Empowering Women To Be The Leaders Of The Future

International Women’s Day originated from protests and activism. Women fought for better pay, shorter hours, the right to vote and the right for education. The United Nations officially recognized the day in 1975 and it has led to advancements in the fight for gender parity. But it has since then evolved into women being encouraged to post selfies, eat pink cupcakes and celebrate brands who turn their logos pink even though they have a big gender pay gap.

The current state

According to the World Economic Forum, at the current rate of progress, it will take until 2158, which is roughly five generations from now, to reach full gender parity. There are many countries where girls lack access to education, have never had a female leader and there are industries where women struggle to gain a foothold into leadership positions.

Women are constrained by so many areas of life from progressing. Childcare often becomes the responsibility of women in heterosexual relationships. Women do most of the family care too, such as caring for elderly parents. With domestic responsibilities, yes you guessed it, in the majority, these fall to women too. These and other factors limit the progress women make into leadership roles, and that’s what campaigns like International Women’s Day should be addressing.

The UN’s theme is ‘For ALL women and girls: Rights. Equality. Empowerment’. Action is needed to campaign and drive change with increased momentum to address the systemic barriers and biases that women face. Around the world, women campaign on areas such as education for all girls, access to technology, mentoring and opportunities.

That is all far more meaningful than brands using the colour pink in their marketing when they have no women in their leadership teams.

Progress through actions

What we need to see through actions is progress. The next generation should see change and see that they have more opportunities than previous generations, and that barriers have been broken.

It’s such slow progress, though. There are not only further barriers in the way, but so many attitudes to change too. For those who do not experience barriers to their progress in the workplace, any change in focus to a different group (such as women) can feel like they are having something taken away from them. So, we see backlash against initiatives that would drive change for the next generation.

This backlash often comes from fear. If we’re going to address that, we need to show people why this matters to them. There are so many different statistics, research and evidence that show that inclusive teams lead to higher profits, more innovation, higher productivity and people are happier to stay in their roles too.

As well as this, it takes thinking about why this matters and applies to everyone. If an organization is designing products or services, or working on a problem, then including women in decision-making means that all aspects are looked at, thought about and addressed. For example, if you are designing a hotel and you do not include women in any of the thinking about what needs to be where, you will end up with a place that does not work for just over 50% of your potential market. This could be applied to anything you are working on, from mobile phones, to websites, to clothing and more.

The thinking needs to be intersectional too. Women are not all the same, so work on this needs to address the different experiences women face. 75% of women of colour have experienced racism at work. Women with disabilities experience barriers to employment and older women face discrimination at work, so it does not get any easier as women get older. And when it comes to young women, 53% have experienced discrimination in the workplace. This story of women’s experiences in the workplace might make many consider founding their own businesses instead of trying to fit in with workplace cultures. There are even challenges there though. Female founders get around 3% of Venture Capital Funding, and it is even less for women of colour. Balance that with a male-founded start-up who make a period tracking app who raised $200m. With research showing that having a woman on the founding team means that the business is less likely to get funding.

The next generation

There needs to be a clear focus on what we can do to drive change and leadership teams must see the point in this. Statistics and research about the business benefits can help reluctant leadership teams who are happy with the way things are. For these people, they need to consider what the risk of not doing anything is. Without this focus, will they struggle to recruit people? Will they struggle to sell to clients? And what will it do for their reputation?

Here are some practical steps organizations can take:

· Mentorship and sponsorship – we all need help to progress and women in positions of power have a big role to play to help the next generation. Mentoring people and sponsoring people are proven ways of helping people get a step up. People can provide introductions, advice and support to help people to progress their careers. Set up mentoring programmes or join programmes that are run by organizations.

· Inclusive leadership – leaders have a responsibility to understand what it means to be an inclusive leader, why it matters and how to lead in ways that include people and help people to further their careers. This is not something that comes naturally to everyone. Leaders should take the time to learn and share this learning with their teams.

· Creating opportunities – women can create opportunities for each other in so many ways to help drive progress. For those in leadership roles, look at salaries across your teams and address any gaps, normalize flexible working, , give opportunities to women to lead on projects to help build their experience and help lead the way.

Many of these points are strategies for leaders to work on, but there are also things that everyone can do. Did you know that women are interrupted 50% of the time in meetings? It is even worse in video meetings. A simple thing everyone can do, is keep track of that. If a woman is speaking and sharing an idea and gets interrupted and you spot it – draw the attention back to her. That is just one example of the things everyone can do to empower women and transform the future.

It is going to take everyone working on this to drive the change we want to see for a future where women are empowered and lead the organizations of the future. The Commission on The Status Of Women is open for people all around the world to join as delegates to learn and campaign for change. Let’s start now.