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Please send links to useful research or case studies to hello@diversily.com to add them here. 

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High levels of engagement increase profitability and productivity by 20% 

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High levels of engagement increase profitability and productivity by 20% 

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In Bain & Company and Chief Executive Women's (CEW) previous joint research (see " What Stops Women from Reaching the Top? Confronting the Tough Issues," 2011), survey respondents ranked visible and committed leadership as the most critical factor in creating equal opportunity for women in the workplace. However, our most recent research indicates that leaders struggle with providing it: Less than 50% of women agree with the statement, "The leadership team at my company or organisation has made gender parity a visible priority."

This year's research aimed to understand specifically what CEOs and other leaders can do to create positive and engaging environments for both genders. Based on survey responses from nearly 1,500 men and women, we find that there are several critical leadership behaviours that can make major differences in employee perceptions of the organisation in general and as a place for women to progress. Importantly, these leadership behaviours affect engagement levels for both women and men, spurring higher performance across the board.

To measure engagement, we asked respondents to rate two questions on a scale of zero to 10: How likely would you be to recommend your organisation as a place to work? How likely would you be to recommend your organisation as a place for women to progress to senior levels? Based on their scores, respondents were categorised as promoters, passives or detractors. The aggregate Net Promoter Score SM (NPS®) for each question was calculated by subtracting the percentage of detractors from the percentage of promoters (see below, " Net Promoter Score explained "). The higher the NPS, the greater the advocacy levels.

Consistent with our previous research, we found that women have very low levels of advocacy. Only 27% of women in Australia are promoters of their organisation as a place to work, compared with 50% of men. Factoring in detractors, women's NPS in Australia is -5, compared with +35 for men. When it comes to rating an organisation as a place for women to progress to senior levels, the number of female promoters nearly halves to a slim 15%, compared with 42% for men. More concerning, 52% of women are detractors of their organisation as a place for women to progress, yielding an NPS of -38.

So, what does it take for CEOs to create more engaged employees? To help organisations find practical solutions, we sought to pinpoint the CEO behaviours that foster environments where both genders are strong advocates of their organisation and feel able to flourish. We began by asking respondents to rate their CEOs on 13 dimensions relating to business performance and gender parity leadership. We then correlated those answers with respondents' NPS scores to identify which traits were associated with higher employee advocacy levels.
Walk the talk: The impact that visible leadership has on employees' perceptions of their workplaces
We find there is a handful of critical behaviours that have the potential to create promoters amongst employees of both genders, if done well-and detractors, if done poorly. We call this "conduct that counts," because these habits significantly shape employee impressions of work environments. One dimension that correlates strongly with NPS for the organisation as a place to work is the effectiveness of the CEO in delivering strong business performance. However, it is not enough for a CEO to simply deliver financial results to win the respect of employees. A key feature of "conduct that counts" is that the CEO demonstrates inclusive behaviour (see Figure 1).

Four statements which correlate strongly with NPS for the organisation as a place to work are:

The CEO is effective in delivering business performance outcomes.

The CEO seeks and accepts diverse ideas, opinions and leadership styles.

The CEO talks and acts in a way that is inclusive of both men and women.

The CEO does not tolerate behaviour which excludes either men or women.

CEOs who practice "conduct that counts" ensure their leadership teams include the top talent who will complement, rather than merely reinforce one another and, accordingly, seek strong representation of both genders. CEOs who promote diversity also translate high-level goals into daily words and actions that encourage both genders to succeed and be themselves in their organisations. Finally, such conduct means that CEOs clearly and consistently impose consequences for those in their organisations who don't behave in such ways, showing zero tolerance for biases against diverse ideas, opinions and styles.

Overall, the message of these findings for CEOs is loud and clear: CEOs who are respected for delivering business outcomes, coupled with inclusive behaviour, provide powerful inspiration to the employees they lead. If leaders want to influence productivity by creating workplaces where their teams feel positive and engaged, then they need to personally value and actively seek diversity within their organisation.

Long term, this will create a positive cycle of diversity and engagement that begins to feed itself. Indeed, our research reveals a real example of this: When we compare the level of advocacy based on the gender of the CEO, we find that both men and women are more likely to be advocates for their organisation when their CEO is a woman.
Actions speak louder than words: The actions that influence perceptions of women's potential to progress
When we focus more narrowly on which CEO behaviours create a workplace where employees of both genders believe women can progress to senior levels, we find that the "conduct that counts" is the actual track record of the CEO in appointing women to, and sponsoring them in, leadership roles (see Figure 2). Three statements that correlate strongly with the NPS for both men and women regarding the organisation as a place where women can progress are:

The CEO has a track record of ensuring women are appointed into senior line roles.

The CEO holds other senior executives and managers accountable for gender parity outcomes.

The CEO has a track record of actively sponsoring women, assisting their career progression.

Such CEOs go beyond simply talking about gender diversity and actually appoint women to line roles in their own leadership teams. They also help influence similar appointments throughout the organisation by actively advising women and creating opportunities for them to claim the senior line roles that lead to the top. Finally, they ensure their direct reports follow suit in their own appointment and sponsorship of women and consistently impose penalties for not doing so.

Underscoring the benefits of having a critical mass of women in leadership teams, the survey shows that both genders are significantly more likely to recommend their organisation as a place for women to progress when more than 25% of its executive leadership team is female. The bottom line: Employees are canny observers of reality rather than rhetoric. These scores indicate employees believe that actions speak louder than words when it comes to CEOs creating environments where women believe they can progress.
Conclusion
Winning the hearts and minds of employees is not an easy task for CEOs, particularly as they face increasingly diverse workforces with different needs and backgrounds. The starting point is challenging, considering women's low advocacy levels for their organisations and prospects to progress.

