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Essays on EqualityRecent data shows how far we are from this reality. In asector collectively committed to achieving gender equalityas a Sustainable Development Goal, global organisationsactive in health should be considered standard-bearers inpromoting gender-equitable workplaces. Yet in its reviewof 200 such organisations, Global Health 50/50 found thatonly 30 per cent reported having flexible work policies.Meanwhile, just a quarter of organisations publish theirsexual harassment policies – an important workplacetransparency measure overall.Third, we need to create structural change. Womencannot achieve equality in the workplace or in positionsof leadership unless they have comprehensive equalityin all aspects of their lives, underpinned by supportivelegal environments. A 2019 report by the World Bankreported that only six countries out of 187 gave womenand men equal rights in relation to laws affecting access toemployment and entrepreneurial activity.3 In some regions ofthe world, women had less than half the legal rights of men.To know whether our efforts are shifting the needle, wecan, of course, keep counting the Johns and Janes, butmore fundamentally we need rigorous and independentmonitoring systems and initiatives that hold policymakers,employers and workplaces to account. We need initiativeslike Global Health 50/50, which is showing how evidence,coupled with smart, political advocacy can shine a lighton inadequate gender equality practices and drive rapidorganisational change. We need more places to follow inthe steps of countries like Britain and Iceland in mandatinggender pay gap reporting. But gender equality is not simplyabout putting women in seats of powerthat have traditionally been held by men– it means rewiring power structures that“Gender equality is notdictate who can access opportunity andwho cannot, whether they be womena zero-sum game, butor any other underrepresented group.a shared responsibilityIn short, we need shifts in three areas –for creating societiesmindsets, institutions and the law. Thesethat work for everyone” can be driven by feminist leadership – fromboth women and men.9

Essays on EqualityMost diversity and inclusion training isflawed. Here’s how to fix itRose CookSenior ResearchFellow, GlobalInstitute for Women’sLeadershipIn recent years there has been a huge growth in the diversityand inclusion landscape. From 2014 to 2016 Google alonespent 265 million on programmes such as unconsciousbias training, and research suggests that 84 per cent oforganisations in the UK have a diversity strategy. Thatmight sound like cause for celebration. But there’s just oneproblem: there is little evidence that organisations haveactually become more diverse as a result.The proportion of women in senior business roles in theUK fell to 19 per cent in 2018, from a high of 21 per centin 2017. And over the last 15 years, that figure rose byjust one percentage point. Even in companies supposedlyconcerned with social justice, where diversity training iswidely used, senior staff are still overwhelmingly male andsome unsettling sexual harassment cases have stained thesupposedly forward-thinking veneer.4So why is the “diversity industrial complex”5 so lamentablyineffective at improving diversity in organisations? Manyof the reasons undoubtedly lie beyond the programmesthemselves, in deep-rooted cultural issues and the unequalgender division of unpaid labour globally. But let’s take alook at a typical D&I session. Many of us have experienceof these sessions, involving large numbers of people whohave no choice but to attend, comprising cringeworthy andpoorly conceived activities, led by well-meaning externalspeakers with little expertise in the research behind diversityand inclusion issues nor direct experience of making changein organisations.According to Katerina Bezrukova and colleagues, whoconducted a meta-analysis on the effectiveness of diversitytraining in 2016,6 it’s little wonder that these programmesare ineffective when many use negative messaging, focusingon identifying discriminatory behaviour or unconscioustendencies in participants. Programmes are not alwayssufficiently focused on behaviour change; their methodology10

Essays on Equalityis more suited to raisingawareness. In some cases,this will be preaching to theconverted; in others it couldbe perceived as coerciveor shaming and met withbacklash from those whomay feel there is too muchattention on diversity issues.“Diversity trainingshould be ongoing,integrated intoa wide range ofbusiness activities”Another factor inhibiting success is that diversity trainingoften consists of a large-scale, one-off, mandatory session.Evidence suggests that diversity training should be ongoing,integrated into a wide range of business activities andprocesses, while at the same time increasing contact amongdifferent groups of employees and fostering shared values.But these principles have made little headway into diversityprogrammes, which mainly continue to be one-off sessionsbased on an awareness-raising model.So far, so depressing. At the Global Institute for Women’sLeadership, we wanted to take a different approach todiversity training, informed by our knowledge of theevidence base and our principles as an institute. We’veput together an exciting programme that aims to improveworkplace diversity and inclusion by addressing every stageof the pipeline as individuals move through organisations:from how people are hired, how work is assigned andwhat happens during performance evaluations, to how11

