Group9_A | SDG 5 : Gender Equality
BETTER REPRESENTATION: WHAT’S IN IT FOR BUSINESSES
Figure
1 For representation purpose only
The proposed
Sustainable Development Goal 5 says “Achieve gender equality and empower all
women and girls.” The UN has always been highly active in taking actions to
address deep rooted gender inequalities in this society. Since time immemorial,
roles have been distinctly defined as those of men and those of women. Owing to
the preconceived physical capabilities of men, they became the first hunters
and gatherers, and the women began cultivation. As times evolved, roles changed
and events like wars forced women to take up the jobs otherwise done by men.
With
changing times came a change in responsibilities. However, the change wasn’t
homogeneous across the globe. Nor did it receive the same acceptance across the
globe. Several decades later today, women are largely underrepresented in
managerial roles or government positions. This misrepresentation affects the
multiple high impacting decisions taken by people in positions of
responsibilities all over the world. The UN has thus tried to address such
social, economic and political inequalities.
SDG-5 is a
multifaceted goal towards sustainable development that holds a plethora of
agendas for developed nations as well as developing nations. While a developed
nation might look at enabling women in leadership positions and in effective
participation in all professional fronts in representable numbers, a developing
nation has goals like preventing female feticide, infanticide, providing
education and sanitation facilities for the female child and cultivating an
avenue to earn a livelihood for themselves. [1]
Relevance
of the SDG-5 to India:
Gender inequality in India is multifaceted as it manifests
itself in various contexts such as health, education, economic and politics.
The ambit for India’s SDG-5 ambition, starts with eradicating discrimination
and violence against women and then giving equal rights to economic resources
and property ownership.
Globally, girls have a higher birth survival rate at birth
and are equally likely to attend preschool. According to the National Family
Health Survey (NFHS-4) released by the Union Ministry of Health, every third
girl above the age of 15 years has been a victim of domestic violence in
various forms. [2] A
major rape case makes the headlines and shocks the nation for not more than a
week, minor ones only find a few inches on an odd page. These cases though
appalling, seem distant and little is done to improve the situation.
The deep connection between girl child education and
societal development makes SDG-5
one of India’s most potent global commitments as the other five SDGs (Zero
Hunger, Decent Work and Economic Growth, No Poverty; Good Health and
Well-Being; Reduced Inequalities), directly benefit from SDG-5. In order
to bring a change, we need to affect a particular dimension: economic, social,
political. This is where the problem gets complex. We need to start by a change
in attitude.
Economic independence brings self-respect and thus the power
to stand for oneself. According to the UN, 13.96% operational landowners in
India are female and 33% of women participate in labour force as compared to
men.[3]
Due to the perceived lack of economic opportunities, girls do not receive their
due investment in education which further limits economic opportunities.
It makes economic sense too. A one percentage point increase
in female education raises the average gross domestic product (GDP) by 0.3
percentage points and raises annual GDP growth rates by 0.2 percentage points.[4]
Thus, achieving SDG-5 plays an undeniable role in India’s development vision.
Business Implications & Responses
Kiran Majumdar Shaw, Leena Nair, Indra
Nooyi, Falguni Nayar and many more such names have repeatedly reminded us of
the importance of gender equality and its impact on business. The number of
female CEOs heading the Fortune 500 companies attained an all-time high at 23,
compared to just 14 in 2020. The GDP of India could potentially increase by 18%
if the full potential of the women workforce is utilized as per a report by McKinsey.[5]
Why Gender
Equality makes more Business Sense
Another study
that was conducted by McKinsey in over 1000 companies concluded that the global
GDP output could increase by $ 12 - 28 trillion based on the extent of
workforce utilization. Gender equality can have a wide range of effects ranging
from morale boosting to increased revenues to better decision making for a
company. Research shows that inclusive teams can make better decisions about
87% of the time compared to teams with low gender diversity[6].
