Gender Balance Is Better Business - Building Gender Balanced Business

“It is time for advocates for change to get beyond the pros and cons of quotas, and appeal to the part of the brain that should be immune to tiredness: the part that wants the business to go on growing.” — Andrew Hill

THREE POINTS COMPANIES SHOULD CONSIDER

• With worldwide competition for the best minds heating up, it’s smart to look at the largest pool of potential candidates.

• Research shows that as the leadership becomes more diverse, the company’s performance and productivity improves.

• New studies are finding that greater innovation and fresher ideas emerge from groups of people who have varied perspectives and backgrounds.

“I would no more expect businesswomen to be unanimous about how to encourage balance in the boardroom than I would expect them to speak as one on the best way to organize their supply chains.” — Andrew Hill

Given their desire to earn their positions on merit, and concern that they will encounter resentment over tokenism, even many female executives are unsure if gender quotas are worthwhile. But it is clear that women are a massive economic force, and currently too much of the corporate world is ignoring them — to their own detriment.

“Why would you exclude the third-largest market in the world [behind China and India]?” — Beth Brooke, global vice-chair of Ernst & Young

At a summit of British, Nordic, and Baltic leaders, Rio Tinto Alcan’s Rannveig Rist argued for legislative action, asserting that it’s “not sufficient to steer ‘gently’ in the right direction.”

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