However, the battle is a worthwhile one, since having a fully engaged workforce is critical to higher productivity and profitability. To help CEOs win this battle, our research highlights "conduct that counts": leadership behaviours that strongly correlate to higher engagement levels. The lesson for Australian CEOs seeking to reap the benefits of diversity is clear: Foster inclusiveness in your organisations and lead the way by appointing women to leadership positions.

Methodology: We received 1,492 responses from employees of Australian businesses, large and small, in government and not-for-profit organisations. Of the responders, 55% were women and 45% were men. Fifty-eight per cent held senior management, executive or board positions.
Net Promoter Score explained
The Net Promoter Score SM (NPS®) groups respondents into three categories: promoters, passives and detractors.

Promoters (score of 9 or 10): People who feel that their lives have been enriched by their relationship with their organisation or leader. They behave like loyal employees, typically staying longer and talking the organisation up to their friends and colleagues.

Passives (score of 7 or 8): People who are fairly satisfied employees, but not loyal ones. They rarely talk their company up, and when they do, it's likely to be qualified and unenthusiastic. If a better offer comes along, they are likely to defect.

Detractors (score of 0 to 6): People who feel their lives have been diminished by their association with their organisation or leader. They are dissatisfied and even dismayed by how they are treated. They frequently speak negatively about their organisation and are likely to leave as soon as they find something better.

NPS is calculated by subtracting the percentage of detractors from the percentage of promoters.
Endnotes
Net Promoter System SM and Net Promoter Score SM are trademarks of Bain & Company, Inc., Fred Reichheld and Satmetrix Systems, Inc

1. State of the Global Workplace: Employee Engagement Insights for Business Leaders Worldwide, Gallup, http://www.gallup.com/strategicconsulting/164735/state-global-workplace.aspx.

2. "Table 2: Award Course Completions for All Students by Citizenship and Gender, 1999 to 2013," Award Course Completions, Australian Department of Education, http://docs.education.gov.au/documents/2013-award-course-completions.

3. Labour Force, Australia, June 2014, Australian Bureau of Statistics, http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/allprimarymainfeatures/CE01582B70A13C4CCA257D2C00124321

4. 2012 Australian Census of Women in Leadership, Equal Opportunity for Women in the Workplace Agency, Australian Government, p. 8, https://www.wgea.gov.au/sites/default/ files/2012_CENSUS%20REPORT.pdf.

5. 2012 Australian Census of Women in Leadership, Equal Opportunity for Women in the Workplace Agency, Australian Government, p. 27, https://www.wgea.gov.au/sites/default/ files/2012_CENSUS%20REPORT.pdf.

6. Melanie Sanders, David Zehner, Dr. Jenny Fagg, Meredith Hellicar, "Creating a positive cycle: Critical steps to achieving gender parity in Australia," Bain Insights, February 06, 2013, http://www.bain.com/offices/australia/en_us/publications/creating-a-positive-cycle.aspx.

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Actions Speak Louder than Words: CEO Conduct that Counts

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Winning the hearts and minds of employees is not an easy task for CEOs, particularly as they face increasingly diverse workforces with different needs and backgrounds. However, Australian CEOs seeking to reap the benefits of diversity can start by fostering inclusiveness and appointing women to leadership positions.

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10 things to know about gender equality and the $12 trillion opportunity

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10 things to know about gender equality and the $12 trillion opportunity

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In 2015, the 193 member countries of the United Nations came together to commit to 17 Sustainable Development Goals. Goal 5 focused on gender equality and set the ambitious target of achieving gender equality and empowering women and girls everywhere by 2030. Five years later, large gender gaps remain across the world, and the early evidence suggests that the COVID-19 pandemic has had a regressive effect on gender equality.

How can we ensure that the role of women in the workplace and in society is central to efforts to rebuild economies in the COVID-19 era, and that women do not fall further behind? As world leaders at the UN General Assembly assess progress, look ahead to recovery, and commemorate the 25th anniversary of the Fourth World Conference on Women and the Beijing declaration, we offer our perspectives on the ten things everyone should know about gender equality.

1. Tackling the global gender gap will boost global GDP

Gender inequality is not only a pressing moral and social issue but also a critical economic challenge. A 2015 report from the McKinsey Global Institute (MGI), The Power of Parity: How advancing women's equality can add $12 trillion to global growth, explored the economic potential available if the global gender gap was narrowed. Five years ago, women generated 37 percent of global GDP despite accounting for 50 percent of the global working-age population. The research found that in a best-in-region scenario in which all countries match the performance of the country in their region that has made the most progress toward gender equality, $12 trillion a year could be added to GDP in 2025. That would be equivalent in size to the GDP of Japan, Germany, and the United Kingdom combined, and roughly double the likely growth in global GDP contributed by female workers between 2014 and 2025 in a business-as-usual scenario. Both advanced and developing economies would stand to gain considerably; all regions could achieve at least 8 percent in incremental GDP over business-as-usual levels. In a full-potential scenario in which women match men's participation in the workforce, their sector mix, and their full-time mix of jobs, the additional GDP opportunity could be $28 trillion, or an additional 26 percent of annual global GDP in 2025. That would be roughly equivalent to the GDP of the United States and China. As we note in item number 6, the COVID-19 pandemic has added new urgency-and new risks-to achieving the economic benefits of gender parity. We have updated our calculations accordingly.

