So the glossy, smiley, Photoshopped, flawless world of stock photography seems to have a thing for corporate shots involving women participating next to men in meetings.
Sadly, it seems to be the only place where women are represented equally on boards. Currently, women only make up 8.3% of directors of the top 200 companies listed on the Australian Securities Exchange, and there’s growing support for enforced quotas that would see more board positions occupied by women.
The idea of forcing a company to promote a certain number of women to a senior management level seems like an easy solution, but I think it will raise more problems than it solves. Here’s why.
In mixed-gender PE classes, the teacher will sometimes instigate a rule during ball sports that means a team can’t score a goal without the ball first being handled by at least two girls. Sounds like a great way of getting everyone into the game, but instead what happens is that the boys will stop playing as they were, and with a dramatic roll of the eyes pass the football/basketball/puck to the nearest girl, only to have it immediately returned. Do the girls get to touch the ball? Yes. Do they feel valued, appreciated, and like they’ve made a worthy contribution to the team? No. They feel patronised and stupid, made to perform as part of a token gesture.
I’m not saying that women don’t belong on boards, or that if they were forcibly elected that they wouldn’t do a damn fine job. I just think that having a quota is going to inspire resentment in the males who should have been more respectful in the first place and potentially self-doubt in women who may feel as though they’ve only been included to avoid a spanking From Higher Up.
Other ways to include women in companies could be:
- Encouraging women to apply for management positions so they feel as though they have a chance of achieving the role
- A policy that sees all resumes handed in contain no gender-identifying features such as a first name or title
- Catered meetings during lunchtime instead of having them after-hours when women may be occupied with their family
- Maternity and paternity leave to encourage a men to take on domestic responsibilities as well as their partners
- Fostering a culture of acceptance instead of enforcing rigid gender roles
Then again, progress is slow. In the 1992 government report ‘Half Way to Equal’, the recommendation for ‘action strategies’ to redress gender imbalances in senior positions was supported. It’s almost 20 years later, and I can’t see much evidence of things changing.
Maybe people will only see that women are capable of playing the game if they have to pass them the ball. Maybe it’s just going to take a much longer time than we were hoping for. Either way, if women and men could get on board with this, we could all kick a lot more goals.