Essays on Equalitycompensation is determined and how people obtainleadership positions.Instead of blanket-marketing to anyone who might beinterested or encouraging compulsory participation (as isoften the case with this type of training), we wanted totarget people who have the power to actually change thingsin their organisation and focus their minds on how to goabout it. Often, employees attending mandatory diversitytraining get on board with the content but have little powerto change the structural factors that led to diversity problemsin the first place, such as recruitment and promotionpractices, working-time policies, bullying and sexualharassment. Our hope is that those attending our courses“The key to solving the gender imbalance in leadership doesnot lie in ‘fixing women’”will have the power to develop evidence-based, tailoredstrategies to tackle these problems in their organisations.As an institute, we stress that the key to solving the genderimbalance in leadership does not lie in “fixing women” – forexample, making them more confident, increasing theirambition or encouraging them to “lean in”. As MichelleObama frankly put it: “That shit doesn’t work all the time.”7Moreover, these types of approaches imply that it is up towomen to fix diversity and inclusion in organisations. That’swhy the first theme of our executive education programmeis on changing processes – not people. We will show howorganisational processes can often be subtly biased againstwomen and minorities and how workplace norms canundermine even the most progressive initiatives. We willpresent the research evidence on biased recruitment andretention practices and consider what initiatives might“de-bias” them, drawing both on the research and on ourparticipants’ own unique expertise as agents of change intheir organisations.12

Essays on EqualityRather than focusing on what helps topromote women and minorities to positionsof power, we will consider the nature ofpower itself, challenging our participants’understandings of what leadership is.What traits and behaviours are associatedwith successful, profitable teams that alsohave high levels of job satisfaction andhealthy staff turnover? We will explorewhat the research says about what makesan effective leader, sharing some surprising insights revealingthat leadership is not all it seems and can be found inunlikely places.“The first theme of ourexecutive educationprogramme is onchanging processes –not people”Finally, our courses will turn to making the case for diverseand inclusive organisations. While there is a lot of evidenceon diversity-related problems in organisations, as wellas emerging evidence on solutions and the business casefor diversity, change won’t happen unless champions canconvince their organisations that it is necessary. We willuse case studies from businesses that have made significantprogress and build on participants’ own experiences ofpushing for equality to identify successful strategies formaking the case for change.While we know that training is only one piece of the puzzle,we hope that GIWL’s executive education programme candispel the idea that just throwing money at the problem willmake diversity concerns go away. We want to demonstratethat an evidence-based and targeted approach to trainingpeople on diversity and inclusion issues is the only real wayto accelerate the pace of change.For more informationabout GIWL’sexecutive educationprogramme, emailgiwl@kcl.ac.uk13

Essays on EqualityMen outnumber women in leadership becausewe mistake confidence for competenceTomas ChamorroPremuzicProfessor ofBusiness Psychology,University CollegeLondonLeadership, the process that enables individuals to worktogether in the pursuit of a common goal, has been a criticalresource throughout the evolution of humankind. Everysignificant accomplishment in human history – the use offire, the invention of writing, the mapping of the humangenome, and so on – sprang from collective action that couldnot have occurred without leadership.A century of science has provided an enormous amount ofevidence about what good and bad leadership looks like,but this does not erase the archetypes of leadership in ourminds. Our gut feeling for what constitutes good leadershipis shaped much more by our ancestral and evolutionary rootsthan by the latest research on leadership, as our brains havebeen shaped by millions of years of evolution. Even whenold models of leadership are no longer effective, they stillmatch our imaginary leadership archetypes fuelled by ourinstincts, and it is not easy to unlearn them.In my view, this is the main reason forthe uneven sex ratio in leadership and“Manifestations ofmanagement across the board, throughouthubris – often maskedcountries worldwide. And part of this is ouras charisma or charminability to discern between confidence andcompetence – that is, because we commonly– are commonlymisinterpret displays of confidence as amistaken forsign of competence. This is consistent withleadership potential”the finding that leaderless groups havea natural tendency to elect self-centred,overconfident and narcissistic individualsas leaders, and that these personality characteristics are notequally common in men and women.8 So, when it comes toleadership, the only advantage that men have over womenis the fact that manifestations of hubris – often masked ascharisma or charm – are commonly mistaken for leadershippotential.9 And again, these occur much more frequently inmen than in women.1014

