While writing my business plan for DamselsInSuccess, I spoke with a number of HR managers to get their thoughts on a job board just for women. The conversations were helpful, but mostly because they confirmed what I suspected — although gender diversity was valued and sought after, most RCs felt that attracting women remained a challenge, and that they could benefit from additional tools towards that end.
There was however, one conversation in the bunch that was memorable. An RC at a major investment bank intimated a dirty little secret. According to her, the instruction from above to bring in more female candidates really was nothing other than a directive to *publicly give the impression* that the company was interested in bringing in more female candidates. In other words, it really didn’t matter if the representation of women at the company actually improved as long as it looked like the company undertook efforts to try to increase that representation.
There’s no way to know if the RC’s understanding was accurate or not, but I’d bet it was — I can see how companies could think that sponsoring diversity conferences would be sufficient to qualify themselves as women-friendly, even in the absence of other, more targeted efforts to recruit women such as hosting events for women at schools, or hiring consultants to understand women’s needs and then instituting policies to meet them.
But, companies that take this approach — focusing on image over results — are not actually women-friendly and are just good at convincing themselves (and potential hires) that they are. Many women today ask tough questions, either when they’re interviewing or later, when it’s time to make difficult decisions about balancing work and life. Somewhere down the road, a company’s short-sighted approach to enhancing gender diversity will catch up with it, most likely in the form of costs associated with attrition and perhaps more importantly, in the form of losing the unique talents that women bring to the table.
I’ll save the list of reasons why women should be coveted by employers for another post since, for now, I just wanted to hear reactions to the RC’s view from the Cheezhead audience. As the founder of a site for professional women, and as a professional women myself, I found the attitude problematic. What do you think? Is it a quick fix to a challenge that many companies face? Is there some wisdom to it that I have missed? I’d like to hear your thoughts…
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