Gender equality at workplace

 

Figure 01: Gender equality

The Global Gender Gap Report 2020 estimates that at the current rate of progress, it will take another 100 years to achieve gender equality. This forecast has frequently been utilized as a form of shock treatment to motivate organizations, associations, investors, and businesses to act. If we want to avoid losing another 10 years to achieving gender equality, our efforts will need to be doubled in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic and economic crisis. In the past, it has been observed that economic downturns not only hit women more severely than males, but also cause discussions on gender equality to be pushed to the bottom of corporate and political agendas. Women make up 39% of the worldwide labor force, yet as of May 2020, they were responsible for 54% of employment losses. Inequalities are further exacerbated by the fact that women are overrepresented in businesses like hospitality and the food services that have been hardest hit by the pandemic. In accordance with the intersections of gender with color, ethnicity, religion, class, ability, sexual orientation, and other identifying markers, these inequities also disproportionately affect some groups of women. (Stuart, A., 2020).

The conversation has considerably changed away from gender diversity in 2020 and toward inclusion and diversification in general. However, it has been challenging for businesses and investors to assess their performance and regularly spot gaps in the industry due to the absence of data on other diversity indicators and how they interact with gender. Because of this, most significant corporate and financial activities continue to emphasize traditional gender indicators.

Influencing other diversity indicators

In the short term, it is challenging to quantify and understand how women's "professional imagination," or their career goals and aspirations, are developing in organizations with more women on the board. Additionally, the statistics does not reflect the anticipated improvement in diversity metrics, such as the proportion of women in leadership and management positions and pay ratios. In fact, there is little association between the number of women on boards of directors and other diversity indicators, according to the analysis done on the data that businesses submitted as part of the Corporate Sustainability Assessment. (S&P Global, 2022).

In general, companies with more female board members have slightly more women in positions of responsibility. However, it is unclear if increased board diversity or companies with a more varied workforce choose to select more women directors as the driving reason behind this trend. These businesses may be more conscious of issues relating to diversity and gender equality, or they may simply have a larger pool of female candidates for director positions. Therefore, it is not surprising that businesses with more women in the workforce also tend to have more women on the board. However, because the correlation between the two indicators is not statistically significant, it is difficult to draw firm conclusions regarding their relationship.

Proportion of companies according to the percentage of women on their board

Figure 02: % of women at work 

Why don't the advantages spread?

To achieve gender equality across all organizations, it is not enough to just concentrate on adding more women to the board of directors. Yet why? There are various relevant aspects.

 

1. Women typically have lesser levels of industrial expertise, which can jeopardize their legitimacy15 as they have long faced prejudice while trying to enter the corporate sphere.
2. Since executive members typically have greater influence than non-executive or independent directors, their inclusion does not always provide the desired outcomes. Having gender representation on both boards, not only the supervisory board, is important in the setting of two-tier boards, where attention should be paid to this.
3. In the workplace, women frequently encounter unfavorable preconceptions that cause them to be seen as less capable than their male counterparts and, as a result, their opinions are not given the same weight as those of men.
4. The fact that they are women does not automatically suggest that diversity and inclusion are their top priorities.
5. Even though we may see an increase in the proportion of female board members, this does not imply that there are more female directors in total. In other nations, women just occupy more directorships than males do on average, which means that rather than an increase in the number of individual women holding these roles, we observe the same women improving the board diversity figures for several organizations.

Figure 03: % of women at emerging markets.

References

S&P Global, (2022). Gender equality in the workplace  [Online] Available from  https://www.spglobal.com/esg/csa/yearbook/articles/gender-equality-workplace-going-beyond-women-on-the-board   [Accessed on 29^th  November 2022]

Stuart, A., (2020). Freedom of Religion and Gender Equality: Inclusive or Exclusive? Available from   https://www.corteidh.or.cr/tablas/r26533.pdf [Accessed on 29^th November 2022]