Essays on EqualitySo long as we continue to associate leadership with“masculine” features, we can expect female leaders to beevaluated more negatively, even when their performance“This tendency to uphold typically male leadership stylesas more desirable is costing us, not just in terms of genderequality, but also in terms of lost revenue”is higher than that of their male counterparts, and evenwhen those who evaluate them are women.11 For instance,a recent study on social sensing, in which male and femaleleaders were tagged with sociometric badges that monitoredeverything they did and said for weeks, showed that despitea lack of behavioural or performance differences betweenmen and women, men were promoted to leadership rolesmuch more frequently than women were.12Yet this tendency to uphold typically male leadership stylesas more desirable is costing us, not just in terms of genderequality, but also in terms of lost revenue. There is nowcompelling scientific evidence for the notion that women are15

Essays on Equalitymore likely to adopt more effective leadership strategies thanmen. Most notably, in a comprehensive review of studies,Alice Eagly and colleagues showed that female managers aremore likely to elicit respect and pride from their followers,communicate their vision effectively, empower and mentorsubordinates, and approach problem-solving in a moreflexible and creative way, as well as fairly reward directreports.13 In contrast, male managers are statistically lesslikely to bond or connect with their subordinates and arerelatively more inept at rewarding them for their actualperformance.Indeed, whether in sports, politics or business, the bestleaders are usually humble14 – and whether through natureor nurture, humility is a much more common feature inwomen than men. For example, women outperform men onemotional intelligence, which is a strong driver of modestbehaviours. Furthermore, a quantitative review of genderdifferences in personality involving more than 23,000participants in 26 cultures indicated that women are moresensitive, considerate, and humble than men, which isarguably one of the least counterintuitive findings in thesocial sciences.15An even clearer picture emerges when one examines thedark side of personality16: for instance, our normativedata, which includes thousands of managers from acrossall industry sectors and 40 countries, shows that men areconsistently more arrogant, manipulative and risk-pronethan women. We also need to acknowledge the importanceof emotional intelligence – or EQ – which should be acore competency in any data-driven model of leadershippotential. Paying more attention to EQ would augmentboth the quality of leaders and the numberof female leaders, increasing the overall levelsof personal effectiveness, self-awareness andtransformational leadership in organisations.sports,“Whether inpolitics or business,the best leaders areusually humble”16So how do we fix this to not just increasethe representation of women in leadershipbut also improve the quality of our leadersoverall? As I argue in my latest book, Why do

Essays on Equality“Too many decision-makers overrate their intuition, andpolitical agendas interfere with the selection of talentedleaders”so many incompetent men become leaders (and how to fix it)?,organisations can take concrete steps. For example, theycan stop interpreting displays of overconfidence, narcissism,psychopathy, and charisma as a sign of leadership potential.In an ideal world, leaders would follow science-basedpractices and prioritise engaging with and inspiring theiremployees, and providing them with a sense of meaning andpurpose.So we need to properly understand leadership talent andlearn how to measure it. These solutions are easier said thandone. Too many decision-makers overrate their intuition,and political agendas interfere with the selection of talentedleaders, especially when the decision-makers are moreinterested in their own agendas than their organisation’swellbeing. Knowing how to detect true leadership potentialis clearly not enough. We also have to introduce measuresthat place better leaders in key roles and promote a culturethat helps them succeed.While it is certainly a sign of progress that a growing numberof organisations are putting in place deliberate interventionsto increase the proportion of women in leadership, a morereasonable goal would be to focus instead on selecting betterleaders, which would also take care of the gender imbalance.There is no conflict between boosting gender equality andboosting leadership quality. On the contrary, it is harder toimprove the standard of leadership without improving thenumber of female leaders.Adapted by permissionof Harvard BusinessReview Press. Excerptedfrom Why Do So ManyIncompetent MenBecome Leaders? (andHow to Fix It) by TomasChamorro-Premuzic.Copyright 2019 TomasChamorro-Premuzic. Allrights reserved.17

