Gender Diversity on Boards & in the Workplace

Wow what a cluster fluff of opinion & little data but lots of aims & targets.

Are Boards & Workplaces better off with better or more even diversity?

What's better off (what improves) and what exactly do you mean by diversity?

Under law you can't discriminate on someone's attributes. Their gender, race, religion, political view, sexual orientation, marital status. And for good reason, its unfair to.

Having said that, some workplaces are gender dominated by men or by women. That's life.

Yes the majority of truck drivers or anything in the transport industry are men by a margin of roughly 4 to 1. In that industry, performance is key and whilst men dominate in numbers, the percentage or good vs bad operators is probably the same for both genders. It makes little discernable difference.

Healthcare & social services, roughly identical ratio but its women who are in the majority. Again the percentage of good vs not good is probably the same so again little or no discernable difference.

More men that women choose transport, more women than men choose health. Its a choice.

Studies have shown that men are more likely to choose overtime & working away whilst women are more likely to be drawn to flexible hours, less likely to work away from home, family & friends. These are neither weaknesses or strengths, they're just the way it goes and people can decide what they do.

So is it proven that an equal number of men & women on a board leads to greater benefits to the board & the company?

Well what studies there are, its pretty inconclusive. What is known at this point is the most effective & successful boards have the most effective & successful directors, CEOs, processes & support staff.

The most effective & successful boards usually have Director Performance reviews to assess the directors & to identify required skills that are missing or areas a particular director needs to build on.

Because effective & successful boards have Director Education Programmes tailored to the whole board & the individual directors. To build their skillset & ramp board performance.

The most effective & successful boards also assess their CEO and the running of the board meeting, the meeting papers and have well fitting policies & procedures as well as good governance. A board's job is to bring strategic thinking, the management is to install it by using their strategic planning.

The most effective & successful boards also have good strategy formulation and monitoring systems.

So far none of these things are gender specific or gender slanted.

The most effective & successful boards probably know that perception is a thing and right now gender diversity is a real big thing. They also know they need to work hard to get the best directors of the female crop. There aren't as many female directors as male. In fact the rough estimate is there are 2 male directors to every female directors.

So if the competency is the roughly the same in percentage for each gender then the pool of really good female directors is roughly half what the really good male directors is. Its just a percentage  based on the scale of the numbers so if you're an effective & successful board you know having some gender diversity is a good look & if you get the best female directors you're no worse off, possibly depending on skill sets better off...and your shareholders perceive the gender balance to be great.

So if a board is all male or all female it probably makes very little difference to director skills.

But the best boards will get the best female directors.

The rights and responsibilities of a director are the same whether you're male or female.

You legal duties, your fiduciary duty all the same whether you're male or female.

If you're a nurse, a plumber, a director, a pilot, a teacher, a CEO your performance is down to you, not your gender.

Should we be setting targets for gender diversity in transport, education, labouring, health, parliament, senior management or boards?

Some strong views out there but for me, its a no. We should provide equal opportunity and allow people to sink or swim on their own performance. We should tell people they can pursue any career they want but if they don't meet the required standards in that field then its probably not the job for them & they should look at other work, other careers. Not everyone can be a miner or a MP or a shearer or receptionist. Gender is not really a big deal, personal performance is.

In broad terms these are some established & widely accepted board aspects, none of which are entirely gender specific when it comes to effectiveness & success...

The Board of Directors is a control governance mechanism, aimed to monitor managerial activities so as to mitigate agency costs (Jensen, 1993), and to set the strategic objectives which should orientate the course of the company (Hillman and Dalziel, 2003). The Board's supervisory tasks include: monitoring the CEO, and the implementation of the firms long term strategy, firing and hiring the CEO and assessing and rewarding the CEO/top managers of the firm (Hillman and Dalziel, 2003).

So if you want more women on your board (or in parliament) go for it. Get the very best women you can, because you should get the best people you can, just know you may have a smaller pool of outstanding directors in the female camp purely because of scale. If you don't care about gender & just want the very best director you can find, going solely by skills and experience, go for it. Either way you'll be ok. But if you go by a quota, well someone's getting the job because of their gender and someone is missing out because of their gender and skillset aside, you put gender first.

What Society has to determine is, what is gender because to some there's 200+ genders to some there's an infinite number of genders and to many of us there's just male, female and in 1.7% of the population intersex.

Now if you chase gender diversity how do you manage with 200+ or infinite number of genders?

How do you manage with male, female, transmale, transfemale or those who have physical attributes of one gender but "identify" wholly as the other traditional gender? Now if we're talking the workplace of Professional Sport, do we abolish all gender sports and have all sports of mixed genders or do we have male & female sports or do we allow someone who was a man for 25 years, now a transwoman or gender reassigned woman compete in women's football, cage fighting, weight lifting?