2. Progress toward gender equality has been marginal since 2015; large gaps remain

Even before the COVID-19 crisis, global progress in tackling gender gaps-in both work and society-had been marginal since 2015. MGI mapped 15 indicators of gender equality in work (how men and women engage in paid work, how they share unpaid work, and their representation in high-productivity and formal jobs, and in leading positions in the economy) and society (essential services and enablers of economic opportunity like digital and financial inclusion, legal protection and political voice, and physical security and autonomy). Gender equality in society and gender equality in work are correlated based on MGI's analysis of 125 countries. While absolute scores on equality in society tend to be higher than those of equality in work for most countries, we found virtually no countries with high equality on social indicators and low equality in employment and labor markets. This suggests that solutions need to tackle both.

We aggregated the 15 indicators into a Gender Parity Score, or GPS, ranging from zero (no gender equality) to one (full gender equality). In the past five years, progress has been marginal. Gender gaps remain across all regions (Exhibit 1). In 2015, the global GPS was 0.60; today, it is 0.61. For gender equality in work, the overall score in 2019 was 0.52, up from 0.51 in 2015. For gender equality in society, the overall score in 2019 was 0.67, up from 0.66 in 2015. These trends are similar across regions. The Middle East and North Africa region experienced the biggest increase in gender equality, rising from a global GPS of 0.47 in 2015 to 0.50 in 2019. However, some regions have experienced declines in either gender equality in work or gender equality in society since 2015.

All is not doom and gloom-there are significant bright spots to celebrate. Maternal mortality is decreasing in most places, and literacy and secondary education enrollment are increasing in many countries. At work, too, most countries are making slow and steady progress in equality. McKinsey has conducted research on gender diversity in North American companies in partnership with LeanIn.Org on since 2015. The research finds that 87 percent of North American companies today report gender diversity is a top priority, compared with 74 percent in 2015, but this reported priority still needs to translate into more decisive action. Representation of women in the C-suite in North America has increased to 21 percent, from 17 percent in 2015.

3. Over the past two decades, while women in advanced economies have made large gains as workers, consumers, and savers, they have faced rising costs and insecurity

Although women in advanced economies of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development have made far-reaching gains as workers, consumers, and savers over the past two decades, much of this progress has been offset by rising costs and new forms of insecurity that disproportionately affect women. Between 2000 and 2018, women accounted for two-thirds of 45 million jobs created in 22 OECD countries, but many of these jobs were part-time or independent work that were less secure and offered lower pay and fewer benefits. In this period, female part-time employment increased by 2.3 percentage points, versus a 0.7-percentage-point increase in full-time employment for women. As consumers, women-and men-benefited from a sharp decline in the prices of many discretionary goods and services such as communications and recreation, but that was offset by rising costs of housing, healthcare, and education that absorbed 54 to 107 percent of the average household's income gains in Australia, France, the United Kingdom, and the United States. As savers, the outlook for women is also challenging. One study found that while women's median net wealth is higher overall than it was two decades ago, a large gender gap remains. In Europe, women's median net wealth is 62 percent that of men.

4. Women continue to work a double shift at home

While women face inequality in the world of work, they also face inequalities in the home. Around the world, women do three times as much unpaid care work as men. As one of many examples around the world, the "double shift" is a fact of life for millions of women in China, who go out to work but then do the lion's share of work in the home as well. On average, they work nearly nine hours a day, and only about half of that is paid. Putting the two together, on average women in China work almost one entire day a week more than men. In some countries like India, women do almost ten times as much unpaid care work as men. This phenomenon is by no means confined to developing economies; it is a consistent fact that women work a double shift in advanced economies, too. In the United States, for instance, women still do almost twice as much unpaid care work as men; 54 percent of women but only 22 percent of men report doing all or most of the housework. Even among individuals who earn the majority of their household's income, 43 percent of women who are primary household income earners continue to do all or most of the household work, compared with only 12 percent of men. In addition, working women are more likely than their male colleagues to have a working spouse: 81 percent of women are part of a dual-career couple and have two careers to balance, while only 56 percent of men are part of a dual-career couple.

5. Women face growing challenges from automation

Growing automation adoption adds to the challenges that women face in the workplace. MGI research found that the share of women whose jobs are replaced by machines and will likely need to make job transitions due to automation is roughly the same as for men: up to one in four over the next decade may have to shift to a different occupation. Between 40 million and 160 million women globally may need to transition between occupations by 2030, often into higher-skill roles (Exhibit 2).

The particular challenge for women is that long-standing barriers make it harder for them to adapt to the future of work. Women and men alike need to develop (1) the skills that will be in demand; (2) the flexibility and mobility needed to negotiate labor-market transitions successfully; and (3) the access to and knowledge of technology necessary to work with automated systems, including participating in its creation. Unfortunately, women often face long-established and pervasive structural and societal barriers that could hinder them in all three of these areas. Women may have less time to refresh or learn new skills or to search for employment because they spend much more time than men on unpaid care work. They may also face financial constraints in doing so. And they may not have the professional networks and sponsors that could make it easier for them to navigate job transitions, among other factors. Moreover, women tend to have less access to digital technology and lower participation in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields than men. If women make these transitions, they could find more productive, better-paid work; if they don't, they could face a growing wage gap or leave the labor market altogether.

