60 per cent of graduate students, and on average have better grades than men. Women drive 70 to 80 percent of all consumer purchasing, through a combination of their buying power and influence. So to attract qualified talent and to better understand your market needs, you need gender diversity.
How to start the journey?
Here are the very first three steps.
First, know your numbers. You need to understand where lack of gender balance is the most blatant. The key questions to ask yourself are: Where are the women? At which levels of the organization? In which functions? How do their recruiting, promotion and retention rates compare with men’s? Where are the gaps?
Second, identify priorities aligned with your business goals. What’s your burning platform to ask people to add one more topic to their priority list and change the way they do things? The key question to ask yourself is: Where will having more female talent have the biggest positive impact on your business performance? Is it at top leadership level? Is it in the product development team? Is it in the commercial teams?
Third, get top leadership’s commitment. If you want people to take this topic seriously, it’s key to have it genuinely sponsored at the senior leadership level. Research has shown that most progressive leaders when it comes to gender diversity, have daughters! Asking a C-suite executive with massive influence in the organization, and a personal interest on the topic could be a key success factor.
The first mistake you could make: Making gender diversity a women’s problem.
Once you know your pain points, are equipped with a strong business case for gender diversity, and have the topic genuinely sponsored at the top level, you’re ready for a promising start.
You’re ready to set your vision and road map. But be careful: promoting gender diversity is not about taking isolated initiatives. It’s about taking the right initiatives in a systemic way, making sure that:
You hold leaders and managers accountable for progress.
You build their inclusive leadership skills.
You review your processes and work organization to make sure they are bias-free and inclusive.
You support women with targeted training, mentoring and sponsoring initiatives.
What many organizations tend to do is just to support women. That’s a tempting way to proceed: it’s highly visible, the women themselves feel special, and you don’t really question the dominant culture.
While such initiatives can be useful and necessary, they’re far from enough. In the long run they might generate “gender fatigue,” that happens when organizations keep talking about gender diversity, take some initiatives, but fail to see changes in representation.
Don’t expect overnight results, the gender balance journey is a marathon, not a sprint. But the return on investment is well-worth it, especially if you get started on the right track and before your competitors do.
Thais Compoint is CEO & Founder of Declic International, a U.K.-based firm specialized in inclusion and diversity training, speaking and consulting solutions.
Thais Compoint is CEO & founder of Declic
International, a U.K.-based firm specialized in
inclusion and diversity training, speaking and
consulting solutions. Sun Xi is an independent
commentary writer based in Singapore. Write
to sunshinelkyspp@gmail.com.