5 Reasons why we need more women in the workplace
According to McKinsey Global Institute’s November 2015 study “The Power of parity: How advancing women’s equality can add $12 trillion to global growth”, India has a larger relative economic value at stake from advancing gender equality than any of the 10 regions analyzed by the company.
A better gender parity for India would mean $700 billion of additional GDP in2025, upping the country’s annual GDP growth by 1.4 percentage points. The report mentions that for this, 68 million more people need to come into the labor force, which can be only be done by bridging both economic and social gender gaps.
Talking to Sairee Chahal, Founder, Sheroes.in, who is championing the cause of jobs and career community for women in India. In August 2013, Sheroes raised its angel round of funding of Rs 5 crore from investors such as Google’s Rajan Anandan, Paytm’s Vijay Shekhar Sharma, and Flipkart’s Binny Bansal , shares why the corporate world, too, needs more women in workplace.
1. Diversity at work brings together different kinds of energies that complement each other. In a male-dominated culture, the workplace loses out on all that women bring to the table – multitasking, customer-centricity, teamwork, a nurturing mindset and so on. I am not saying men don’t have these qualities, but women by design are more conditioned towards these characteristics.
2. Think Women consumer through Women: When you talk about products and services specifically for women, you need women to conceptualize, design, and strategize ways to sell these very products and services. You need to know what women really want.
3. A culture of Gender Balance in offices: More women in the workplace are required for gender balance in the society and within the workplace. As role models if there are no women, we won’t know gender balance is important. Let me repeat this gender balance not only makes the workplace more dynamic, women bring different skills and energy levels, too.
4. Financial Inclusion: If not, women will lose out on financial independence. There is an urgent need for entrepreneurs and enterprises to understand the importance of financial inclusion, which gives more and more peoples purchasing power.
5. 50 percent world needs higher representation: Women make for nearly 50 per cent of the world’s population. For a more balanced workplace they need to be represented equally, too. Actually, they need to have an equal representation in the larger scheme of things everywhere.