‘Hey Mum, have you got that in your newsletter?’ I was telling my son that the topic of my latest newsletter, Value Adding # 66, is gender inequality while lamenting that this is still an issue as we head towards 2014. I’d made the statement above, to which he’d asked this question. I had not included it and now have.
As I said in this newsletter, two heavy weight organisations in Australia have put in place stringent measures to increase the number of women in their senior ranks: the Business Council of Australia (BCA) and a fairly recently formed group called Male Champions of Change. The BCA is now seeking a range of responses from its members and has set a target of women in 50% of senior jobs by 2023. Male Champions of Change have a 12-point action list which includes some practical suggestions including the ‘plus one’ initiative that expects that “managers in their organisations will add at least one woman to their teams as roles arise; and if not, they’ll be asking ‘why not'”.
Surely I said to my son with a sigh, with these initiatives in place sanity will prevail and Australian organisations will indeed begin to tap 100% of the available talent pool rather than only 50%.
How about your organisation? How’s it doing in terms of gender equality?
