4 Ways Companies Can Encourage Gender Equality
Highlights
A lot of companies have encouraged gender equality, however business practices don't always support women or gender equality.
Here are four key strategies that can allow companies to better support women and gender neutrality in the workplace.
Companies encouraging gender equality aren’t one of those one-and-done kinds of situations. Much like with anything we expect companies to strive for, it’s easy to say companies support women or gender diversity and yet fail to implement anything or make real progress in that direction.
Women today are still being paid less than their male counterparts for example. Not only that, but gender biases continue to linger and bar women from leadership positions.
If companies continue to insist they’re for diversity, then companies need to be bolder with their claims and put together actual programs in place for this. Beyond that, taking actions within the workplace to encourage gender equality is a must.
Here are several ways to do that.
Recheck Vacancy Announcements
To start, if a company is to have more diversity, then it needs to be more welcoming in various business practices. Hiring is most of all since potential female employees will engage with that side of the business. Ensuring gender neutral ads and job descriptions are posted is a good start. But a company can extend that to refraining from gender-sensitive questions in interviews too.
Check The Gender Ratio
Gender equality is of course, represented with the gender ratio. If the company is male-dominated, then it’s a good time to consider revamping hiring and recruitment strategies. That being said, diversity is diverse across each industry.
For example, logistics companies might not have many female workers for companies to be diverse in that industry.
That being said, logistics companies (or any company) can still thrive if the general plan is to bring on more women, even if those efforts culminate to one female hire for every three or four male hires.
Crack Down On Discrimination
It’s not uncommon for women to face workplace harassment at work. Even those on senior levels still have to deal with the stigma or harassment too. One of the best ways to deal with that is to change company culture.
Simple changes like senior managers empowering women and treating women equally to men. Giving flexible working hours to everyone regardless of gender, not having gender pay gaps in the company, among other things is a good start.
Generally offering the same opportunities and perks regardless of who the employee is will only benefit the company.
Give Women Leadership Roles
It’s challenging for women as it is to thrive in a workplace environment. It’s even tougher if women are seeking for higher roles and positional power in a company. Between biases preventing women from being considered for those leadership roles to and poor company culture, women are less incentivized to aspire for higher positions.
So a good step forward for companies is to provide those opportunities in the first place. And that begins with recognizing that women can perform excellently in those positions. Beyond that, it’s giving women the tools to succeed and thrive in those positions as well. Additional training and extra support goes a long way.
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