"Gender equality: Taking stock of where we are"
McKinsey are to be congratulated for their candid assessment of their continuing challenge to achieve gender equality. The good news is McKinsey refer to the “efforts under way to challenge fundamental mind-sets and behaviors inside the firm”. At The Diversity & Innovation Company we believe the key to making breakthrough progress on diversity is to address the “Empathy Gap” through our immersion experiences.
"Gender equality: Taking stock of where we are
There is a growing consensus among top executives that gender diversity is both an ethical and a business imperative. Yet progress is painfully slow.
Despite modest improvements, women are underrepresented at every level of today’s corporations, especially in senior positions. We’re quite cognizant of how difficult it is to make progress. Despite the fact that McKinsey has, for a number of years, been conducting research that has helped our firm and many other companies improve their gender balance—for example, through our Women Matter initiative,1 led by Sandrine Devillard, one of this essay’s coauthors—we’re not yet where we want to be.
Women now represent about 39 percent of McKinsey’s entry-level hires, but occupy just 11 percent of the senior-leadership roles within the firm. There are currently four women (including Judith Hazlewood, one of this article’s coauthors) on our 30-member Shareholders Council."