Whenever executive coach Nancy MacKay accepts speaking engagements from women’s business groups about ways to promote gender diversity in the workplace, she makes sure that top male executives are going to be present.
That’s because, with gender dynamics having changed little in a decade among executive teams and boards, MacKay and others who have long promoted the importance of narrowing the ratio of men to women in the workplace recognize that female champions can’t change things alone.
“We really have to engage men more so that they have the opportunity to see that women are just as talented as men in CEO roles and any other management positions in a company,” said MacKay, who is president of Vancouver’s MacKay and Associates Advisors Inc.
“When you have companies with male-dominated teams, it is men talking to men. It’s men, not women, who are going to say, ‘This is a problem.’ Peer pressure is a lot more influential than women saying, ‘There’s a problem here.’”
Engaging men to become diversity champions is a topic that Catalyst Canada Inc., a Toronto-based non-profit organization that aims to expand opportunities for women in business, has recently made its own.
Among the conclusions made at Catalyst’s Vancouver event on February 1 was that diversity is not a women’s issue, but a business issue that needs attention and commitment from all senior leaders – women and men.
“Yet, too often, men are an untapped resource in such gender initiatives,” stated Catalyst in a report called Engaging Men in Gender Initiatives.
Women’s fortunes in the top-rung of the workplace haven’t changed much in a decade.
In 1999, 12 of the largest 500 companies in Canada were headed by women.
In 2010, only an additional seven women had made it to the top posts in corporate Canada.
In 2009, 14% of board seats among the top 500 Canadian companies were occupied by women, compared with 9.8% in 2001.
The figures look more imbalanced when it’s noted that 47.3% of the Canadian labour force is made up of women.
“The reality is that there are more than enough women in the workplace,” said MacKay. “They’re just not at the top.”
MacKay noted that an increasing number of companies are taking the usual proactive steps, such as implementing boardroom policies that ensure a certain percentage of women are short-listed for roles when it comes to recruiting, succession planning or promotion.
But both MacKay and Catalyst say that many programs have missed the mark.
“There isn’t necessarily buy-in to the business case for gender diversity, so companies jut keep doing what they’re doing, and use excuses such as, ‘Our industry is male-dominated anyway,’” said MacKay.
According to Catalyst, too many gender initiatives focus solely on changing women – from the way they network to the way they lead.
As well, says Catalyst, too many organizations look to women alone to change the organizational practices that maintain the status quo.
“Organizations must enlist both women and men to work together as allies in changing the organizational norms and structures that perpetuate gender gaps,” said Catalyst in Engaging Men.
And even some women’s groups are against the more extreme initiatives that focus on forcing workplace gender balances – as was evident last month when a federal senator put forth a bill that would require publicly-traded companies, banks, insurance companies and trust companies to reach gender parity on their boards in three years.
Before individuals can support a change initiative, states Catalyst, they must first be convinced that there is something wrong with the status quo. •