6. The challenge for women is now even greater as they experience economic fallout from COVID-19

Although the early evidence suggests that the COVID-19 infection has been more deadly for men than women-the death rate for men in countries like China, Italy, and South Korea has been almost double the rate for women-women's economic prospects have been hit the hardest. On employment, our research has found that women's jobs globally are 1.8 times as vulnerable to this crisis as men's jobs. Women make up 39 percent of global employment but accounted for 54 percent of overall job losses as of May 2020. Globally, part of the reason is that women are disproportionately represented in industries that are expected to decline the most in 2020 due to COVID-19 (Exhibit 3). Another factor is that during the pandemic, even more unpaid care work such as childcare and home schooling fell to women as nurseries and schools closed; in the United States, for example, the amount of time women spend on household responsibilities has increased by 1.5 to two hours, according to one study. The pandemic may have had noneconomic consequences for women, too-some reports suggest that the prevalence of violence against women from an intimate partner may have increased during lockdowns. If no action is taken to counter the gender-regressive impacts of COVID-19, we calculate that global GDP growth could be $1 trillion lower in 2030 than it would be if women's unemployment simply tracked that of men in each sector. That hit to growth could be even larger if increased childcare responsibilities, a slower recovery, and reduced public and private spending on services such as education and childcare force women to leave the labor market permanently. However, if action is taken to advance gender equality, $12 trillion could be added to global GDP in 2030 compared with the baseline, as noted earlier; this implies a $13 trillion potential compared with the gender-regressive scenario in which global GDP slides back by $1 trillion in 2030. A middle path-taking action only after the crisis has subsided rather than now-would reduce the potential opportunity by more than $5 trillion.

7. We can grow our way out of some gender equality issues but not others

Even if policy makers and companies manage to craft a robust economic recovery from the COVID-19 crisis, there is no guarantee that a resumption of economic growth will help revive progress toward gender equality. For many years, it has been clear that economic growth (rising per capita GDP) does not lift all segments of the population-we cannot grow our way out of some aspects of gender equality.

In MGI's 2015 power of parity report, we identified ten "impact zones." These are the largest concentrations of gender inequality, where action to tackle gender gaps would have the most impact. In five global impact zones, gender inequality is high whether women live in an advanced or emerging economy: blocked economic potential (including women's participation in leadership positions and formal work), time spent in unpaid care work, fewer legal rights, political underrepresentation, and violence against women. Today, for every 100 men in leadership positions globally, there are just 37 women. One in three women globally, including in developed countries like the United States, has experienced violence from an intimate partner at some time in her life. In these impact zones, economic growth alone is insufficient to guarantee progress; sustained and proactive interventions will be needed.

In contrast, in some geographies, economic growth could help advance gender inequality in five regional impact zones where certain aspects of gender inequality are most prominent. They are low labor-force participation in quality jobs (in South Asia, the Middle East and North Africa, and sub-Saharan Africa), low maternal and reproductive health (in sub-Saharan Africa), unequal education levels (in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa), financial and digital exclusion (in South Asia, the Middle East and North Africa, and sub-Saharan Africa), and girl-child vulnerability (in China and South Asia). For many of these impact zones, economic growth can increase the provision of services that could help improve outcomes. In Africa, for instance, rising per capita GDP should enable more healthcare provision, reducing maternal mortality. As countries increase their standard of living, girls typically attain increasing levels of education. In developed countries, women are now outperforming men academically on many dimensions. In the United States, for example, women receive 57 percent of college degrees, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, and have higher overall average GPAs (but still lag behind men in STEM graduation rates).

8. Companies that are gender and ethnically diverse outperform their peers

Advancing gender equality is not just an opportunity for countries; companies also stand to gain. McKinsey research on Diversity Matters (2015), on Delivering through Diversity (2018), and most recently in May 2020 on Diversity Wins examined whether companies with higher levels of both gender and ethnic diversity have greater economic performance. The 2020 research examined a data set of more than 1,000 large companies in 15 countries and found that companies in the top quartile for gender diversity were 25 percent more likely to have above-average profitability than companies in the fourth quartile. Companies in the top quartile of ethnic and cultural diversity were 36 percent more likely to outperform on profitability. The highest-performing companies on both profitability and diversity had more women in line roles (that is, owning a line of business) than in staff roles on their executive teams. The research also found a penalty for bottom-quartile performance on gender diversity: companies in the bottom quartile for both gender and ethnic diversity were 27 percent more likely to underperform the industry average than all other firms.

Given all the competing priorities arising from the current pandemic, there is a significant risk that inclusion and diversity may recede as strategic priorities for organizations as companies focus on recovery. Downgrading diversity could well be a mistake, compromising performance and thwarting efforts to strengthen recovery over time.

9. The corporate career pipeline for women is leaky, especially early on

Over the years, our research with LeanIn.Org has found some progress in the advancement of women through the corporate pipeline in North America. In the 2019 Women in the Workplace report, we found that, of entry-level workers, 48 percent were women, compared with 45 percent in 2015. Women made up 21 percent of the C-suite, compared with 17 percent in 2019. However, as these numbers show, women are underrepresented at all levels of organizations, and the pipeline is leaky between the entry level and the C-suite. The biggest obstacle to women on the corporate ladder is a "broken rung" in the first step up to the manager level. For every 100 men hired or promoted to manager, there are only 72 women-and only 58 black women. After this initial degree of drop-off, it is very difficult for women to make up the ground lost. If differences in promotion rate are aggregated across five years, this equates to a difference of one million women in leadership roles.

