Hiring women must go beyond just meeting quota requirements

International Women’s Day has been celebrated since 1911, yet, we’re still hearing about women being fired from work when they come back from maternity leave, working women being expected to juggle housework and full-time jobs, and women being discouraged from working outside the house.

As of 2021, India ranks 122 out of 191 on the Gender Inequality Index, a composite measure that reflects inequality in achievements between women and men in reproductive health, empowerment, and the labour market. While the basis of such rankings may not be perfect, and it is futile to compare one country against another, the fact remains that gender inequality remains a thorny problem all over the world.

Humanity has made significant progress in issues such as women’s rights in the past century, but the World Economic Forum estimates that it’ll take another 136 years for the global gender gap to close. We can’t afford to wait till 2160!

The gender gap is only one of the numerous, and urgent existential problems we face today. Addressing social inequality, Climate Change, and cyber threats requires not just urgency, but also a whole paradigm shift.

‘Box-checking’ will not suffice

In the corporate world, rules and regulations were introduced to tackle such issues. For example, the world’s first board diversity policy was introduced in Norway in 2003. It codified a 40 per cent quota for women on Norway’s corporate boards. However, what followed was the ‘golden skirt phenomenon’, where a small group of women became directors on several boards. A few women have even managed to gain 25 to 35 directorships each.

This is a classic example of ‘box-checking’ behaviour, where companies choose to do the minimum to satisfy regulatory compliance or meet Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) requirements. However, such actions are merely performative and don’t meaningfully contribute to the change we need.

In India, the Companies Act, 2013, has made it compulsory for all publicly listed firms to have at least one woman director. While India has avoided the ‘golden skirt phenomenon’, these woman directors were less likely to sit on key committees, such as compensation. Such performative behaviour only perpetuates prevailing gender gaps, and makes them that much harder to close.

A paradigm shift

The urgency of social inequality, Climate Change, and cyber threats demands corporations take a stand and act responsibly. The box-checking responses in Norway and window-dressing behaviour in India aren’t acceptable. Corporations must make a paradigm shift by pursuing steward leadership, which is the genuine desire and persistence to create a collective better future for stakeholders, society, future generations, and the environment.

As the name suggests, steward leaders see themselves as stewards of planet Earth and society, and pursue the purpose of creating the collective better future while strongly believing in (and living) the following four stewardship values:

Interdependence: View the world as an interconnected system in which your success depends on the success of others.

Long-term view: Create sustained value for both current and future generations.

Ownership mentality: Take proactive responsibility to make stewardship happen.

Creative resilience: Develop tenacity to find innovative solutions to disruptive challenges.

The ESGs must, therefore, upgrade to ESLs, where ‘L’ stands for leadership — specifically steward leadership.

The business challenge of the 21st Century is doing well by doing good. Policies such as those implemented in Norway and India are important for guiding corporate behaviour in the correct direction, but to make a difference, steward leadership is required. To make meaningful change, corporations need to integrate the spirit, not just the letter, of these policies into their business strategy. Women should not be hired just to meet quota requirements. Steward leaders recognise their value and genuinely want to support their development. Driven by their values, these steward leaders institutionalise support for them in the workplace, recognising that only systemic changes can propel us towards gender equality.

Becoming a steward leader is hard. Trying to find economic success while addressing monumental challenges requires the determination to relentlessly innovate, fail, and try again. Only true steward leaders have the tenacity to persist. This is because the best steward leaders don’t go about creating a collective better future because it was legislated or because they thought it’d make them more money (although it often does), but because they want to leave a positive legacy considering the existential challenges that threaten humanity today. They proactively choose to see themselves as stewards. Will you?

Rajeev Peshawaria is an author and CEO, Stewardship Asia Center, Singapore. X: @RajeevPeshawria.

(Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.)