To Data, or To Do
Another month, another pile of posts sharing the same old data, in a shiny new format but showing the same old issue - how far away from equality we are.
‘A girl born today won’t see global gender parity in her lifetime, new data suggests’
‘Women in Switzerland earned 16% less than men’
And my personal annual pet hate:
‘It will take 123 years to get to gender parity’
It’s like we own an elephant and every year we weigh it and say ‘Oh wow everyone guess what, the elephant is heavy.’
So here’s a thought - instead of continuing to spend time and money on expensive research and consultants that come up with the same data and conclusions every year on how big the gender equality issue is (and share it like it’s breaking news), how about we invest some time and money into ACTUALLY ADDRESSING AND FIXING the gender equality issue.
Because it isn’t going away, it isn’t going to miraculously fix itself, we’re not going to get a lovely surprise next time we run the research - ooh look, how marvelous, we suddenly have a leadership team of 50% women, no gender pay gap and zero cases of sexual harassment.
It isn’t going to fix itself because of all the invisible, unconscious forces in the world and workplace culture that favour men and convince us that they are ‘better’ than women and the ones we should choose for the big jobs and give more money to. And if we don’t understand these forces and make strategy interventions to address and overcome them, they will continue to run free and the self fulfilling prophecy of gender inequality will keep on fulfilling itself until infinity (way beyond 123 years, by the way).
So put the research budget on hold because I can tell you here and now for free that your data looks pretty close to this:
0ver 90% of your top leaders are men
Only 20-30% of your senior leaders are women
You are paying your women around 16% less than your men
Here’s my recommendation for you: stop investing in gathering the same data that keeps telling us the same thing - and let’s start investing in making the necessary interventions instead.