The Manager's Guide to Gender Balance Part I - Building Gender Balanced Business

“Talent, markets and performance are, therefore, three key drivers behind a renewed interest in gender.”

Most companies recognize the importance of getting this right. They know that women increasingly represent the majority of the talent base and make more and more of the consumer purchasing decisions. So, being able to promote female talent at work and understand the female consumer is a business imperative.

Studies have also shown that companies are likely to perform better if they have more women on their boards and in key management positions.

Talent, markets and performance are, therefore, three key drivers behind a renewed interest in gender.

But companies often approach the gender issue with trepidation. They see it as something of an intractable problem. For many managers, particularly American ones, it feels as if they have focused on the issues for decades with relatively unsatisfactory results.

The pace of change has been glacial. There are still too few women in senior positions, too few women on the board, too few women in top positions at law firms or consulting firm partnerships.

“The more pertinent question is not, What is wrong with your women? It is, What is wrong with your company? If your leadership team and pipeline lacks large numbers of women, it is time to take a hard look in the corporate mirror. Your organisation’s future may depend on it.”

There is a reason for this slow and frustrating pace of change. Business has been repeating and amplifying approaches that have had a limited impact. They are not, therefore, likely to make much headway until they adopt a fresh approach.

Companies understandably look at what other companies have been doing to identify best practice. But as the majority have all been painfully slow in developing a well-stocked leadership pipeline of women, and have not typically put more than one or two women on their boards, this is an underpowered catalyst for change.

Typically, the best practice approach will lead well-intentioned companies into launching conferences, networks and leadership training and coaching specifically aimed at women. They will call on women to come up with their recommendations for change, something they will have to do in their spare time.

The underlying assumption of this approach, dubbed by us as fixing the women, is that the problem rests squarely with the women themselves. They are not making it to the top because they can’t, they don’t have what it takes or they don’t really want to.

The more pertinent question is not, What is wrong with your women? It is, What is wrong with your company? If your leadership team and pipeline lacks large numbers of women, it is time to take a hard look in the corporate mirror. Your organisation’s future may depend on it.

It is better to come to this realisation before it is too late or before your rivals have overtaken you. As the Managing Director of Bain & Co. in France, Olivier Marchal has said, “In improving gender balance, women may hold the keys, but men still control the locks.” And men have been uninvolved in the gender conversation for far too long. Without them, progress on rebalancing gender will be stalled for many more years.

Avivah Wittenberg-Cox is CEO of the leading gender consultancy, 20-first. Based in Paris, she works with progressive companies interested in both halves of the talent base and both halves of the market – the female and male halves. She helps companies develop more inclusive leadership styles, promote more gender-balanced management teams and review processes and policies to better respond to women – both as employees and consumers. She is the co-author with Alison Maitland of the best-selling Why Women Mean Business: Understanding the Emergence of Our Next Economic Revolution (Wiley, 2008), which is being updated and published in paperback form in September 2009.