Economic Crisis Reveals Which Firms Really Subscribe to Diversity - Building Gender Balanced Business

• Not only are jobs disappearing in the economic crisis, but some companies are cutting gender diversity programs, too.

• And with women losing a disproportionate number of jobs in some countries, such as Britain, this causes a double whammy: There are fewer women in organisations, in absolute terms and as a share of the workforce, at the same time that gender diversity efforts that could assist those women in advancement are downplayed.

• Ian Dodds, who runs a diversity consulting business, said, “There’s no doubt private sector companies have put a lot of effort into diversity — now budgets are being cut, awareness training gets cut.”

• But Avivah Wittenberg-Cox, who is chief executive of consultancy 20first as well as publisher of WOMEN-omics.com, was quoted by the Reuters news service as saying some companies that have taken a more strategic view of diversity are using the economic crisis to shuffle their gender balance.

• Examples of such a shift include the naming of the first woman to the Siemens board (which was also the first such appointment for a German blue-chip firm).

• “Companies that have invested in this for a long time are reluctant to lose it,” Wittenberg-Cox told Reuters. “Some saw it has a ‘nice to do’, but it was not completely business driven. It [the downturn] will reveal those who believe it and those who don’t.”

The Reuters article