If you ask men and women who work in large organizations on how to define your professional career, the most common responses will be, in them, which has been “successful” and “motivating”, while they probably labeled a “challenging” and “frustrating”. These responses, which are part of a study of the University of Harvard, are just a small sample of the gender equality in the workplace, although in recent decades much progress has been made, is still very far from being a reality. Starting with the wage gap, and followed by extra load and is not shared, which often involves the attempt to have a balance between family and work. All this spoke to more than 2,000 entrepreneurs and managers Kathleen McGinn, Harvard professor, at the annual meeting of alumni of IESE in Barcelona.

The teacher, who believes hard although common pictures like that of Christine Lagarde as the only feminine in the team of the governing Council of the European Central Bank, points to the huge benefit of having women in roles featured. “You have many men and women are at the front means that you can change things, and that surely she will be able to change them even more,” he says.

According to McGinn, one of the challenges for further progress in the inclusion is that the companies and organizations realize that they have teams in various is beneficial to the accounts of the results, and that it does not become only a gesture or a way to comply with the quotas of what is politically correct.

“To be clear: I believe that the companies have to be diverse because it is the morally right thing, but I also think that there are some sites on which, until not see it in numerical terms, not be convinced”, he says. These benefits, he explains, are several: first, with the inclusion of gender employs more people, which implies more consumption and an economy that is more energized, but more importantly is that the companies that traditionally only had men, have in the recruitment of women in relevant positions a window to points of view that they didn't know, dynamics that were not the usual. And this can only lead to increase the benefits. Only in Spain, the gender gap causes the loss of the 15% of the gross domestic product, according to the minister of Economy, Nadia Calviño.

“There is a risk that feminism is a pond. I'm not sure that the connectivity is good”

“The diversity increases the competitiveness, and organizations are starting to understand that they need to invest in gender equality, because it is good for the business”, argues this professor specializing in business administration, conflict management, and gender. “The organizations that succeed are not those that do things just because. Are those that identify its problems and shortcomings, for example more presence of female talent, and understand that really, truly matter to the business,” abounds McGinn, who believes that in this equation must also think of the inclusion of ethnic groups and religions. “The more diverse a group is, the more creative is because there are more contexts and visions intertwined, and therefore the more likely the success,” he says.

The professor explains that gender equality has improved a lot “in numerical terms” in recent decades, especially in Europe and the united States. “In these countries begins to be part of the normal, and will begin the stage of acceptance, which may involve the risk that the process will stagnate,” he says. “We have reasons to think that the change will be global and will impact on countries that are very late, such as India, although each society will have to find its solution. In this sense, I am not sure that the impact of social networks and the connectivity is always very positive, because not all solutions can be applied in the same way in all countries,” he explains.

Populism

can The progress be lost? There are risks, such as, for example, the wave of political populists and extreme right who reject feminism and diversity. “Populism is against diversity, but I think the generation of my daughter, a millennial, we can overcome in the struggle for gender inclusion. This generation is very standardized, several studies show that both men and women prefer roles equal in the workplace, and attitudes have changed, so that soon so will the attitudes of the organizations,” he predicts.

But what you may end up with a job recognized in an enterprise, you must start on the two pillars of education: the family and the school. McGinn recalls a study conducted which analysed families in which the mothers worked outside the home and those that do not. In the second, the gender attitudes considered “traditional” were more numerous both in men as in women, while in the families of working mothers were more likely to see greater empowerment in daughters and sons.

Another study, which is being drafted, he continued during three years to the girls of a school in Zambia, classes were given for negotiation. “We saw that the girls had a space to negotiate their preferences, at the end of the year improved in all aspects: the family and the teachers invested more in them.”

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Carmen Sánchez-Silva

In Spain there are still few women in power, while the harvest of appointments of 2019 in the Ibex 35 companies has been of the more bulky of the last few years. In the boards of directors they sit 126 females, 27.6% of the total. More than twenty of them have been incorporated during the year that has just ended in Iberdrola (Sara de la Rica), Banco Santander (Pamela Ann Walkden), CaixaBank (Cristina Garmendia), Inditex (Anne Lange), Bankinter (María Luisa Jordá), Mapfre (Rosa Garcia), Repsol (Aránzazu Estefania and Maria Teresa García-Milá), Enagás (Patricia Urbez), Indra (Isabel Torremocha), Telephone (Veronica Pascual, and Claudia Sender), Ence (Irene Hernandez and Rosa Maria Garcia Piñero and Amaia Gorostiza), Meliá (Cristina Henríquez), Aena (Leticia Iglesias), Másmóvil (Nathalie Picquot and Cristina Aldámiz) and Colonial (Silvia Alonso-Castrillo, Ana Bolado and Cristina Peralta). In all of them has increased the presence of women, although there are three other companies that have signed advisory relieving other: IAG (Margaret Ewing), Acciona (Sonia Dulá) and Grifols (Enriqueta Felip).