diversity
continue to be crucial to changing the way society’s organizations
function. Gender issues in the workplace will not simply
vanish once a certain number of women are present, even though
that was one of many assumptions made years ago when organizations
began looking at gender differences.
“We put the cart before the horse,” said Annis. “We made a
bunch of assumptions, like if we just educate more women, time
will take care of it. We’ve assumed that if the pipeline has some
form of gender balance, we’re good. But now, here we are. We
have all these women but no plans to retain them and no plans
to advance them. And we have to do better.”
“We’re still talking about this because of bias, plain and
simple,” said Gallagher-Louisy. “For most of us, biases are unconscious
and unquestioned. Women have been achieving more
undergrad degrees than men since the 1979-1980 school year
and it hasn’t dropped below 50 per cent since then. You’d think
in 37 years, women would have climbed the ranks and be close to
equality. Well, women make up about 5 per cent of CEOs on the
FP 500. If you look at top earners, less than 10 per cent are women.
There’s a pyramid; the higher you climb, the less women there
are. Sexism in our organizations is pervasive. Women across all
sectors get interrupted in meetings more often than men but it’s
men and other women who are interrupting them. So, clearly
there’s an unconscious bias influencing that behaviour.”
In her 2010 TED Talk, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg
spoke to the importance of gender intelligence in society:
“The data shows this very clearly – if a woman and a
man work full time and have a child, the woman does
twice the amount of housework than the man and
three times the amount of childcare than the man. So,
she’s got three jobs and he has one. Who do you think
drops out when someone needs to be home more? As
a society, we put more pressure on our boys to succeed
than we do our girls. If a little boy shows leadership,
he’s a boss. If a little girl shows leadership, she’s bossy.
This is the other side of the gender equality argument.”
Building a gender intelligent society is more complicated and
involves more than changing organizational cultures. It begins
with an individual shift in mindset, a willingness to acknowledge
our own biases and the drive to make the changes that are
necessary for everyone to have a seat at the table and have their
perspectives understood and valued. n
CONSIDERING GENDER VS. SEX
The majority of research and work conducted
on gender intelligence focuses on
gender as a binary term, meaning men or
women. So far, it does not include those
who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual,
transgender or queer (LGBTQ). With that
in mind, it’s important to consider that sex
and gender are not the same thing. When
a child is born, they have either male or female
sex organs. (Very rarely is a child born
with both, but it does happen.) Thus, the
child’s sex is either male or female.
Gender, on the other hand, is in the brain
and is how that child identifies with being
either male or female, regardless of their
sex at birth. While there is much fantastic
research indicating that men’s and women’s
brains work differently, there remains
the question of nature versus nurture: how
boys and girls are taught to behave based
on their sex (not gender) and how that affects
the development of the brain. As the
study and application of gender intelligences
grows and changes, the needs, values
and perspectives of those who identify as
LGBTQ must be accepted and included to
foster true gender intelligence throughout
organizations and society.
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HRPROFESSIONALNOW.CA ❚ AUGUST 2017 ❚ 35