Coming to the effect on bottom line, according to a business case published by
McKinsey in 2019, the companies in the top quartile for gender diversity on
their executive teams were 25% more probable to report above average profit
numbers than the companies in the fourth quartile[7].
Also, a HBR Review conducted in 24 industries across 35 countries, gender
diversity correlates to better productivity[8].
Figure 2:
Likelihood of financial outperformance w.r.t gender diversity
Women
Leadership during Covid Crisis
Political
Leaders globally have made massive commitments and recently adopted the
Sustainable development goals to strategically incorporate gender equality,
with a formal commitment to bring more than 100 million women into the
workforce by 2025[9]. As seen during the Covid-19 crisis, and
subsequently reported by a HBR case study, Women turned out to be better
leaders in the times of Crisis. A research study conducted on a dataset of 194
countries concludes that Covid-outcomes were systematically and significantly
better in countries which were led by women. It was the key differentiating
factor in this context where attitude towards risk and empathy mattered a lot
along with clear and decisive communication[10].
A similar study about the US Governors associated women’s leadership to
the number of deaths observed during Covid in the respective states. Although
this may not prove direct causation, there certainly exists evidence of a
pattern of positive impact on governance with increasing gender equality.
Gender Equality
and Business Ethics
Apart from the
quantifiable impact, Gender Equality enriches the ethical standards of the
workplace and increases productivity. A question persists, “Are Women more
ethical than Men?”. An interesting article published in the Guardian stated
that men might have a lenient approach when it comes to ethical standards as
compared to women[11].
Further it added that the reason for this disparity is believed to originate
from deeper traits acquired over the years.
From a
leadership perspective, having a higher ethical standard always helps the
organization, especially today because in the current economic climate, the
consumers' trust is low and there is a pressing need to establish a universal
standard on what is considered right and wrong. Women are less likely to
compromise on the ethical standards for career success, and more likely to
believe that the corporate ethical standards help in creating a positive
difference[12].
Figure 3:
Sallie Krawcheck, former CEO Global Wealth Management Division at CitiGroup
As per Krawcheck, whose employment culminated due to difference in opinion about the strategy to be adopted after the 2008 crisis, on whether to compensate its clients for a mis-represented investment opportunity sold by Citi or not. She reflects, “there happens to be a prevailing message in the industry that in order to succeed in business, you need to act more like men.” The assumption further extrapolates the attributes of being more aggressive, in control of emotions, and in general strategic and calculative as compared to a more lenient, emotionally passionate, individualistic and empathetic kind of personality. [13]
Some
Examples of Companies’ Response towards tackling gender inequality
1.
NatWest Group: has been one
of the pioneers in acting against Gender Inequality. It was one of the 52 firms
globally to be recognized for its efforts by Bloomberg Financial Services
Gender Equality Index in 2017. BFSGI helps investors by providing them with
standardized aggregate indexes on factors like employee policies, gender
statistics, gender consciousness efforts in the product offerings, etc.[14].
RBSs’ score of 88 is well above the global threshold of 60 and the average of
75 points on the index, which goes on to reflect the adoption of best-in-class
policies and commitment. It targets to have at least 30% women in its top three
global layers since 2015 and has a vision to achieve gender balance by 2030[15].
RBS also has an
Inspiring Enterprise grant funding program where it funds into the sector to help non-profit
organizations to support female entrepreneurs[16]
2. Samsung
electronics: Some of its initiatives include Seoul Sisters
conferences, celebrating Diversity & Inclusion Week, Mommy Room (for
pregnancy and breastfeeding), STEM Education (to develop technological skills).
It has won various awards like Mother Friendly Workplace (‘20), Top 50
employers in STEM Workforce Diversity Magazine (‘20), Best Places to work for
LGBTQ Equality (‘21).
3. Bajaj: In a country
like India, there are few firms which have made phenomenal strides in reducing
gender inequality. With constant commitment, the company now employs about 4X
more women, since 2014. Bajaj has also established an all-women assembly line
for its first ever electric scooter Chetak[17].
