It is going to take six decades before gender parity is achieved in the workplace, according to the World Economic Forum. In an attempt to shorten that time frame, a voluntary female leadership initiative called WoW, has published an action plan on accelerating the female talent pipeline.
Aileen O'Toole, a digital strategist and a co-founder of this initiative, said the rate of progress had been very slow to date, despite much attention to this issue. "There's a lot of good intent, but we're not seeing much progress on the ground."
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WoW has come up with a "change model" which details a series of actions for business leaders around culture and for women who wish to accelerate their career progression. "Our message to them is that they don't need to be like men. They have excellent attributes, they perform better academically than men, but they need to flex their style within the workplace," Ms O'Toole stated.
"One example is an action around the whole area of gender pay. There are multiple reasons why that happens. Women don't negotiate as well as men and they allow themselves to slip behind. We have practical steps on how to get a pay rise and go for more senior roles," she added.
Aileen O'Toole said she was moving towards the idea of quotas as a means to grow the pipeline of female participation in the higher levels of organisations. "Quotas are controversial, but it needs something significant if half of the workforce is being excluded from senior roles," she said. "It's a pipeline issue. We have to get more women interested in those roles. It's about starting early and ensuring the culture is correct and that they the sponsorship and support."
More information is available on WoWempowering.ie.
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