Men and Women Unite to Achieve Gender Equality in the Workplace?

By Josh Durso

We have never been better poised to fix the culture that exists around women in the workplace.

Men still dominate the workforce’s highest paying positions, and even for the women who manage to claim those positions, working harder, justifying your position or vying for power can be a less than appealing task even for the most ambitious.

Gender equality in the workplace isn’t just about money although equal pay even at the highest echelons is still contentious with female CEOs and other C-suite women earning less than their male counterparts. Just last year it was noted that amongst the top-earning female leaders, in these high-level positions earn an incredible 18% less, and that’s only the average. Some of the more harsh examples of a gender-based pay grade gap amongst CEO’s even exceed 20-30% less than their male counterparts and “industry standards” amongst the top-tier of female executives.

Gender equality in the workplace is something that is significantly broader than that. It doesn’t always have to be something statistical that is thrown around to really put women in a challenged position in the workplace. Political jockeying, or “office politics” as many know them as are a major cause for the gender divided workplace culture that has been created.

According to a Harvard Business Review research roundup, note that when it comes to women leaving the workforce – especially after childbirth – it rarely has to do with the event of giving birth, or caring for a family. As it turns out, contrary to somewhat narrow-minded, and popular belief – women can be great parents, and have a dominant place in the workforce as well. As the research points out, it’s a constant marginalization that is occurring and ultimately driving women out of the workforce after childbirth.

It’s the notion that women aren’t being pushed out of work, but rather, being marginalized in the workplace. What happens when someone is marginalized in the workplace? Well, that often results in unhappy employees, and employees that ultimately – for the most part – leave out of frustration with the situation, rather than a genuine change of interest, lack of desire to work, or anything at all pertaining to childbirth. In fact, one study cited by the Harvard Business Review even goes as far as to point out that 90% of the women involved in the study – left due to “workplace problems.”

What we ultimately have is a broken culture that is exploited for gain in the workplace. Women aren’t marginalized in the workplace after childbirth birth due to the act of giving birth. They’re marginalized because our culture allows it. Want to see the proof? According to the numbers in 1950 37% of women were a part of the workforce. In 1990, that number reached 74%, and yet today, it remains there. No higher or lower, just stagnant at 74%.

I’ve always been a firm believer that stagnant numbers, like these, are ultimately as damning as those which depict a decline, or wrongdoing. Statistics that are flat, or stagnant are as indicative of cultural failing as seeing action take place right in front of our eyes. It’s indicative of a mindset being created. One that isn’t being fixed, or even being given appropriate attention to be fixed.

The solutions we seek will come from innovative, new, and empowering ideas that actually revolutionize the workplace for both sexes, instead of just making a temporary fix.

When it comes to childbirth the emphasis is often placed on coming back instead of reintegrating into the workplace. Employers offering more modernized parental leave models already are gaining traction and greatly improve the situation for women and men in the workplace.

Oftentimes, due to the dollars and cents that are at stake, the emphasis is placed on factors that leave a bad taste in your mouth, if you’re evaluating parental leave from a far and it can still have a stigma attached as an implicit judgment on your ambition levels – even for men. As Clair Cain Miller pointed out on the Brian Lehrer Show “Men pay the same career price, and in many cases an even steeper price than women have paid. Men tend to get praise for showing up for little league game or after-work childcare. That changes once they take time off work.” Again, circling back to the unspoken narrative that good parenting, and professional ambition can’t be, or shouldn’t be in the same sentence.

Employers oftentimes give their employees whatever is legally required of them, and nothing more. This is not a competitive position and savvy employees are creating a conversation around the subject or just going to a better option at another firm. It is a matter of talent management and dispelling of stereotypes that women lose ambition when they marry or have babies.

Pew researchers even found in 2012, according to the numbers when it came to recently-married couples, 21% of wives had achieved more, or advanced further academically.

It’s more than politics, it’s more than opportunity, and it’s really simply about creating a great workplace culture.