Why Should Companies Promote Gender Diversity?
For long, it has been said and heard that companies should promote gender diversity. Promoting gender diversity equates to hiring more women to achieve gender balance. However, ever wondered, why should companies promote gender diversity? What’s wrong in men-only companies? Should companies promote gender diversity just because it is supposedly the right thing to do? Or is it because gender diversity is a good social slogan? Or is it that women opt out because of possible sexual harassment and the resulting #metoo movements?
Enough and more has been written extensively on the need and importance of recruiting and empowering more women. As per the No Ceilings Full Participation Report, if Egyptian women were employed at the same rate as men, that country’s GDP would climb by 34%. In the U.S., by the way, that figure is 5%. The same report shows that, since women prioritize things like education and healthcare for their children, they also build the foundations of a prosperous future. This means empowered women can generate a vast amount of wealth that people around the world would be able to spend.
Women currently make up 47% of the US workforce and 51% of all management, professional and related positions (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2017). Globally, the outlook is similar, with women accounting for 49% of the workforce (International Labor Organization, 2016)...................
Exhibits
Exhibit I: Why Companies Should Hire More Women
Exhibit II: Benefits of Having More Women in the Workplace