Accelerating Gender Equality: Insights from Thought Leaders on Driving Real Change (Author Q&A)

The road to equality is already paved but what are leaders across industries doing to accelerate gender equality in the workplace?

Gender equality in the workplace cannot be achieved through words alone—leaders must take bold, measurable actions to dismantle systemic barriers and create lasting change. This International Women’s Day, we asked Kogan Page thought leaders and expert authors what it truly takes to accelerate gender equity in organizations.

From conducting pay equity audits and ensuring flexible work policies to actively sponsoring women in leadership and embedding gender parity targets into business performance metrics, our experts share actionable strategies that move beyond performative allyship. They highlight the persistent challenges—such as systemic bias, unequal caregiving responsibilities and limited access to leadership roles—that continue to hold women back across industries.

Explore the insights, strategies, and real-world solutions that can transform workplaces into equitable environments where all women—especially those from marginalized communities—can thrive.

#ForAllWomenAndGirls

What is one concrete action leaders must take today to make their workplace more equitable for women?

Tibisay Vera: Conducting a comprehensive pay equity audit can help to bring into awareness and act towards more equitable workplaces for women. Practically, this means systematically reviewing salaries, bonuses and benefits to identify and correct any gender-based pay disparities.

Allegra Chapman: One of the easiest changes to make is to implement flexible approaches to work. Women are still forced to take on the greater share of caregiving responsibilities and until that changes, providing women (and all staff) with the flexibility to combine work and care responsibilities will make a huge difference to skilled, talented and driven women being able to remain in the workforce and progress to senior roles. There is no reason, in most businesses, why work must take place in a set location between set hours – unless you are paying staff specifically to keep a seat warm, giving them greater freedom to work in a way that suits them (and in which they can, therefore, deliver their best results) benefits everyone.

Sally Percy: One of the greatest challenges for women is returning to the workplace after maternity leave. Many women struggle at this point because they are exhausted from combining work with having young children at home. A concrete action for leaders is to put policies and processes in place to support women while they navigate this tricky phase of their lives so they can get through it and thrive in the long term.

Jennifer Moss: Flexible work options should be a right not a perk. Inclusive policies for women include access to remote work, staggered hours and hybrid models that support core hours – not rigid start and end times that lengthen commutes and increase expenses for childcare. I also think we need to do a better job at encouraging men to take paternity leaves and simultaneously offer better ramp-up and flex policies for women returning from maternity leave.

How must senior leadership move beyond performative allyship to drive real, lasting change for gender equality?

Melanie Franklin: Because of the existing nature of inequality, we must be willing to seek out female leaders, even if they are not at the same hierarchical level as others and include them in the consulting and decision-making process, even if it means diving a level below or even two levels below.

Tibisay Vera: Senior leadership should focus their commitment to gender equality on tangible, measurable outcomes, rather than symbolic gestures. For example, they should integrate gender parity targets directly into business performance metrics, tying executive compensation and career advancement to the achievement of these metrics. Examples of these metrics could be embedding equity into strategy, creating feedback mechanisms or brain bias training.

Allegra Chapman: Leaders need to stop seeing gender equity as a women’s issue and expecting women to fix it. Equity and inclusion – in all aspects – are everyone’s responsibility, and they benefit everyone. Ultimately, the people best placed to drive meaningful change are the people with the power, influence and privilege in society, rather than the people who are already being overburdened and restricted by the system. When leadership teams recognize that diverse and inclusive teams are vastly more successful (and 36% more profitable) than their competitors and they encourage everyone to collaborate on building a more inclusive and equitable culture, they are able to make real, tangible progress.

Sally Percy: Sponsorship and mentorship from senior leaders are vital to gender equality. By championing the talented women within their organisation, sponsors help to increase the visibility of those women. As mentors, senior leaders can help women succeed by providing guidance and feedback and introducing them to useful contacts. Sponsorship and mentorship both act as a ‘helping hand’ to women who are climbing the career ladder, helping them to make it to the next rung.

Jennifer Moss: Senior leaders must actively sponsor and advocate for women in promotion and talent discussions rather than just offering mentorship; real change happens when leaders use their influence to ensure women’s work is visible and valued. We need to change the narrative that ensuring more women are in leadership roles isn’t a benevolence strategy – it’s a business strategy.

Kamales Lardi: Senior leaders must tie diversity goals to performance metrics and compensation. If leaders are accountable for gender equity in the same way that they are for revenue, we’ll see real change. It’s about measurable impact, not statements of support.

Which workplace policies or initiatives have had the greatest impact on your career, and where do businesses still fall short?

Melanie Franklin: The policies or initiatives that have had the greatest impact on my career and that are the most effective are based on psychological safety. That feeling that it is OK to speak up that when we speak up, we will not be marginalized, we will not be humiliated and that our opinions will be treated with respect and listened to.

Marie Carasco: For my career, the 1964 Title VII Civil Rights Act which banned employment discrimination on the basis of race, colour, religion, sex or national origin had the greatest impact. This law prohibited employers from explicitly preventing me from being considered for any role that I was qualified to perform.

Sally Percy: There is no particular workplace policy or initiative, but becoming self-employed had a transformative effect on my career. It enabled me to take control of the work I did, where I did it and who I did it for. I believe it enabled me to achieve my true potential. I guess the lesson from this for traditional workplace environments is to give women the opportunity to be entrepreneurial and take control of their own careers. Too many workplaces are inflexible, taking a one-size-fits-all approach to people management and development and not allowing people to play an active role in shaping their own careers.

