What Happens When We Balance Genders?
by Planning Human & Writer, Ellie Cavell-Clarke
This is not a post about stats. It’s not a post that will mine over all the things we know and the things we see in every work place we’ve ever been in. Because it’s just a fact that men outnumber women in C-suite roles and that while many companies are — say they are — hope they are — on the road to something that better resembles equality. The truth is, there’s still a very long way to go.
So. This isn’t a post about that. Not really.
This is a post about what happens when you actually do embrace gender diversity, not to pay lip service to a current trend, but to actually do it, because the place you work and the work you create will be far better for it.
Let’s start in the middle: According to Forbes, globally women are spending over $150 billion annually. They drive 70 to 80% of all consumer purchases. In part this is to do with the multiplier effect: even if they are not making a transaction directly, they are still impacting decisions beyond their own because they are the primary caregiver of children and the elderly.
And I pause here, because it seems ironic to me that the same thing that sometimes holds women back from getting bigger roles in the work place, is the same thing that makes them an ever more important audience for brands building services and products they wish to sell.
But it’s not rocket science, is it? Anaiis Nin said, and as a planner I remind myself every day: we do not see the world as it is, we see it as we are. Which means that rooms full of men, will not properly serve a majority female audience. It means that rooms full of middle class white men will not serve an ever changing world.
It is a mistake to imagine that we can slice and dice as easily as a knife through gender: women are not — as men are not — a collective to market to. People are complex, diverse, tricky, wonderful things. Women are more than their sex, and more than their role as mothers: you only have to see my NCT group to find that out. To do great work, your Work forces must represent the world they hope to connect with, in all its diversity.
People say they want to hire the best person for the job — and that may be a man, given the opportunities and experience he is afforded in a system as unbalanced as the one we work within. Diversity targets have a role to play in reorganizing and I applaud it. But. But. A bigger drive might be that if you don’t have a diverse work force you are on the back foot. If you don’t have women in key roles, others will never thrive, and you will never sell. Not as you could.
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