Diversity

Diversity
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than half agreed that they are more
cautious in taking steps towards
leadership roles. The results reveal a
critical disconnect: women want to
lead, but something is holding them
back. Were the women encouraged
to lead as children? Did they have
a role model? Were they offered
appropriate support and development
opportunities in the workplace? Such
factors play a possible role in whether
a woman moves up the career ladder
into a senior leadership role.
There is plenty of research on
the approach taken by males and
females in pushing for promotion or
a pay rise. Of the women surveyed by
KPMG, over 75% did not feel confident
in asking for access to senior
leadership, a promotion or pursuing
a job opportunity beyond their
experience. Their male counterparts
are unlikely to be as hesitant. There
is an oft-cited example of two people
looking at promotion criteria for a
new role. The male candidate will
look at the 10 items, believe he meets
the criteria in three or four and go
for the job. The female candidate will
do likewise, believe she meets eight
to nine criteria and not apply as she
doesn’t meet all 10.
It is not a case of one approach
being better than the other. The
average female brain simply works
differently and approaches such
matters in a different manner.
However, the reality is that most
performance appraisal or promotion
systems are traditionally designed to
target more male-dominated traits. It
is therefore (unconsciously, in many
instances) not a level playing field.
Iris Bohnet, a behavioural
economist at Harvard University, in
research for her book entitled What
Works – Gender Equality by Design,
has found that “companies that use
potential, in addition to performance,
as a way to evaluate employees are
more likely to be gender-biased.
We generally find that leadership is
associated with men, and potential
has something to do with career
advancement and climbing up the
career ladder. We don’t necessarily
associate career and leadership with
women”.
On an average basis, a higher number of
women in lower paying support grades plays
against a higher number of men in more senior,
higher paid roles. The resulting statistic will show
this simply as a pay gap.
What can we do to effect change?
Many organisations are starting to
tackle these differences by introducing
unconscious bias training. This was
first put forward as a concept by
psychologists at Harvard University,
the University of Virginia and the
University of Washington who created
‘Project Implicit’ to develop hidden bias
tests – also called implicit association
tests, or IATs, in the academic world
– to measure unconscious bias. IAT
measures attitudes and beliefs that
people may be unwilling or unable to
report, which would indicate that most
of us are pre-programmed to associate
certain roles and traits as either male
or female. For example, you may
believe that women and men should
be equally associated with science,
but your automatic associations could
show that you (like many others)
associate men with science more than
you associate women with science.
Unconscious bias training simply
seeks to raise participants’ awareness
of these inherent biases in our
thinking so we can start to challenge
ourselves more and apply a gender lens
(as opposed to positive discrimination)
in how we approach performance
appraisal, salary reviews, promotion
discussions and job allocations to
ensure they are appropriately gender
balanced.
Another key component in the
toolkit for addressing gender diversity
is mentoring. Whether you are a man
or woman, having someone more
senior in the organisation looking
out for you, acting as a sounding
board and being an advocate for
you is invaluable in helping you
develop the skills necessary to push
for advancement to more senior
leadership roles.
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