Bending Gender Boundaries - Building Gender Balanced Business

We have never been so close to attaining an Eden-like rebalancing of gender roles.

The macroeconomic tipping point has been hit, with women moving in and flipping stereotypes, expectations and power. The labor force of several countries, including Canada and the United States, has gone majority female for the first time in history.

While the media focuses on the gender wage gap, the real story is that history is shifting. This century is not just about the rise of China. It will also be about the rise of women.

We are witnessing two parallel and mutually unhelpful trends:

1. Continued overmasculinization of senior ranks in the business world, with unfortunate underutilization of female talent and misunderstanding of female consumers.
2. More recent overfeminization of the educational sphere, with a similarly unfortunate exclusion and lack of success of boys in the classroom, while girls continue to clock in superior academic scores in country after country.

Just as the first imbalance of too many men should be of concern to the mostly male leadership of companies, too many women should be of increasing concern to women. It is not healthy to have men only represent 40 percent of university graduates in the world today. This should be of concern to every company and government — and every parent — on the planet.

New Era, New Approaches

Companies have addressed gender issues for decades, and results have been generally dissatisfying. This has led to a sense, particularly in Anglo-Saxon countries, that they have “done” gender and now will move on to other issues. Yet the opportunities have never been greater for companies to appropriately seize and adapt to the massive gender shifts under way.