Why Organizations Need to Focus on Women
If it’s objective, women succeed; if it’s subjective, women fall behind.
Featured Author:
Kerrie Halmi
Kerrie Halmi of Halmi Performance Consulting specializes in increasing women’s success in business through speaking, coaching and facilitation. Kerrie has over fifteen years of experience in the Human Resources field with such clients as eBay, Bank of America and Kaiser. She received her MBA from the University of Michigan and is certified in coaching with Corporate Coach University International.
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November 02, 2007
Most organizations recognize that they need to have gender equality in the workplace. So how are we doing in Corporate America in terms of women? A little over half (51%) of the nation’s managers and professionals are women. In spite of this, there are only 13 women CEOs in Fortune 500 companies (or 2.6%). Obviously, there is a discrepancy. Furthermore, some measures of women at the top are actually going down. For example, in 2006, only 15.6% of the Fortune 500 corporate officers were women, down from 16.4% in 2005.
If that’s the reality, why do corporations need to work to change it? For me personally, I have 2 amazing daughters who I want to grow up knowing they can be anything they want to be. However, that’s not going to convince a lot of top management teams to look at the issue.
There are other reasons besides doing the right thing. A basic Marketing 101 principle—reflect your customer base. Women purchase 83% of all products and services in the US.
From an HR perspective, you’re overlooking a huge talent pool if you don’t advance women. Also from an HR view, another reason is how gender diversity relates to performance. One study showed that companies with the highest representation of women on their top management teams performed better financially than did groups with the lowest women’s representation.
So what can you do to influence change? There are many strategies, but I’ll mention two. The first is dealing with work-life balance in your workplace. Lack of work-life balance disproportionately impacts women. Companies need to be proactive with work-life strategies.
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The other way is to be objective with performance standards. Look at criteria for promotions and raises—make sure that they’re not subjective. A sad fact remains that women receive less recognition for their accomplishments than men do. There is significant research to back this up. This starts at pre-school and happens with both male and female evaluators. For example, in one study, two groups of people were asked to evaluate particular items, such as articles, paintings, resumes, etc. The names attached to the items were either clearly male such as Jim Davis, or female such as Sue Smith, but reversed for the two groups. So, what one group believed was created by a man, the other believed was created by a woman. Regardless of the items, when they were credited to a man, they were rated higher than when credited to a woman. In all of the studies, women evaluators were as likely as men to downgrade those items ascribed to women.
If it’s objective, women succeed; if it’s subjective, women fall behind. Corporations need transparency and bottom-line measures. I am confident that with more focus on the topic, women can be more equally represented in Corporate America, which will benefit companies and society as a whole.
