How can I address corporate misogyny?

[corporatemisogyny]

I work for a huge global company who’ve just proudly announced how much they’re doing to promote gender equality.

Apparently the entire workforce is currently 55% women, and currently the senior leadership is 31% female. But they have an inspirational target to get this up to 35% in five years time.

I had to stop myself hitting reply all, to ask if this was a typo. How can the target be anything below 55%? Or I guess 50%? Why is a penis required to get a leadership role at this company? This is not an industry where senior leaders stay in their roles for years and years, so there will have been a huge turn over in five years. All the recent new senior appointments have been male.

I feel like I have to tread extremely carefully, as I’ve not been there long and am still on probation. I don’t even know that many people there yet. But I can’t do nothing, I’d feel complicit.

So far I’ve been dropping it into conversation with colleagues, and asking what they think. Most didn’t even notice the announcement, but when I explain they’ve all strongly agreed it doesn’t sound very fair.

What can I do?

Send your ‘reply all’ thought?

I feel like I'd get sacked if I did that - and that it wouldn't change anything.

I mean obviously you don’t have to but I think either you do because you’ve decided the risk of being targeted and sacked is ok or you don’t because it isn’t and you make your peace with that.

I am of the view, personally, that you are not under the obligation to personally disadvantaged yourself and your family in order to challenge a structure over something that cannot realistically be changed by one email.

It’s all a risks/benefits analysis in truth.

You don’t have to sacrifice yourself in order to advance a cause, equally it takes bravery to change things. It’s a very personal judgement to make regarding whether it isn’t worth it or not for you.

It may be of comfort to consider that re the early feminists it was mainly women with the cushion of economic privilege who were able to sacrifice in order for advances to be made for all women.

Perhaps ask why they have adopted what, on the face of it, looks like a non-stretch target. Would they elaborate on their thinking behind the adopting of that particular number.

I have had these conversations with senior management and in my company the target was what they thought was realistically achievable not what was the ideal position.

There are a lot of wider social and cultural reasons that there are not so many women in leadership positions and I don't think it's necessarily fair to expect your company to be able to overcome all of those.

I would be more interested in the concrete actions they are taking to increase female representation than the targets myself.

You might find this interesting

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.vox.com/platform/amp/2017/9/8/16268362/gender-wage-gap-explained

How many new roles are being created, and what is the turnover in senior leadership?

I agree that 50-50/55-45 would be more appropriate, but maybe the 35 is a first stage with the answers to the above in mind?

You’re right. I got the rage when the BBC announced that women were “prominent in the queen’s birthday honours list with almost 50% of the honours going to women”. WTF?

Slight tangent, but your probation is a bit of a red herring. You don’t have protection from unfair dismissal (unless for discriminatory reasons) until you have been with an employer for 2 years.

I think Quentin is right about certain issues which mean women are less likely to be found in higher positions.

I wouldn't reply all but reply to the sender or head of department it came from in a positive way, i.e. this is an area you're interested in and you'd love to be involved and speak to people about how the figure was arrived at and helping the company get there and possibly more.
Be positive and helpful; you never know, you might be one of the female managers soon (sorry if I'm wrong but, I've assumed you're not already).