Empowerment in the Workplace 2021: Removing the Gender Bias

6 min readMar 8, 2021

If there’s one thing that I’m tired of hearing, it’s this phrase ‘Women in the Workplace’. Why? Because it feels like we’re already discriminated against in the process of bringing us forward. The term has been used so much that it just goes along in our head as the status quo. Do you ever come across any reference as to — ‘Men in the Workplace’. No, right?

On a similar note, as a working ‘professional’, not a working ‘woman’, I’ve never even once faced discrimination in the workpace on the basis of my gender. I’ve worked three years in the tech industry, working on building content for companies. Maybe, I got the most ideal, perhaps even better than ideal opportunities and I grabbed them — not as a woman but just as a capable professional.

Now, that’s my individual experience. The recent statistics say an entirely different story:

The World Bank’s recent Women, Business and the Law report 2021 says that just six countries give women equal legal work rights as men — Belgium, Denmark, France, Latvia, Luxembourg and Sweden.
According to a survey conducted by Leanin.org, mothers are more than twice as likely as fathers to worry that their performance is being judged negatively due to their caregiving responsibilities.
42% of the men in leadership roles and 66% women in senior positions say that they take a stand to support gender equality, according to Mckinsey 2020 Women in the Workplace Report

Changing the Narrative

“Empowering women isn’t just the right thing to do — it’s the smart thing to do.” Barack Obama Former US President said on International Women’s Day in 2013.

The way I want to rephrase that statement is — “Empowering everyone, as per their professional capability, is the smarter thing to do.” I do not want to bring in the gender narrative at all. The conversation should be about how I, as an individual, can contribute to the success of my company. Not how, being a woman, I should be given additional opportunities.

I cannot negate the fact that we are built differently, men and women, physically. However, one trait that is common in all of us is the ability to use our brains. Brains aren’t gender discriminative. Ironically, we just use them to create gender biases. We could put a stop to it altogether.

Redefining the Workplace

It’s all about the environment at your company. Organizations that make significant investments in building a more flexible and empathetic workplace — and there are signs that this is starting to happen; they can retain their employees long term — be it men or women.

At this point, I reminisce about going for almost 50 interviews in a month, trying to look for a suitable working environment. It wasn’t about me being the interviewee, but instead I always had a list of expectations I wanted from a company, becoming the interviewer:

Flexibility to work on my own time
Opportunities for rapid and constant growth
Good salary that reflected the value of my skills and experience
Safe and positive working environment

Rather than judging a company for having fewer women employees and excluding them from my possible places of employment, I considered the recognitions held by the company. For instance, my current company, is named as a ‘Great Place to Work’, which highlights the fact that the culture here is inclusive of all genders and portrays that it is a safe and reliable place to be at everyday, for everyone.

Not once in my career, have I come across any conversation that starts with “I, being a woman, cannot handle such a task” or “My male colleagues earn much more for the same work I do.” It is not about gender anymore. It is just about the company and you — a professional.

I appreciate that while I might not have faced such an issue, other women would have, and unfortunately the companies and the cultures they foster are at fault. But let the more realistic statement be “My company is failing at keeping the recognition standards”, ensuring that it is never a fight between genders but more about the focus on the company vs culture conflict.

It All starts from home

The moment we all see our mothers working in the kitchen and our fathers going out for work, we feel the need to set roles as per genders. No wonder it arises such numbers:

More than 70% of fathers think they are splitting household labor equally with their partner during Covid-19 — but only 44% of mothers say the same.
At the current rate of progress, it will take another 108 years to reach gender parity, according to the World Economic Forum’s most recent Global Gender Gap report.

In an amazing book written by ‘Sheryl Sandberg’ called ‘Lean In’, it mentions the role of fathers / husbands in helping women stay and thrive in leadership roles. When it boils down to retaining talented women in the workplace, the involvement of men is also equally crucial.

Studies revealed that companies where men actively champion gender diversity are much more likely to progress than those where men are just by-standers.

Again, mentioning the fact that household chores / work responsibilities are not gender biased. We make them like that because that’s what society asks us to do. I’ve seen plenty of males that cook for their children and multiple women that hop onto business meetings day and night. We don’t need to solve the bias — we just need to be supportive as human beings leaving any bias behind.

Having a Voice

When it comes to sexual harassment at the workplace, we immediately think of a woman being in such a situation. And, yes the assumption comes out of the reality that we witness everyday.

The #MeToo movement brought a spotlight to the seriousness of the issue globally. And the first question asked was “Why did the victim not report the incident?”

Yes, it’s true. While women face it far more than men, they are skeptical to voice the issue. The primary reason being the risk to their professional reputation, or perhaps, silence feels more comforting than being involved in a fight, and even the fear of being fired for creating chaos.

There’s a very important lesson I learnt from my own experiences, that having a voice and using it at the right time is essential. I understand it is difficult to speak out about such incidents but at the point when you don’t have the courage to speak up, think of other women in the same workplace who might be experiencing the same thing and not saying a word.

To make everyone feel safer at work, voicing our concerns is the first step. Unless we speak out against it, even anonymously reporting the incident, the issues remain unsolved. Companies do have strong policies for such instances, typically ‘Zero Tolerance Policies’. However, they cannot act unless they get to know about it in the first place.

Afterword

No doubt, women have conquered the ongoing issues and made tremendous progress in the corporate world. I am proud of the fact that the percentage of women in senior management for India stood at 39%, as against the global average of 31%, which signals the changing outlook of Indian businesses towards working women, the Women in Business 2021 report said.

I understand the previous numbers tell a different story but the progress isn’t bad either. We’re moving towards a gender neutral working environment and change begins from within ourselves. Once we stop saying ‘Our Women at the Workplace’, equality will be set in place.