10 Ways to Boost Gender Diversity in Leadership

In most society and nations of the world, women make up to almost half of the population, yet over the years, they have been grossly underrepresented in leadership roles albeit the male counterpart has sometimes failed in positions where women have once thrived.

Thus, there have been subtle protest and grievance from the women about equality issues when it comes to leadership, while, according to talentCulture, empirical evidence suggests that gender diversity in leadership is positively associated with economic growth.

If this marginalization and inequalities continue to exist even in some advanced nations, can there be any solutions around? Below are some 10 solutions that may help:

1. Increase The Gender Representation On Your Board of Directors

Where the board of a company has at least one woman on its board, it is likely to crush the competition. Unlike in the employment context, you can specifically target women for positions on the Board. No discrimination issues.

2. Make Affirmative Efforts To Increase Diversity Of Applicant Pool For Leadership Positions

Where there is gender diversity on the senior leadership team, companies out perform their competitors. While we always should hire the most qualified person, we should make sure that we cast a wide net to increase the diversity of the applicant pool. For example, consider circulating to managers resumes without names. This not only will help eliminate unconscious bias relative to gender but also race, religion etc.

 3. Redesigning Resumes/CV: Fields like Sex and Religion often included in resumes. sometimes elicit bias, from HR managers. Thus, an objective recruitment process should demand that such fields be exempted, so that the female applicants may not be screened out on the basis of their gender during the first stage of invitation for Aptitude Test.

4. Decision Making Process

Diverse teams should help to ensure that there is not conscious or unconscious gender bias in decision-making. How do you avoid the unconscious? Bring it to conscious awareness through training, discussed below.

5. Education Of The Senior Leadership Team (SLT)

The SLT need to understand the legal issues associated with gender discrimination. It is not enough simply to reference it generally. Focus also on unconscious bias and how conscious systems can minimize the risk of it. Don’t forget to focus on covert bias, too.

6. The Assignment Process

It is important to evaluate critically your organization’s work assignments systems to make sure the work is being distributed fairly and equitably and not based on personal relationships or gender

7. The Evaluation/Appraisal Process

Evaluation processes in most organizations are sometimes subjective. It often benefits men as a result of unconscious bias. We need to evaluate the evaluators!

Be careful not to evaluate based on projected confidence rather than actual competence. Focus on the performance, not the person!

8. Evaluation of Our Leaders

Some leaders engage in behaviors that are contrary to gender equality. Make them pay a price on their evaluations and in their compensation.

9. Empowerment of Women

We talk a lot about sensitizing leaders. We need to empower women, too. While we always need to be clear that employees can bring a complaint, teach power tactics, too.   Excluded from a meeting where you clearly belong? Join the meeting and say something like: “Someone mistakenly left me off the invitation list. Don’t be too hard on them.’

10. The Men

Men must play a role in remedying gender inequality.   Women alone cannot resolve it, particularly in organizations where men dominate the power circles. Nor should they. This takes time and effort and it is not fair to expect women to carry this burden alone. Men who are women’s allies sometimes face bias from men and women alike so that also should be properly addressed.