Kamales Lardi: Flexible work policies and leadership sponsorship have created progress, but they’re not enough to break systemic barriers. Unconscious bias still skews hiring and promotions, keeping women from advancing to executive roles. Companies often pledge commitment to diversity but fail in execution—particularly in ensuring women reach the C-suite. To drive real change, organizations must move beyond blanket policies and adopt hyper-personalized working models supported by AI and other emerging technologies. AI-driven workforce analytics can identify bias in hiring and promotions, ensuring fair evaluations. Intelligent scheduling tools can create customized work arrangements based on individual needs—whether that means remote work, dynamic hours or project-based assignments.

What policies or initiatives have proven most effective in organizations that are serious about gender parity?

Melanie Franklin: Initiatives based on psychological safety. Psychological safety has many benefits, such as building trust, developing innovation and widening the perspectives upon which we make decisions. When it comes to gender equality, being able to speak up in an environment where our voices are respected is important.

Tibisay Vera: One example could be brain bias training. Bias is an energy saving process our human brain does in order to keep us safe, which can happen at an unconscious level. For lasting change in gender equality, it is necessary to recognize bias is present at any point in time and the only way to reduce the impact of the bias is to learn to recognize when it is present.

Allegra Chapman: Gender pay gap reporting has forced a lot of businesses to confront the reality of the discrepancy in opportunity within their staff teams, which they might have otherwise preferred to believe didn’t exist. It is easier to bury your head in the sand, but, once you understand where the issues lie, you can take steps to address them, rather than allowing resentments to simmer beneath the surface, damaging morale, productivity and your reputation.

Sally Percy: A generous male paternity leave policy, which allows fathers to take a significant amount of paid time off work – beyond the statutory minimum – following the birth of their children. The more that child rearing is seen as a joint responsibility between men and women, the more equal the world will be. Research has found that countries with more than six weeks of paid paternity leave have a 4% smaller gender wage gap and a 3.7% smaller labour force participation gap. It is also important that paternity leave is paid at 90% of income, in the same way that statutory maternity leave is. Men may feel that they cannot afford to take six weeks of paternity leave if it’s only paid at the current statutory rate – which is £184.03 per week.

Jo North: The most effective policies are the ones that give real access—structured sponsorship, clear promotion pathways and leadership programmes that don’t just tick boxes but actually result in more women in senior roles. It's also important to note that providing flexible working policies and transparent pay structures helps to create an environment where gender parity is both achievable and sustainable.

What is the most pressing barrier holding back gender equality in your industry and how must leaders address it?

Kamales Lardi: Bias—both conscious and unconscious—is the biggest roadblock to gender equality in leadership. Traditional bias training alone isn’t enough; real change requires transformative, immersive experiences that rewire the brain’s decision-making patterns. Through my work in neuroscience and technology, we could utilize technologies such as VR (Virtual Reality), AR (Augmented Reality), and wearable EEG (electroencephalogram) devices to train bias out of the workplace by directly engaging the brain’s cognitive and emotional responses. VR-based simulations allow leaders to experience workplace bias firsthand, stepping into the shoes of employees facing discrimination. This builds deeper empathy and rewires subconscious reactions in ways traditional training cannot.

Melanie Franklin: Women will not apply for a role unless they believe they meet nearly every single criteria associated with the role, whereas men more often will apply for a role even if they believe they do not meet 50% of the criteria, believing they can grow into or develop the skills needed. Being aware of this difference in approaches and coaching your female talent pool to apply for roles which would be a stretch, but they are more than capable of stretching to, is an important activity for all leaders.

Tibisay Vera: One of the most pressing barriers is the deeply ingrained systemic bias that permeates organizational cultures; from hiring practices and promotion to everyday workplace interactions. These unconscious biases often lead to women being undervalued or overlooked for leadership opportunities, creating a persistent "glass ceiling” and can result in limited access to high-visibility assignments and influential networks.

Marie Carasco: My most recent experience is working in tech, which is a male dominated industry, as with most STEM fields. Access to opportunities for women and girls, especially those of colour, is a barrier holding back gender equity. Early intervention programs, scholarship and internships are paths to progress in increase the representation of women in STEM.

Allegra Chapman: The biggest challenge in all areas of equity – gender and beyond – is a mindset one. Many leaders see equity as a nice to have, or as unnecessary political correctness that has been forced upon them.  Once they recognize how much of a difference it makes to their bottom line – not only that treating people with respect and valuing them as human beings is the right thing to do, but also that equity and inclusion massively increase productivity, engagement, results and profits – then they can begin to treat it as a business imperative.

Jennifer Moss: LeanIn.org highlights the pervasive issue of women being promoted at lower rates than men, especially into first-time management roles, as the "broken rung." This issue is less about the proverbial glass ceiling and more about the numbers – women are blocked from these pivotal early leadership positions, which ultimately reduces their representation in higher roles like directors and CEOs. Leaders must proactively track and correct gender disparities in promotions, ensuring women have equitable access to leadership pipelines​.

Jo North: The biggest barrier for women in sustainable innovation isn’t a lack of talent or ambition—it’s visibility and recognition. Too often women do great work, but it happens behind the scenes and is often overlooked, while others take the credit or get the opportunities.

Technical expertise alone isn’t enough to move up. The people who progress are the ones who are seen leading critical projects, presenting ideas and driving business impact. In some male-dominated industries, women aren’t always brought into those spaces as naturally, which means leaders need to be intentional about ensuring they are visible.

At the same time, women in innovation can’t afford to wait for someone else to put them in the spotlight. It’s not about self-promotion for the sake of it, but about making sure your work is seen and valued. If you’re the expert in the room, own it. If you’ve delivered results, speak about them. Recognition isn’t automatic and visibility matters.

Learn more about accelerating action for workplace equality this International Women's Day 2025 from our authors and experts: www.koganpage.com/inspire-inclusion