Feminism Today...I had to ask some questions

So where is feminism today? Its a bit of a mine field for some. No harm in asking, nothing helpful in not knowing

Everyone can have a view, but apparently some think if you're a man you cannot have an opinion on it and other people say a man can have an opinion on it.

Some are of the view a man can be a feminist & some say they cannot.

Then the minefield gets flooded with petrol because some men claim to be "male feminists" and some women claim they actually don't support feminism.

So it gets tricky but sometimes its easier with some than with others. Sooooo…I asked 2 ladies I've come to know online. Both I've never met in person. Both are straight shooters, or as they old saying goes "Good old fashioned no sh!t sheilas"

One is a younger than me person of a conservative political leaning. One is an older than me person and is of a very left political leaning. I figure there's bound to be truth somewhere in between them.

So I asked the following,

"How accurate do you think this is...the Feminist Movement has been seen in 3 waves...

1) Enemy of unfairness then...
2) Enemy of men...then to now where’s beginning to be
3) Enemy of men & women but a Chardonnay Socialist’s joyful playground. "

The younger conservative said "Basically. Great Summary"

The older Left leaner said "Sadly bang f**kin on. Turned into a no win tribal sh*t show, in fact itll probably get worse from here on in for everyone"

Well that threw me for 6, I thought, well I dunno what I thought they'd say. Guess I was expecting 2 very passionate, very clear to them views from their respectively different political viewpoints & I'd see points I never considered. I was expecting long deep answers.
Both cut to the chase, knew exactly what they thought long before I put the question to them

I didn't know if there is or was 3 waves or 20 or 1, I just gave a personal view to prompt them to sit up, think & share. I wasn't expecting commonality between them & certainly wasn't thinking they'd think similar to me.

Yes I did ask the older Left Leaner what she thought I meant by Chardonnay Socialist and pleasantly surprised me. She said...

 "Chardonnay Socialists are a thing alright, but we just call them dogs. I've seen you post about them a lot and got to tell you they're not from the left or the right. They're from their own pirate ship making whatever noises they need to so they can fill up for free. They're not crusty old school right wads in nor True Believers or any of the good people in between. They only love themselves, they're dogs."

She went onto say that not all so called feminists were Chardonnay Socialists but old school feminism is really only needed in Asia, the Middle East and a few other places. She added "But it'll get you ****ing killed quick smart in those places and no one bats an eye"

The next question I was going to ask was to do with Misogyny & Misandry but don't think there's any point. My view is they're actually the same thing.

Misogyny = Sh!t people doing Sh!t things to other people who really don't deserve it.
Misandry  = Sh!t people doing Sh!t things to other people who really don't deserve it.

I'm thinking they might just agree with that too.

There probably was a reason for 2 separate gender specific terms once, maybe there still is but to me they're both unacceptable because they're both Sh!t people doing Sh!t things to other people who really don't deserve it.

Kind off killed of any chances of this being a long blog entry. Maybe I should just stay calm & remember its pretty cool that I found myself in full agreeance with 2 politically polar opposite ladies on feminism...and maybe all three of us are right, maybe all three of us are wrong. Seems like I was the only one caught out surprised. I thought I knew, they knew it.

I'm good with that.

(I might chuck the link of this to the 2 ladies & ask if they want to add a comment below or if they want to remain nameless I can copy/paste just below instead of the comment section)

Does your board need female directors & how many?

Yes, odd question that will immediately set up for sandbags either way for some but it is a pertinent question. Do women think & therefore decide differently on matter than men?

Well there's quite a few studies that we can cite & people often do except often the studies chosen can be chosen upon the conclusions & not the methodology. Its a tricky path.

But does a board do better with a female influence and if some is good, is more better.
Yes.
And No.

In the case of a board, directors are confined to act within boundaries, these boundaries are oblivious to a person's gender. A board is skill based or should be. You'd hope you can have at the higher levels, higher levels of required skills in certain fields. Legal, financial, strategic are just some of the angles directors have to confront...in the best interests of the shareholders otherwise known as their "Fiduciary Duty".
The emphasis is deliberate yet shouldn't be required but...it is.
The perpetuity of the company and the best interests of the shareholders or members is key but sometimes forgotten. This aspect is in the Corporations Act.
All very no gender centric.