Women of color are especially underrepresented in the North American workforce and face the steepest drop-offs. In North America, 18 percent of entry-level positions are held by women of color, but their representation in the C-suite is 4 percent, according to our 2019 Women in the Workplace research. These outcomes are mirrored in the day-to-day experiences of women of color in the workforce-56 percent of black women say they and their peers have equal opportunity for growth, compared with 69 percent of white women. Women of color also experience more workplace "microaggressions." For example, 40 percent of black women and 30 percent of Asian women say they needed to provide more evidence of their competence than others, compared with 28 percent of white women and 14 percent of men.

We find similar trends across the world. Across Asia-Pacific, for instance, there is only one woman in leadership positions for every four men. In some countries in East Asia, there are only 12 to 20 women leaders for every 100 men.

10. All stakeholders need to work together to maintain and accelerate progress on gender equality

There is a huge amount to do, particularly given that the automation age and now COVID-19 mean that women face new challenges on top of old ones. The only way to breathe new life into efforts to meet Sustainable Development Goal 5 is for the main stakeholders to work together on comprehensive solutions to the complex issue of gender inequality. As governments design stimulus programs and companies look for restart strategies in the wake of the pandemic, it will be important not to ignore potential gender consequences; indeed, it's time to double down by putting gender at the heart of these initiatives to capture opportunities. More data will be needed to ensure greater transparency and understanding of gender consequences.

National governments can enable change on a broader front using the law. For instance, they can remove legal barriers against women working (such as regulations prohibiting women from working night shifts) and can enforce laws protecting women from violence. The policy tool kit is wide-ranging, from financial support for women such as cash transfers, to tax regulations, childcare programs, and ensuring that public infrastructure is built and designed with gender in mind. The importance of reducing the gender gap in who takes responsibility for caregiving cannot be overstated, and governments can play an important role here. Some governments have enacted quotas to ensure a minimum level of women in leadership roles. Others have accelerated gender equality through incentives for women's education, entrepreneurship, and business lending, for instance. Nongovernmental organizations also have an important role to play, for example in shaping attitudes and social norms. Many governments and NGOs have developed fruitful partnerships with companies to scale new solutions quickly. Finally, stimulus programs can be used to help invest in women and girls.

Companies can act on a number of fronts starting with their own employees, attracting, retaining, and promoting women and understanding where the pinch points in the talent pipeline are greatest. Leaders need to champion gender diversity, ensuring that hiring and promotions are fair and fostering an inclusive and respectful culture. In the COVID-19 era, many companies are exploring family-friendly policies, including flexible and part-time positions, to support workers experiencing an increased childcare burden, as well as rethinking performance reviews and promotions. Companies can use this moment to design and put in place policies and practices that can support women in the long term. Companies can also use their supply chains and procurement practices to support women-owned businesses and hold suppliers accountable to diversity and inclusion targets.

Individuals need to make a contribution, too, from advocating for themselves in their own careers to helping others advance through sponsorship and mentorship. At work, they can be proactive in supporting talented women and speaking up if they see unconscious bias or microaggressions. In their personal lives, they can explore their own biases, both conscious and unconscious. If they have families, they can aim to raise sons and daughters who are not constrained by gender. If they are investing, they can back companies that are driving gender equality in a way that is consistent with their values.

Five years after the introduction of the Sustainable Development Goals, progress on gender equality has been modest at best, and now the effort to narrow gender gaps faces new challenges in the form of automation trends and the regressive impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. With only ten years left to meet Goal 5, progress needs to accelerate. Achieving equality for half the world's population is a global imperative that risks being undermined by competing priorities in a complex world and by the challenges of recovering from the pandemic. Creating more opportunity for women and the next generation is an aspiration and a very real goal that can lift the global economy as well as contributing to a more just society. It is a goal we need to meet collectively.

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Ten things to know about gender equality

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Since 2015, progress has been marginal, and now COVID-19 has hit women hard. We offer ten facts about gender equality that everyone should know.

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It's no secret that greater organisational diversity improves productivity and wellbeing. Now, a white paper from online decision-making platform Cloverpop has found a direct link between inclusive decision-making and better business performance.

The study analysed around 600 business decisions made by 200 teams, across a range of companies. Researchers found that when diverse teams (of three or more people) made a business decision, they outperformed individual decision-makers up to 87 per cent of the time. Diverse teams were also shown to make decisions faster than individual workers, and benefited from a 60 per cent improvement on decision-making.

"Unfortunately, non-inclusive decision-making is all-too common," says author Erik Larson. "All-male teams make about 38 per cent of the decisions in a typical large company, and the gap is even worse among less diverse firms like those in Silicon Valley's technology industry."

Effective decision-making also increases with greater diversity in a team. All-male teams were shown to make better business decisions than individuals 58 per cent of the time, while gender-diverse teams outperformed individuals 73 per cent of the time. Teams that were geographically diverse, and included members with different genders and at least one age gap of more than 20 years, were the most successful - making better business decisions than individuals 87 per cent of the time.

"This research aligns with behavioural economics theory, which has clear implications for results-focused companies," says David Daniels, assistant professor in the department of management at Stanford University. "Business strategy should revolve around a decision-making process."

Research: ' White Paper: Hacking Diversity with Inclusive Decision Making'

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It's no secret that greater organisational diversity improves productivity and wellbeing. Now, a white paper from online decision-making platform Cloverpop has found a direct link between inclusive decision-making and better business performance. The study analysed around 600 business decisions made by 200 teams, across a range of companies.

