Women’s lib: Taking the bull by the horns

With a stern look, hands akimbo, a little damsel stood challenging the iconic bull outside the citadel of corporate America. Wall Street has seen many protests before. But this one was unique and symbolic. 

In the form of a bronze statue this diminutive girl was the Messenger of the Women’s Lib – protesting lip service being given to women at the highest echelons of corporate boardrooms. Here was a speechless statue that could not have conveyed a more audacious challenge to the Wall Street bull—and to the global corporate world at large. One look at her gave me the sense of impatience in her impatience.

The defiant challenge posited by the statue, orchestrated by State Street, a Boston-based corporation, was to protest the imbalance in gender diversity along the corporate ladder. 

Diversity gaps continue to exist globally despite improvements. Egon Zehnder, the global headhunter, reported that of the 44 countries they reviewed, women made up only 19% of corporate board members in 2016, including non-executive directors. The good news, though, is that its 5% higher than 2012. And a survey by Grant Thornton, the consulting firm, shows that in 5,500 businesses reviewed in 36 economies, the proportion of women in senior management was at 25%, higher than before. But painfully low in this day and age.

Sri Lanka

And what of Sri Lanka? Our own Charitha Ratwatte writing in these columns noted in 2012 that there were only 10 women directors in 25 of the top corporate boards in the country. Sure, there have been improvements since. But a lady here and a lady there at the top tier of boards begs the question as to whether this is a token toward political correctness. 

Some proffer the futile defence that it’s difficult to find adequately qualified women directors. This is baffling especially in light of the stellar educational and professional accomplishments of the women especially in professional fields—management, finance, sales and marketing, technology, architecture, legal, banking, auditing and accounting; medical, engineering, human resource management, academia and in the social sectors. 

The question then is: why is there such a deficit at the levels of corporate boards and senior management. The question that underlies the question therefore is what should women do to “get there”; or more relevantly and poignantly: what should men do to let go of hang-ups? 

The bottom line however should be that our top corporates set a shining example by taking the “bull the horns” and make diversity a sustainable strategy and an uncompromising commitment. 

My own experience in corporate life, globally, was clearly that women have proved to be better at productivity, more dependable at multi-tasking, and are conscientious to a fault. Numbers and percentages are only a calculus that one can indulge in as a past time. What matters most is the attitude and latitude given to women in management, in decision-making and in meetings. 

Anne Marie Slaughter, an international observer in these matters, finds that often many men at management and board meetings listen to women with a posture of barely veiled impatience, waiting for them to finish so that another man can speak. Often women, she observes, are interrupted when they speak; if you have a meeting involving men and women and compare the average speaking time for each woman compared to each man “you’ll be surprised at the disparity”. And, one will be astonished at how often woman’s contribution is ignored until a man makes it. 

Sri Lankans and South Asians—a truism?

A cartoonist recently depicted the chairman at an all-men, cigar-smoking board room approving the corporation’s press statement for Women’s Day: “So gentleman we not only say we support women, we need them too!”

Ouch! 

(The writer can be contacted via [email protected].)