But do women & men think differently and if so how much is nature & how much is nurture?
Yes and we don't know definitively. We know the effect of nature is not zero, the effect of nurture or culture or upbringing or any other social influence is not zero. We know not all men think exactly the same, we know all women don't think exactly the same and we know corporate psychopaths can be male or female. We know altruistic people can be male or female and we know embezzlers can be of either gender too.

So are there advantages of having women on boards? Yes, most likely. Having a genuine spread of individuals with life skills, board skills is paramount though and if you don't have women (or men) on your board right now don't stress unless you think it's "just a bad look", If your board is operating well, if your business is operating well, if you're meeting your targets, your compliance requirements and you're enjoying growth, get on with things.

It is possible to have a successful board that is all male, all female or a slanted or even dead equal mix. It is a historical fact, that most company directors in the last 50 years have predominantly been men & its a current fact that this is changing. Nowadays women are applying for jobs they may not have historically done in large numbers once. This is not a bad thing.

What is a bad thing is if a board should think it needs a "coupla gals on board" to meet a pub test. What is a bad thing is if a board, or a company at its AGM should think that 50:50 gender balance on the board is a desirable outcome.

What should be the aim is the perpetuity of the organisation & the benefit and best interests of the shareholders...the owners. The Corporations Act does not view things as a Gender playing field and I don't think responsible boards or shareholders should either. If they find a good director, with a good business background, a good board history and in possession of particular skills in an area the board is possibly deficient in that are identified as required...consider grabbing that director irrespective of their gender.

Fact is less women apply for board positions today, yes more now than ever before but it is predominantly a male domain. There's a number of reasons for this, a number of non discriminatory reasons and a number of biased reasons why. Know the difference, then fix the fault. There are less women studying their MBA yet more women studying that than probably ever before. As a result I'd expect to see less female CEOs & less female CFOs...and less of them going onto to a life away from management & a career in boards. That is just one variable and its not sexist, its part of the entire equation.

Are women equal to men? Under law yes. In fact 2 people with the same skills, with the same experience in the same job must be paid the same. irrespective of their race, religion, gender anything else. But some get paid more because they've been in the job longer, some work longer, some get extra skills & advance their positions. But it is illegal to benefit someone or penalise someone purely on the basis of their gender.

Women probably do in a very general sense think differently than men, they may be wired differently than men but I don't think its an earth shattering day night differences, its possibly far more nuanced and it's largely rendered immaterial under the Corporations Act.

So seek out good directors and ignore their gender. It will be, by & large, irrelevant. Treat men & women equally by ignoring their gender & focusing on the skills, knowledge and experience they have, what deficiencies you board is trying to fix and press on.

It is odd we now have a point where if a person identifies as something they are that something. A sort of bizarre subjective truth. A man identifying as a women is accepted by many as being a woman. The change appears to be a mix of surgery, prescription chemicals and mind set. That used to be man is now a woman. So does that "new" woman think like a woman now?
Do the genders actually have differences we should celebrate or is it just mind set & surgery that separates men & women? Can't really have it both ways.

I think there are areas where gender is irrelevant and certain workplaces like the board room is clearly one of them. Other workplaces still need segregation. The extreme example, elite level rugby league or AFL. Or weight lifting or other Olympic competitions.

I believe there will always be more men in the field of interstate trucking, brick laying, plumbing and general labouring jobs. There will always be more women in nursing and teaching. These things are not negatives, they are "just are".

I do think it odd that we must have gender balance in boards & the parliaments, 50:50 as soon as possible but while this aim is applied to high paying, high profile white collar jobs the same gender balance is not applied to bricklaying. Will you new house have better walls if 50% of the bricklayers during construction were male and 50% were female? At some point we will have to ignore the gender balance & just get on with the job and focus solely on the equal opportunity being presented and then the performance being the telling judgement point.

When I get on board a jet plane I don't care if the pilot is male or female, I just care & trust they can take off, fly & land without incident. Their gender will play no role in their ability and if it does, then that's not a gender issue, its a performance issue.

I worry that good well meaning people will over look a vital point. By having a quota or worse still and inferred need to get people into a job due to their gender they overlook the fact that someone is missing out on a job due to their gender.

MBAs are a respected degree, but a MBA really only gets you your first job. Its the performance of your first job that will get you your second job. Your MBA is a required milestone, its not a guarantee of a long successful career. You need an MBA to have the OPPORTUNITY to apply & hopefully get a job, it should never be a seen as a God given right to a guaranteed outcome.
Life does not have equal outcomes, but we should all have equal opportunities.

In citing some studies of men vs women thinking we risk creating or adding to existing neurosexism.

No Board Needs That. It Needs People Appropriate Skills Performing Well.

https://stanmed.stanford.edu/2017spring/how-mens-and-womens-brains-are-different.html