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Diversity wins is the third report in a McKinsey series investigating the business case for diversity, following Why diversity matters (2015) and Delivering through diversity (2018). Our latest report shows not only that the business case remains robust but also that the relationship between diversity on executive teams and the likelihood of financial outperformance has strengthened over time. These findings emerge from our largest data set so far, encompassing 15 countries and more than 1,000 large companies. By incorporating a "social listening" analysis of employee sentiment in online reviews, the report also provides new insights into how inclusion matters. It shows that companies should pay much greater attention to inclusion, even when they are relatively diverse.

By following the trajectories of hundreds of companies in our data set since 2014, we find that the overall slow growth in diversity often observed in fact masks a growing polarization among these organizations. While most have made little progress, are stalled or even slipping backward, some are making impressive gains in diversity, particularly in executive teams. We show that these diversity winners are adopting systematic, business-led approaches to inclusion and diversity (I&D). And, with a special focus on inclusion, we highlight the areas where companies should take far bolder action to create a long-lasting inclusive culture and to promote inclusive behavior.

(Our research predates the outbreak of the global pandemic, but we believe these findings remain highly relevant. See the sidebar, "In the COVID-19 crisis, inclusion and diversity matter more than ever," for more on why I&D must remain a priority even as the context shifts, or read " Diversity still matters" for an even deeper dive. You can also explore a related interactive for another lens on the issues.)

Our latest analysis reaffirms the strong business case for both gender diversity and ethnic and cultural diversity in corporate leadership-and shows that this business case continues to strengthen. The most diverse companies are now more likely than ever to outperform less diverse peers on profitability.

Our 2019 analysis finds that companies in the top quartile for gender diversity on executive teams were 25 percent more likely to have above-average profitability than companies in the fourth quartile-up from 21 percent in 2017 and 15 percent in 2014 (Exhibit 1).

Moreover, we found that the greater the representation, the higher the likelihood of outperformance. Companies with more than 30 percent women executives were more likely to outperform companies where this percentage ranged from 10 to 30, and in turn these companies were more likely to outperform those with even fewer women executives, or none at all. A substantial differential likelihood of outperformance-48 percent-separates the most from the least gender-diverse companies.

In the case of ethnic and cultural diversity, our business-case findings are equally compelling: in 2019, top-quartile companies outperformed those in the fourth one by 36 percent in profitability, slightly up from 33 percent in 2017 and 35 percent in 2014. As we have previously found, the likelihood of outperformance continues to be higher for diversity in ethnicity than for gender.

Yet progress, overall, has been slow. In the companies in our original 2014 data set, based in the United States and the United Kingdom, female representation on executive teams rose from 15 percent in 2014 to 20 percent in 2019. Across our global data set, for which our data starts in 2017, gender diversity moved up just one percentage point-to 15 percent, from 14-in 2019. More than a third of the companies in our data set still have no women at all on their executive teams. This lack of material progress is evident across all industries and in most countries. Similarly, the representation of ethnic-minorities on UK and US executive teams stood at only 13 percent in 2019, up from just 7 percent in 2014. For our global data set, this proportion was 14 percent in 2019, up from 12 percent in 2017 (Exhibit 2).

While overall progress on gender and cultural representation has been slow, this is not consistent across all organizations. Our research clearly shows that there is a widening gap between I&D leaders and companies that have yet to embrace diversity. A third of the companies we analyzed have achieved real gains in top-team diversity over the five-year period. But most have made little or no progress, and some have even gone backward.

This growing polarization between high and low performers is reflected in an increased likelihood of a performance penalty. In 2019, fourth-quartile companies for gender diversity on executive teams were 19 percent more likely than companies in the other three quartiles to underperform on profitability-up from 15 percent in 2017 and 9 percent in 2015. At companies in the fourth quartile for both gender and ethnic diversity, the penalty was even steeper in 2019: they were 27 percent more likely to underperform on profitability than all other companies in our data set.

Learn more about delivering through diversity

We sought to understand how companies in our original 2014 data set have been progressing, and in doing so we identified five cohorts. These were based on their starting points and speed of progress on executive team gender representation and, separately, ethnic-minority representation (Exhibit 3). In the first two cohorts, Diversity Leaders and Fast Movers, diverse representation improved strongly over the past five years: for example, gender Fast Movers have almost quadrupled the representation of women on executive teams, to 27 percent, in 2019; for ethnicity, companies in the equivalent cohort have increased their level of diversity from just 1 percent in 2014 to 18 percent in 2019.

At the other end of the spectrum, the already poor diversity performance of the Laggards has declined further. In 2019, an average of 8 percent of executive team members at these companies were female-and they had no ethnic-minority representation at all. The two other cohorts are Moderate Movers, which have on average experienced a slower improvement in diversity, and Resting on Laurels, which started with higher levels of diversity than Laggards did, but have similarly become less diverse since 2014.

We also found that the average likelihood of financial outperformance in these cohorts is consistent with our findings in the quartile analysis above. For example, in 2019, companies in the Resting on Laurels cohort on average had the highest likelihood of outperformance on profitability, at almost 62 percent-likely reflecting their historically high levels of diversity on executive teams. Laggards, on the other hand, are more likely to underperform their national industry median in profitability, at 40 percent.

