According to statistics, with a balanced gender composition of boards, the financial results of the company improve. So, what is the purpose of gender-diverse boards?
Women in leadership posts
A fair and secure world for all is the ultimate goal of humanity’s work. Women, for whom the world was neither fair nor safe for thousands of years, today defend their legal right to an equal role with men in the management of all spheres of public life. In business, the visibility of women has increased significantly in recent years. For a long time, you can often hear about business leaders or start-up founders. However, gender equality in business is not only the quantitative balance of women and men in the company but also the equal power of the voice of women and men in decision-making.
In today’s world, where the level of globalization and interdependence is constantly growing, the most important factor in achieving success is the use of all social and economic resources. However, despite the progress made, women continue to face discrimination, marginalization, and exclusion, even though equality between men and women is a universal international principle and is a fundamental and inviolable human right.
But business has great resources to accelerate the advancement of gender equality in the world. During the last decade, there was a noticeable trend of increasing the representation of women on boards in several countries worldwide, argued by the fact that corporations with female executives make better decisions for shareholders.
Women’s business is very different from men’s. Women have to work not only to organize and control a company but also to prove their worth and leadership qualities. Women turn out to be much more forward-looking in terms of careers, and modern educational opportunities and the availability of many benefits have allowed women to become real leaders.
Why gender-diverse boards are important?
Gender diversity is important to business because a company’s creativity and flexibility come from the versatility of its employees, especially those on the board – those on whom strategic decisions depend. Women and men have different experiences that are extremely valuable for business. 57% of surveyed employees around the world, using the example of their own business, we`re able to show that gender diversity improves the economic performance of a business. This improvement manifests itself in an increase in company profits, a better ability to measure consumer interest and demand, and creativity.
The empowerment of women to ensure their full participation in all spheres of economic life and in boards is necessary for the following reasons:
- build a more stable and vibrant business environment. Men are mostly results-oriented, while women prioritize human relationships and communication. For women, relationships within a team are one of the primary conditions for productivity. By their nature, they rarely like to build strategies, but they know how to follow them.
- achieve the internationally agreed goals for development, corporate sustainability, and human rights. It involves broad partnerships between stakeholders, as well as everyone who helps them, contributes and introduces innovations aimed at expanding opportunities for women and men;
- when there is a significant proportion of women on the board of a business, the business is more likely to create charitable projects that will benefit the community as well as positively impact the reputation of the business;
- women have their approach, they can work out other problem points and situations, offer innovative ideas and bring the organization to a qualitatively new level.