Is diversity in the workplace a farce? Is all the talk about gender parity and bringing more women into leadership positions just a ruse? Think about the number of women in prominent management roles in your organisation. I can bet their percentage will be minuscule as compared to the men. Does it mean no woman is capable, and all men are? Certainly not. Think about how women have to undergo additional training or programs in the guise of having a shot at being promoted. Men never have to, do they? They do their job and get promoted. Women have to go through litmus tests to just think of being considered for a higher role. The promotion comes much later, if at all. Does that mean having the male sex organ is the criteria for promotion? I mean, it does sound awfully like that to me. To me, this all points to diversity existing only in policy pdfs. It does. And the story is the same everywhere, not in one organisation or just one country. One woman or ten women promoted in a sea of men isn’t diversity. If you think it can, there is nothing much to be said.
Let me give you a few statistics from a McKinsey research article here, “Across all industries and roles, women are promoted at a slower rate than men. Indeed, only 86 women are promoted to manager for every 100 men at the same level, according to McKinsey’s Women in the Workplace 2021 report, coauthored with LeanIn.Org. But the gender gap for women in technical roles is more pronounced, with only 52 women being promoted to manager for every 100 men.“
Doesn’t this make you wonder what is stopping organisations from bridging this gap? All this is mumbo-jumbo if you ask me. Organisations will set up a program where women will be selected and told that they are being provided with a unique opportunity to train, get mentors and work towards making themselves ready for promotions. All this is apart from the work women are already doing as part of their job descriptions. My problem is that men never have to go through such elaborate charades for promotions. So, where is the equality, I ask? Why do you have to make women ready for promotions? Have you heard of programs to exclusively make men ready for promotions? You wouldn’t have because all this happens only with women.
What organisations are saying is that uneven distribution of promotions is not something wrong done by them. It exists because they can’t find women worthy of being promoted as opposed to accepting that the problem lies in their biased approach towards promotions. While they acknowledge that the problem exists, all they are willing to do is add another hurdle in a woman’s path and put the onus on anybody but themselves. If fewer women are being promoted as compared to men, isn’t the solution simple enough? Increase the number of promotions for women instead of just pretending to do something about it while essentially not doing anything at all. Now, don’t tell me that everywhere only men are deserving of promotions, and women with required qualifications just do not exist. We might be fewer in number because you choke us out of the workforce, but we do exist. Why pretend like we don’t?
What irks me is when some women too pretend that the problem doesn’t exist because they turned out to be the exceptions. Shouldn’t we work towards being the norm? If you look at the everyday struggles of a working mom and just make a list of all that she accomplishes in a day, you’ll realise how organisations can benefit from more and more women in the upper echelons of power. Because studies have shown that companies where women are well represented at the top earn up to 50 per cent higher profits and share performance (source). So, instead of feigning ignorance that women are treated equally at workplaces because you were or that women shouldn’t complain but work towards growing, open your eyes. The world is bigger than just you. Do something because you can.
Women are not given early promotions like men are. By the time they reach the point where they are eligible to move towards managerial roles, it is also more often not the time for them to have children should they choose to. Then comes the maternity break which means restarting careers from scratch because apparently women lose all faculties after giving birth. What else explains the treatment, the lack of opportunities or hikes that women have to deal with once they rejoin after maternity break?
Say a woman hasn’t taken a break to raise a family and somehow manages to reach a few levels higher. What happens next? She is still passed over for promotions. She puts in the work but is always the last choice. And god forbid, she advocates to bring up other hard-working women, her efforts will be the butt of jokes. The difference is some women then stop backing other women, and only a few brave ones don’t. But my question is when boys’ clubs unabashedly exist in organisations, why can’t women have their own and back their own?
Well, whatever the reason a promotion gap exists with women on the receiving end of it which results in many women dropping out of the workforce. It affects them financially, their quality of life and that of their families. It is one of the reasons you’ll find more women at entry-level positions, but the number slowly decreases because how long can one fight a losing battle?
As Caroline Criado Perez writes in Invisible Women, the workplace is designed for men. Unless you belong to the boys’ club, you have to be the exception, the lone woman who has been allowed to climb up. And hence, diversity in the workplace is just a bunch of hooey. In the name of diversity, you’ll get mailers stating how women can better balance working from home. The subtext being women are expected to balance while men just need to focus on one thing at a time. That is the reality of it all. That is the system in which women have to work, survive and try to achieve whatever they can. And every day is a fight, every day is a setback, a dance of one step forward and two steps backwards.
As per an article here, “the participation at work for women in the country dipped from around 36 per cent in 2021 to a little over 33 per cent in 2022.” I’m not surprised because how long can you wade through daily disappointments? It might not seem like much, but it takes a lot of courage to enter and stay in a workforce where you are the other, the neglected and, not to mention, the one paid less than your male counterparts. diversity i
So, I really think all this talk of diversity across organisations in India and abroad is simple hogwash, a term that is used to make PowerPoint presentations or spoken loudly in town halls but not executed in reality. If you think otherwise, let me know. But come armed with statistics.