By analyzing surveys and company research, we explored how different approaches to I&D could have shaped the trajectories of the companies in our data set. Our work suggested two critical factors: a systematic business-led approach to I&D, and bold action on inclusion. On the former we have previously advocated for an I&D approach based on a robust business case tailored to the needs of individual companies, evidenced-based targets, and core-business leadership accountability.

To further understand how inclusion matters-and which aspects of it employees regard as significant-we conducted our first analysis of inclusion-related indicators. We conducted this outside-in using "social listening," focusing on sentiment in employee reviews of their employers posted on US-based online platforms.

While this approach is indicative, rather than conclusive, it could provide a more candid read on inclusion than internal employee-satisfaction surveys do-and makes it possible to analyze data across dozens of companies rapidly and simultaneously. We focused on three industries with the highest levels of executive-team diversity in our data set: financial services, technology, and healthcare. In these sectors, comments directly pertaining to I&D accounted for around one-third of total comments made, suggesting that this topic is high on employees' minds.

We analyzed comments relating to five indicators. The first two-diverse representation and leadership accountability for I&D-are evidence of a systematic approach to I&D. The other three-equality, openness, and belonging-are core components of inclusion. For several of these indicators, our findings suggest "pain points" in the experience of employees:

While overall sentiment on diversity was 52 percent positive and 31 percent negative, sentiment on inclusion was markedly worse, at only 29 percent positive and 61 percent negative. This encapsulates the challenge that even the more diverse companies still face in tackling inclusion (Exhibit 4). Hiring diverse talent isn't enough-it's the workplace experience that shapes whether people remain and thrive.

Opinions about leadership and accountability in I&D accounted for the highest number of mentions and were strongly negative. On average, across industries, 51 percent of the total mentions related to leadership, and 56 percent of those were negative. This finding underscores the increasingly recognized need for companies to improve their I&D engagement with core-business managers.

For the three indicators of inclusion-equality, openness, and belonging-we found particularly high levels of negative sentiment about equality and fairness of opportunity. Negative sentiment about equality ranged from 63 to 80 percent across the industries analyzed. The work environment's openness, which encompasses bias and discrimination, was also a significant concern-negative sentiment across industries ranged from 38 to 56 percent. Belonging elicited overall positive sentiment, but from a relatively small number of mentions.

These findings highlight the importance not just of inclusion overall but also of specific aspects of inclusion. Even relatively diverse companies face significant challenges in creating work environments characterized by inclusive leadership and accountability among managers, equality and fairness of opportunity, and openness and freedom from bias and discrimination.

We took a close look at our data set's more diverse companies, which as we have seen are more likely to outperform financially. The common thread for these diversity leaders is a systematic approach and bold steps to strengthen inclusion. Drawing on best practices from these companies, this report highlights five areas of action (Exhibit 5):

Ensure the representation of diverse talent. This is still an essential driver of inclusion. Companies should focus on advancing diverse talent into executive, management, technical, and board roles. They should ensure that a robust I&D business case designed for individual companies is well accepted and think seriously about which forms of multivariate diversity to prioritize (for example, going beyond gender and ethnicity). They also need to set the right data-driven targets for the representation of diverse talent.

Strengthen leadership accountability and capabilities for I&D. Companies should place their core-business leaders and managers at the heart of the I&D effort-beyond the HR function or employee resource-group leaders. In addition, they should not only strengthen the inclusive-leadership capabilities of their managers and executives but also more emphatically hold all leaders to account for progress on I&D.

Enable equality of opportunity through fairness and transparency. To advance toward a true meritocracy, it is critical that companies ensure a level playing field in advancement and opportunity. They should deploy analytics tools to show that promotions, pay processes, and the criteria behind them, are transparent and fair; debias these processes; and strive to meet diversity targets in their long-term workforce plans.

Promote openness and tackle microaggressions. Companies should uphold a zero-tolerance policy for discriminatory behavior, such as bullying and harassment, and actively help managers and staff to identify and address microaggressions. They should also establish norms for open, welcoming behavior and ask leaders and employees to assess each other on how they are living up to that standard.

Foster belonging through unequivocal support for multivariate diversity. Companies should build a culture where all employees feel they can bring their whole selves to work. Managers should communicate and visibly embrace their commitment to multivariate forms of diversity, building a connection to a wide range of people and supporting employee resource groups to foster a sense of community and belonging. Companies should explicitly assess belonging in internal surveys.

For deeper insights, download Diversity wins: How inclusion matters, the full report on which this article is based (PDF-10.6MB).

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Diversity wins is the third report in a McKinsey series investigating the business case for diversity, following Why diversity matters (2015) and Delivering through diversity (2018). Our latest report shows not only that the business case remains robust but also that the relationship between diversity on executive teams and the likelihood of financial outperformance has strengthened over time.

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"What gets measured gets improved."

Legendary management consultant Peter Drucker famously said these words 40 years ago and they're just as relevant today.

Corporate America has taken this advice to heart. The business community has a long history of using bonuses to get their executives and employees to shape up and improve performance. Bonus programs, when they're well-designed and implemented, can be an effective accelerant for change. When a company ties business goals to financial benefits, it sends a strong signal the firm takes the goals seriously.

These days, organizations have become well aware that creating a diverse and inclusive workforce culture is not just a nice-to-have. It's not only beneficial for recruiting and employee morale, it's good for the bottom line. According to research by McKinsey & Company, organizations with a more diverse senior management team (gender and ethnicity) and an inclusive culture outperform their industry peers who are not as diverse.

