How I achieved gender parity in my team

As far as I remember, as a woman working in a tech company, I’ve always been part of a minority. If not the only woman.

My most recent job was no exception. When I took the job a bit more than a year ago, my team was exclusively composed of men, great talented guys, but not a single woman in view.

So when last week and the arrival of two new comers in the team I realized that we had reached parity, with exactly 5 women and 5 men in the team, I had to pause and reflect on it.

Why does it matter?

As product managers we are responsible for shipping the best products and features that will create the most impacts on users. It requires a blend of hard and soft skills, and most importantly it implies to deeply understand the users of your products, their needs, their pains, whether they are clearly expressed or not.

Individually, this is what is expected from a Product Manager. It’s already quite demanding, but this is not enough to succeed. To shape your product strategy and create impact, you need to confront your plans and learnings with others. And so you need diversity in your working environment, starting with your close team.

Diversity can theoretically be achieved with one woman in the team.

But minority puts at risk diversity because it often means inequality

People are strange, when you’re a stranger. That’s the ground root of inequality and Jim Morrison summarized it so well. If you’re the only woman, you have less chance to be heard, taken seriously, promoted because it will always be easier to listen to all the other ones that think and look alike. So yes, parity matters. Collectively for the team, and consequently for each individual of the team, not just for women.

How to achieve it?

I will not pretend to give a general answer on that one. I’m just going to stick to the context that I know the best: tech company, product management, France, and hopefully that can be extrapolated a little bit.

The women that joined my team are all coming from internal moves within my company. They were not working in product roles before but expressed their wish to transfer to the product team and learn the job.

I think this is actually telling a lot:

• first of all, the product manager job allows for it because you don’t find the same barriers as in engineering roles. Although you need to understand very well the tech, you don’t necessarily need to have studied computer science as you’re not expected to be coding yourself.
• Then, the French workplace is still not very mature in product management. It’s not easy to recruit good product managers, the market is highly competitive. So if you manage to create internal vocation, go for it!
• And last, I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the internal vocation was created particularly among women. It’s not linked to my own merit, but the simple fact that I’m a woman managing the team removes an unconscious blocker among other women to project themselves in the job.

What’s next?

It’s not enough to attract those female talents in the team, you need to help them succeed. And it starts with a good training and a clear career path. Because yes I reached parity in my team, but women are also the most junior team mates for now. So this is going to be the real good test of whether or not our environment favors equality of chances and allows talents to grow.