HOW Women Mean Business - New Book by Avivah Wittenberg-Cox Soon To Be Published - Building Gender Balanced Business

In the book, WHY Women Mean Business, Avivah Wittenberg-Cox, and co-author Alison Maitland, set out the clear business case for gender balance. Today, there is a much greater understanding of the historic shift and economic opportunity afforded by the rise of women as the majority of talent and a majority of consumers influencing purchasing decisions. As most business leaders now realise, having gender balanced organisations leads to superior business performance. But how can companies make this shift? To answer this question, Wittenberg-Cox will be publishing her second book this spring (Wiley, April 2010), HOW Women Mean Business: A Step by Step Guide to Profiting from Gender Balanced Business.

The Four Steps to Gender Balance
This book is designed to provide senior managers with a clear understanding of how to approach the challenging process of shifting an old corporate culture into the modern age. Readers who follow the general guidelines and suggestions in the book will be able to set up and sustain their own successful gender balance programme. It is organised across four simple stages: Audit, Awareness, Align, and Sustain.

AUDIT: Business leaders eager to effect change often rush too far ahead too quickly. It is very important to ensure first that there is a good understanding of where a company is coming from on this issue, what has been accomplished, and what lessons are to be learned to date, both internally and externally. So, the first part of the book covers the Audit Phase, incorporating three chapters on understanding the issue internally and externally.

AWARENESS: The second phase concerns Awareness, ensuring that senior managers understand why gender balance matters. This section is about leaders deciding what the business case for gender balance really is in relation to the company’s broader strategic goals. Then it means learning the language of women as well as men, leading to gender bilingualism. It ends with the framing of an action plan, which has a chapter of its own.

ALIGN: Once the leadership is convinced and convincing on the issue, companies are ready to adapt the systemic underpinnings of their organisations by identifying and rooting out subconscious obstacles leading to a more gender balanced meritocracy. The Alignment Phase is about changing the company’s DNA by embedding new processes and systems in training, talent, and marketing.

SUSTAIN: Finally, companies need to use clear and effective measures, reward structures, and communications approaches to maintain the change process. This is covered in the last section called Sustain.