In today’s time women in the leadership roles and gender diversity is key for organizations’ bottom lines. It is seen that companies with the highest representation of women on boards financially outperform companies with the lowest representation of women on boards. Gender-diverse teams have higher sales and profits compared to male-dominated teams.
Even though gender diversity in management improves innovation, employee engagement and retention rates, and profit margins, men still outnumber women by large ratios at the highest leadership levels in most workplaces. Disparities begin at the first promotion level, when they’re less likely to cultivate the kind of relationships with company leadership that can aid in career advancement. From there, challenges mount at each stage of advancement, particularly at mid-career when women are more likely to ease up on their careers or even leave the workforce to shoulder caregiving responsibilities. There are many ways an employers can take to address these challenges and increase the number of women in leadership.
Importance of promoting gender equality
Only a few sectors, like personal services, education, non-governmental, and membership organizations, have near equal men and women representation in leadership. On the other hand, industries like manufacturing and construction have lower than 20% representation of woman in leadership positions.
Progress toward equality can be frustrating for women who are just starting out in their professions. However, some organizations are leading the charge to ensure that women in their workplace are prepared to advocate for career advancement from the very beginning. From establishing objectives that hire and promote more women to forming women-focused Employee Resource Groups (ERGs), these organizations have identified various strategies to ensure the growth of women in the workplace. We have listed a few here for you.
Increasing females in leadership role
Lets delve into few tips that organizations can do to bring gender diversity in leadership:
Promoting females at management level
Men begin to break away from women at the first promotion level. Women are far less likely to put themselves forward or to be tapped by their direct supervisors for increased responsibility.
To address this systemic issue, one need to set goals for recruiting and promoting women at all levels, with a focus on entry-level management. Make recruitment, retention, and promotion of women part of performance criteria for all managers and executives in your company. Assess progress on this goal frequently by celebrating progress and being transparent when you fall short.
Support professional goals
Supervisors are more likely to assume women are not interested in leadership roles, as they do not bring their career goals in one-on-one meetings with supervisors. Even when they are promoted into management, women in leadership roles face gender-based biases.
Managers who write performance reviews and have a say in promotions, can increase inclusion. Encourage managers to have conversations with high-achieving women employees about their career aspirations.
Top leadership can model work-life balance by taking time off and resisting the urge to send work emails at all hours. Communicating to employees that boundaries are important and respected can go a long way toward avoiding the kind of burnout that can lead top-performing women to jump ship before you have the chance to promote them into positions of leadership.
Equity in compensation
Women, including those in leadership roles, make significantly less than men, and the discrepancies for women of color are even more dramatic. Ensuring more transparency and equity in compensation can help retaining top-performing women with leadership potential.
Encourage mentoring
Women to catch up with men as workplace leaders, need mentors. A growing number of employers are encouraging mentor-protégé arrangements. These close relationships pair someone at a higher level of leadership with someone more junior to provide general advice and guidance.
Recognize contributions women make
Women in leadership are more likely to check in on team members and provide the kind of support that maximizes performance. They are also more likely to be involved with DEI initiatives, community outreach, and employee morale initiatives. All of this work benefits organizations. Unfortunately, none of this is considered in the metrics used by most employers for internal promotions. Incorporating these categories of labor into company’s promotional metrics can increase the number of women who move into management and leadership roles.
Accepting nonlinear career paths
Many talented women and men will opt to interrupt their career trajectory at some point for a host of reasons. Employers need to recognize that candidates with leadership potential may come with gaps in their resumes, and that the experiences those gaps represent sometimes make them better leaders. Opening up your hiring and promotion screening process to candidates who have less linear career paths will likely increase your company’s gender diversity in leadership roles.
To guarantee that women have a voice in decision-making, they must first have a seat at the table. Though this endeavor will take time, organizations can begin a variety of initiatives to empower women as they enter and rise in the profession.