Essays on EqualityNo Brexit deal can represent the “will of thepeople” without women in the negotiationsThree years, two prime ministers, one big problem.Emma KinlochResearch andProjects Associate,Global Institute forWomen’s LeadershipIn the UK our politics has been dominated by one story andone story alone for the last three and a bit years: Brexit. Ithas led to total paralysis in the British political system. Withno consensus in parliament and Boris Johnson’s pledge totake the country out of the EU “do or die”, the prospect ofa no-deal Brexit is very real indeed. The deadlock faced byour political class is unprecedented in the post-war era.One solution to the impasse was suggested by the onlyGreen Party MP, Caroline Lucas. In August 2019 sheproposed an all-female “Emergency Cabinet” to block a nodeal Brexit. This suggestion drew derision, bemusement andcries of sexism from all sides of the political debate. Citingthe pivotal role Christiana Figueres and Ségolène Royalplayed in bringing about the Paris climate agreement, as wellas Betty Williams’ and Mairead Corrigan’s activism thatkickstarted the Peace People’s movement during the darkestdays of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, Lucas argued thatwomen do politics differently.17While there is some debate as to whether this is the case,there is a rich seam of feminist theory on the importance ofwomen’s presence in the political process.18 And the genderjustice argument cannot be overlooked: women make uphalf the population so should make up half of the voices inpolitical debate.As Lucas highlighted, this gap in women’s representationis never more apparent than in the Brexit process – andit has been since day one, when Theresa May appointedthree men to the positions of foreign secretary, internationaltrade secretary and Brexit secretary to carry out the UK’snegotiations with the EU.Now Boris Johnson’s “war cabinet”,19 a group of cabinetministers tasked with thrashing out Brexit, comprises18

Essays on EqualityChancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster Michael Gove,Chancellor of the Exchequer Sajid Javid, Brexit SecretaryStephen Barclay, Foreign Secretary Dominic Rabb andAttorney General Geoffrey Cox. Notice any similarities?The full cabinet has nine women members, so why notgive one a seat at the table? The most puzzling omission isHome Secretary Priti Patel – she holds one ofthe great offices of state, and you might thinkher input was a necessary addition, particularly“The full Cabinetgiven that, as the government itself hashas nine womenacknowledged, a no-deal Brexit risks causingcivil disobedience, undermining nationalmembers, so whysecurity and leading to increased immigrationnot give one a seatchecks.20at the table?”Boris Johnson isn’t the only one who has formwhen it comes to excluding women from thekey sources of power in British government. Just lookat his neighbour’s team at Number 11, the residence ofthe chancellor. Arguably the most powerful governmentdepartment, the Treasury is now run by an all-maleministerial team, led by Sajid Javid. Decisions made byTreasury officials in the event of a no-deal exit will behugely consequential to the future of the UK.The obvious counterargument to the charge that womenhave been silenced in this process is that our secondever female prime minister, Theresa May, was in chargeof Brexit for three years. The symbolic power of havinga woman in the highest political office of the nationcannot be denied, yet within months of taking office Maywas subject to the usual slurs often directed at femalepoliticians. The “Maybot” cartoon,21 a caricature of anunfeeling robot with no capacity for empathy, took on a lifeof its own, illustrating the age-old double bind for femaleleaders that you are either too sweet to lead or to shrill (orrobotic in this case) to like.22The seeds of the Maybot nickname were sown duringMay’s leadership election, when she w

The "women's vote" is a myth: the average voter 34 is a female voter Rosie Campbell What will it take for women to be equal at 38 work in the UK? Sam Smethers Essays on Equality . and charisma for competence, we end up with poorer leaders and fewer women at the top. He argues we need to value