The Importance Of Women In Leadership For Equitable And Inclusive Policies
International Women's Day is more than the rose given to women employees on 8th March. In the corporate sector, where women have historically been underrepresented, it's an opportunity to reflect on the progress we've made and the road ahead.
Diversity of leadership is crucial for any organisation to thrive. However, simply having women at the table isn't enough. To truly create an inclusive environment, we need leaders who not only advocate for women but also understand the challenges they face.
The Empathy Gap: Beyond Good Intentions
While diversity encompasses various biases such as language bias, disability bias, to name a few, today's focus is on gender. It is a fact that all genders face professional hurdles like language barriers, cultural differences, and discrimination. However, additional challenges unique to women often go unseen. These include societal and familial expectations, which contribute to increased stress and demands that extend beyond the core responsibilities of their professional roles.
Many leaders express empathy for women's experiences. However, genuine change requires moving beyond intellectual understanding to experiential empathy. This involves actively seeking to understand the challenges and burdens of juggling work and family life, while balancing professional expectations with personal commitments. Women often face judgment for prioritising personal commitments, like leaving work on time or adjusting their schedules. This stems from unconscious bias that fails to acknowledge the invisible workload they carry – coordinating childcare, managing household needs, and navigating a world where men's roles as primary breadwinners are often the default assumption.
Women need more flexibility to shoulder the multiple responsibilities in their life of details, which take up their mind space. This is where #InspiringInclusion plays a key role, fostering a space where these challenges, even if unspoken, are acknowledged and addressed. Women leaders, having faced these challenges themselves, can inherently bring this instinctive understanding to the table and create an intuitively experiential environment, making space for more women.
Championing Change: The Power of Shared Experience
Women leaders have a unique perspective. They understand the emotional toll of losing career momentum after maternity leave, the exasperation of navigating a male-dominated industry, and the constant mental jugglery that defines many women's lives. This experiential empathy allows them to champion policies that are truly equitable and inclusive.
The pain of losing a job post-maternity leave whilst still grappling with guilt over leaving their little one at home is not easy to deal with. With biology at work, hormones too make life incredibly hard at times for women! Organisations should have policies that provide temporary respite to women to keep them for the long term. Women in leadership positions can translate these experiences into equitable and inclusive policies that have the potential to transform unconscious bias to conscious bias, to eventually become unconscious un-bias.
Breaking the Cycle: Transforming Bias into Action
Lack of female leadership creates a Catch-22 situation where non-inclusive policies persist due to underrepresentation, hindering further inclusion. While acknowledging women's challenges is crucial, dismantling the systems perpetuating them is vital. Just like erstwhile pioneering women leaders, like Savitribai Phule, who paved the way for women’s education for future generations, we need courageous leaders who embrace diverse perspectives to create equitable and inclusive environments where all can thrive. Women leaders of today have the responsibility to pave the way for future generations when it comes to equal respect and support for all genders at the workplace.
To quote Maya Angelou, "Each of us, regardless of our situation, experiences anguish. Our challenge is to move beyond it." Let's move beyond acknowledging the challenges women face, and actively #InspireInclusion, to create a future where success is measured by talent, not gender.
