IMI: Radical strategies for promoting women in leadership

How to overcome resistance to gender diversity measures and gain stakeholder buy-in

If companies can’t develop and promote the women they hire, it will be difficult to achieve gender parity at the senior level.

It’s easy to get distracted by numbers and quotas with gender equality in the workplace. Take an organisation with an exact 50/50 split between male and female employees. On the surface, this organisation might appear to be a progressive model, but a deeper dive into the data often tells a different story.

For example, it’s common for organisations to have gender parity or close to it in entry-level roles, only to see the percentage of female employees decrease when getting closer to the top of the organisation. According to the McKinsey/Lean In Women in the Workplace study, only 38% of managers are female, followed by 33% of directors, 28% of senior vice presidents, and 21% of C-suite executives.