Top Bad Reasons to Talk about Gender Equality from your Organization

Because it is one of those international days: “Hey, it’s 8th of March, it’s women’s day! Let’s do something for women! We can offer them a discount! Or let’s share on our website the story of some important woman for our company! Or let’s give our employees a purple ribbon to wear that day!”
Because you want to sell your product/service to women: “Well, we need to expand our market and sell more. Women are not buying our stuff. Let’s make it more appealing to them! Let’s do a Woman’s Race! Let’s create a page in our website dedicated to women! Let’s do a commercial for them!”
Because it is politically correct: “We need to add something to our RSC. Put the gender thing in, together with diversity and all that new age stuff and let’s get over with it.”

Guess what: all these ideas will very likely get your organization into trouble. Before you even think of showing your clients how happy you are to celebrate women, take a good look around.

Look inside your organization and ask yourself: is this a good place for women to work? Are the women in our company happy? Do they feel valued and encouraged? Where are they and what do they do? Does your organizational culture contribute to a diversity welcome environment? It might be that you never even thought about this or that you just assumed everything is ok.

But, is it? Did you ever do an assessment about it?

I suggest you do and make sure that you have everything set and ready inside your organization before you start promoting your interest in women. If not, it will backfire on you.

Laura Viñuela | Espora Gender Consulting