Mens’ Corner

Improving Gender Diversity in Companies : Why CEOs Should get Serious About Sex

It was never going to happen.

With hindsight, it should have been clear that trying to create a ‘men only’ space at the Women’s Forum was a non-starter. As the first session got underway, male participants, happily sipping from their blue bottles of Champagne as opposed to the pink variety on offer outside what was supposed to be their exclusive enclave, were outnumbered at least two to one by their female counterparts.

But in the event, it really didn’t matter. The discussion on the need to ensure more women make it top management levels of major firms raised some key issues aound a theme that is central in the Women’s Forum.

Avivah Wittenburg-Cox, a Managing Partner with Diafora, reminded participants in no uncertain terms that times have changed. “The twentieth century corporate reality of rigid, pyramid-style management structures is yielding towards a more complicated, organic way of managing companies,” she argued.

In this new business environment, women’s skills were needed more than ever and firms that failed to grasp the very concrete economic advantages their female employees can bring in the long term risked losing out to more enlightened competitors. “Women have a lot to offer in the twenty first century,” she said.

Citing a Goldman Sachs study quoted in other Women’s Forum sessions, she said that achieving overall male-female parity in the workplace could lead to a significant rise in GDP. “Gender is now a clear business issue,” she said.

She also cited evidence showing that of the so-called ‘Fortune 500’ leading international firms, those with a healthy gender balance on their controlling boards generally saw a return on equity that was at least 35 percent higher than firms with none or fewer women in the boardroom.  “Women will have an impact on your future growth and bottom line. Ignore them at your peril,” she said.

Gerald Lema of healthcare firm Baxter International argued that his company always tried to ensure that it valued and promoted its talented female employees. He said that on average across the globe about a third of Baxter’s executive managers were women. In certain regions, for example the Asia-Pacific zone he was in charge of, the percentage of senior women managers was higher.

Russ Hagey, Chief Talent Officer of business and consulting firm Bain & Co., told a similar story. He insisted that his firm had always taken gender equality issues seriously and operated a clear 50/50 policy when it came to recruiting men and women into the firm.

However he conceded that as employees progressed within Bain & Co., the gender balance began to skew, so that at senior management level there were around 35 percent of women to 65 percent men. He said his company was doing all it could to try to understand why women were not making it to the top in the same numbers as men and was keen to ensure that more female employees made into senior positions. He also pointed out that Bain & Co.’s Chairperson was a woman.

Wittenburg-Cox argued that firms needed to put in place clear strategies for ensuring that more women made it all the way to the boardroom and that this required more than just fine words. “You need to give these initiatives a budget,” she said. She also insisted that progress would only be made if men and women felt they could speak frankly and openly about the issues. If people were hamstrung by what she called “horrible” political correctness then it would not be possible to have the kinds of in depth discussions that were so clearly needed, she argued. “You have to let people express dissent,” she said.

She also argued that it was outdated to think that defending equality meant that men and women were the same. Obviously they were not. Companies that could harness these differences and build teams of men and women who worked together in harmony were companies that would succeed, she said. “Women are equal but they are different,” she said.