Ah, August 9, my nemesis returns. It’s not that I don’t believe in commemorating the 1956 women’s march — or acknowledging the political savvy and protest prowess of both previous generations of women and those of today. I just can’t abide the pinkwashing that comes with it.
Women’s Day should not be about #bossbabes and “balancing” work and mom duties. That’s sleight of hand that merely distracts. Instead, it should prompt clear-eyed assessment. So here is some: although SA ranks 20th overall (of 146) in the World Economic Forum Global Gender Gap Index — and that seems fantastic — on the Economic Participation & Opportunity Subindex we’re ranked 80th.
SA’s ranking for “wage equality for similar work” is a foul and desultory 111 out of 146 countries. Not just a pay gap, but a canyon, for comparable skills and titles nogal. “Firms with women majority ownership” stands at a mere 8.7%. “Women’s board memberships” languishes at 38%.
Essentially, our solid numbers in the Political Empowerment Subindex — a measure of representation at ministerial and parliamentary level — keep us at that pretty 20th spot, but that achievement obscures some harsh truths for those who don’t claim MP perks.
Our equality on paper — the right to vote, access to financial services, and so on — doesn’t pass the real-world test. Women get systematically excluded and sidelined in the workplace, and earn less than their male counterparts while shouldering the majority of the care burden.
And I simply don’t have the stomach — or the spoons, in popular nomenclature — today to get into the issue of rampant gender-based and sexual violence experienced by women in this country. But that’s too cumbersome to fit into the staff-wide rah-rah emailer today, isn’t it?
The sectors with the worst gender parity locally, according to the WEF report, are engineering, manufacturing and construction, followed by information and communication technologies. On a global scale, mid-career women leave tech at double the attrition rate of men (according to TechRepublic), citing “weak management support”, “lack of work-life balance” and “lack of opportunities” as the key reasons.
If you’re a forward-thinking executive looking for solutions, addressing these — really putting your money where your mouth is — is your best lever for change. There are, thankfully, some positive case studies that show the gender makeup of tech firms can be transformed with consistency and commitment.
A research report by Accenture and Girls Who Code cite Microsoft as one such company, where year-on-year the number of women in technical roles has increased. Some 41% of leadership roles in Microsoft are now, according to the report, held by women, an increase of 56% in the last five years. Long may it trend upward.
At Cisco, six of 13 (46%) of the executive leadership team are women. One of them is Francine Katsoudas, executive vice-president and “chief people, policy and purpose officer” who told me the gender-diversity challenge (in fact, in terms of all elements of diversity) lies largely in the broad mid-tier of the company.
Cisco sees many women coming in at the entry level — as she did 25 years ago — and that near-equity in the C-suite, but not in that critical middle. It is attempting to address it through inclusive hiring, and development programmes. Cisco also runs regular pay parity screening across the company, to flag anomalies and fix them.
As an aside, I am a big fan of such data-based efforts, producing figures that reveal to us the actual rands-and-cents value we place on the labour of men and women. Katsoudas was in SA recently for, among other things, the launch of a “strategic partnership” between Cisco Edge and Womhub — a local organisation that is part co-working space, part incubator for women in science, technology, engineering and manufacturing.
This partnership is being launched in Joburg, and next week in Cape Town. I got a sneak-peek-walkaround of the beautiful space, which has hot desks, meeting rooms and fintech and full-stack “labs”. In the Cape Town instance there’s even a tiny, safe play area to keep junior busy while mom launches her tech SME.
According to the General Household Survey 2019, most SA children (42%) live only with their moms, compared to a third who live with both parents. Most of the footprint of WomHub in Green Point, though, is dedicated to spaces for focus, for collaboration, for hosting would-be clients and funders, learning, and even testing innovations — reflecting the kind of support women entrepreneurs consistent ask for, here and globally.
SA workplaces and the global tech industry are primed for meaningful transformation, if only those in charge are willing. On the corporate side, the pipeline of talent is increasingly diverse, with more women graduating from tertiary education than men (WEF).
For start-ups and small businesses, empowering women is a key job creation tool: a 2019 Global Entrepreneurship Monitor report shows female entrepreneurs create a higher return-on-investment (in employment terms) than male entrepreneurs. According to the UN, women invest 90% of their income back into their families, compared with 35% for men.
Various studies also show how diversity is a business imperative. McKinsey, for example, found that companies that are more gender diverse are 21% more likely to be above-average profitable. Fascinating research from Harvard Business School even finds that our beliefs about gender diversity in the workplace are “self-fulfilling”, making clear that the change must come from willing leadership, and not a mythical social driver or window-dressing in the office.
“Countries and industries that view gender diversity as important capture benefits from it. Those that don’t, don’t,” summarises the Harvard Business Review.
• Thompson Davy, a freelance journalist, is an impactAFRICA fellow and WanaData member.
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