Analysis
& Suggested Path Ahead:
The response of business, government and society has been
tepid at best towards the issue of gender equality in India. We still rank
140/156 countries in the Global Gender Gap index of the World Economic Forum.
The case is particularly bad in the income inequality where India’s performance
is even worse. At the same time, the economic impact of achieving gender
equality in India is estimated to be US$700 billion of added GDP by 2025. The
IMF estimates that equal participation of women in the workforce will increase
India’s GDP by 27 percent[18].
Take any dimension of this multidimensional problem, and
India fares worst even among developing countries. Therefore, only a holistic
approach towards the issue could lead to a sustainable solution.
We could broadly divide the suggested solutions according to
the job profile, since our primary concern is business. However, the complexity
of the problem automatically covers other aspects of a woman’s life. The facets
that act as an impediment to a multi-dimensional improvement in quality of live
are many. Social and cultural conventions, normalization of stereotypes,
indifference from male counterparts hold back significant change that can be
made for women on a professional level.
High level jobs –
The most pressing problem here is very low representation of women at higher
level positions in corporate world otherwise known as “the glass ceiling
effect”. The government’s approach of affirmative action in several sectors
such as Company act 2013 (women representation on boards[19])
and huge success of reservation for women in panchayat should be extended to
other sectors. Many companies play the flagbearer of diversity during
recruitments and hire women at entry level jobs. But at the same time, only a
small percentage can climb the corporate ladder due to pressure from a male
dominated board. Often, we see examples of tokenism in large companies only to
gather forced goodwill.
Another consequence of this conspicuous absence is the
resulting difference in average pay of men and women (~19% less according to
Monthly salary Index 2019[20]).
This requires both transparency in payroll reporting, government intervention
and businesses to act on their own.
Middle level jobs – This level paints a particularly peculiar picture in
India as it is probably the only country where Female Labour Force
Participation has fallen in the 21st century[21].
The reasons are again multifaceted. These range from Lifecycle issues such as inbuilt
inequality in parenting with women bearing the whole brunt to the
ever-worsening security situation in India. Some efforts such as recent act to
increase maternal leave to 24 weeks are steps in right direction but parenting
needs to be equitable and paternal leaves much also be promoted. The security
issues require an overhaul in our infrastructure and better implementation of
current laws such as The Sexual Harassment of Women at
Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013.
However, the elephant in the room is the ingrained
patriarchy in our system, which is the primary reason for the negative correlation
between rising income and labour force participation. These changes take time
and require constant societal pressure to get resolved.
Lower-level jobs
Other problems related to nutrition
and literacy must also be investigated. Strengthening of the current Integrated
Child Development Services (ICDS) and other services related to advisory, financial
support and infrastructural support would be a good way forward. Mahatma Gandhi
used to say “India lives in villages” which is still true to a large sense. And
women in these areas are often not represented, not heard of and are ultimately
ignored to some level by us. Just taking an empathetic view towards this and
modifying our approach accordingly will go a long way.
The road
isn’t smooth, and the destination lies far away. But it is only through
consistent effort in policy formation and attitude development that we can hope
to see any kind of significant change in the mission of gender equality. As
people educate themselves better and normalize political correctness, we can
expect better opportunities and an improved standard of living across the
spectrum of gender and move away from an otherwise heteronormative male
dominated society.
[2] https://www.news18.com/news/india/the-elephant-in-the-room-every-third-woman-in-india-faces-domestic-violence-1654193.html
[5] https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/gender-equality/the-power-of-parity-advancing-womens-equality-in-asia-pacific
[7] https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/diversity-and-inclusion/diversity-wins-how-inclusion-matters
[9] https://fortune.com/2021/08/02/female-ceos-global-500-fortune-500-cvs-karen-lynch-ping-an-jessica-tan/
[18] Gender Equality: Women’s Economic Empowerment. https://in.one.un.org/unibf/gender-equality/
Comments
Post a Comment