Dr. Stephen Murphy, dean of the Ted Rogers School of Management at Ryerson University, recently shared his thoughts on the gender gap in business with The Globe and Mail, following a visit from Catalyst Canada.
In October, Tanya van Biesen, Executive Director of Catalyst Canada, recently visited the Ted Rogers School of Management to discuss gender inequality with current MBA students. Founded in 1962, Catalyst Canada has been working for more than fifty years to build welcoming workplaces for women by providing the necessary research, tools, and solutions to create leadership roles for women. “Gender inequality is not a women’s issue, it’s society’s issue,” van Biesen told Ryerson MBA students.
Dean Murphy agrees. “The gender gap is everyone’s problem,” he told The Globe and Mail, noting that only 68 of 142 countries increased their gender gap score throughout the past year, while 74 countries actually moved backwards. According to Murphy, a crucial part in reducing the gender gap lies in not just engaging women—but also men.
In Canada, women hold just 19 percent of S&P 500 board seats. Yet despite constant evidence revealing the benefits of gender and racial diversity in the workplace, 27 percent of directors in a recent survey (97 percent of whom were men) said there was an unnecessary amount of attention placed on gender diversity.
While many organizations and initiatives, such as HeForShe, exist to try to close this gap, dean Murphy emphasizes how important it is for men within a company to also see the importance of reducing the gender gap. At companies like PwC—which was able to increase the number of women in their global leadership team from 8 percent to 47 percent—training involves a discussion of the implicit biases that may lead to gender discrimination.
“Educating leaders on implicit and explicit bias is key to cracking the diversity nut,” Murphy said.
You can read the rest of his article in The Globe & Mail here.