But, despite the increasing awareness about the benefits of diversity, we haven't seen traction at the macro level in terms of the closing wage gap and opportunity gap for women and minority groups. The majority of leadership positions in the largest firms in the U.S. are still occupied by men. And, women and minority groups like Hispanic and African American workers are still underpaid and underrepresented in higher level positions compared to their white, male counterparts.

To inspire the right kind of change fast, bonuses provide a viable solution

Catalyst CEO Deborah Gillis strongly advocates increasing monetary bonuses for leaders who deliberately promoted women and docking the pay for those who do not.

"We know that women face a glass ceiling [and] for women of color it's a concrete ceiling," Gillis said in an interview with Fairygodboss in 2016. "Given that 95 percent of leadership positions at some of the largest companies are occupied by men, they need to be champions of gender equality."

Tying diversity goals to financial benefits signifies that companies take diversity advancement goals more seriously and pushes leaders to be accountable for their behaviors and confront their unconscious biases.

"Who gets promoted? Who gets that new opportunity?" says Gillis. "It should be people who manage in a way that's inclusionary."

This idea is starting to gain traction. In fact, a few pace-setting organizations have already implemented this idea.

Companies That Tie Bonuses to Diversity Goals

Microsoft and Intel have both said diversity is one of the strategic performance goals that determine 50 percent of executives' annual cash incentives. This is described in the companies' proxy statement, as reported by TheCorporateCounsel.net. For Microsoft, this move came in 2016 following a year of decline in the number of women that make up its workforce, as reported by .

In 2015, Intel's then CEO Brian Krzanich set a goal to reach "full-representation" by 2020, as reported by . Intel defined full representation as having a workforce that is reflective of the available talent pool in the technology industry, and earmarked $300 million to spend towards strategic initiatives to achieve their goal. Intel baked diversity and inclusion goals into the business strategy, with seven percent of all employee bonuses tied to hiring and retention goals. To encourage referrals of more diverse candidates, Intel doubled the referral bonus for staff who referred diverse candidates.

The chip-maker also invested in initiatives like Warmline, which catches workers who may be thinking about leaving because they do not feel challenged or included. In October 2018, the firm announced they had achieved "full representation." According to Barbara Whye, its Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer, women and underrepresented groups like Hispanic and African-American workers are now leaving at a slower rate.

Johnson & Johnson: Each Johnson & Johnson department is held to very specific goals based on metrics styled similarly to other business objectives. "Until you actually put metrics on these things... you don't get the right outcomes," Sandra Peterson, Johnson & Johnson's Group Worldwide Chairman, told The Wall Street Journal. "The signal of the importance of something is whether you're actually measuring it and you're holding people accountable to improving those numbers."

Facebook: Staff recruiters were given points for successfully recruiting diverse candidates. These points apply to Facebook's internal ratings system and lead to stronger performance reviews and potential bonuses. While the company still has a long way to go (the number of Hispanic and black employees has remained stagnant within the U.S. offices), the percentage of female employees rose to 33 percent in 2016.

Just last month, Facebook added a new metric to its employee bonus formula: employees' ability to tackle problems like misinformation and hate speech on its service. As reported by , this change came about after Facebook faced mounting pressure from consumers, advocacy groups and regulators to clamp down on illicit content and privacy breaches.

Uber: Former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder's report regarding his investigation of Uber's sexual harassment problems endorsed the "bonus as carrot" approach. Under this tactic, Uber would incorporate "ethical business practices, diversity and inclusion, and other values from Uber's Business Code into its executive compensation program." Based on public information, it's not clear the extent to which Uber baked D&I targets into its executive compensation program. However, Uber now supports Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) and published on its website that "employees who showed significant leadership in ERGs receive a special bonus in recognition of their work to further inclusion at Uber."

At this point, there is a strong business case to be made for taking diversity seriously. Companies that aren't proactive from within may soon face pressure from shareholders and employees.

Google ShareHolders Call on Board to Address Gender and Racial Diversity

Photo by Office Snapshots

In the summer of 2018 and again just last month, shareholders of Google's parent company, Alphabet Inc., have called on the Alphabet board to address issues related to gender and racial diversity, and tie these metrics to executive compensation.

A proposal delivered by Google shareholders and backed by Google employees calls for the board of its parent company, Alphabet, to address issues related to gender and racial diversity, and tying these metrics to executive compensation, Bloomberg reports.

The shareholder resolution states the lack of diversity in tech is a "crisis" that "threatens worker safety, talent retention, product development, and customer service." The resolution also notes Google employees are not satisfied with the company's response to a series of concerns raised in the past year, including ending forced arbitration and adding a worker representative to its board.

"We believe executives are out to lunch on several key social risks facing the company," Pat Tomaino, Director of Socially Responsible Investing for Zevin Asset Management LLC, a Google shareholder, told Bloomberg. Last year, Zevin and others introduced a similar shareholder proposal backed by Google employees that would tie diversity metrics to performance. Alphabet rejected the proposal.

The most recent resolution claims Alphabet "has not responded adequately to key demands" made by workers in a massive walkout in November, such as adding a worker representative to its board and ending forced arbitration for its entire workforce. It also asks the board's compensation committee to look into including "sustainability metrics"-such as executive diversity- into its bonus system or stock vesting protocols.

Tell Us What You Think

Does your organization have diversity targets? To reach your goals, what programs and initiatives have you implemented? Tell us what you think in the comments below or on Twitter.
Banner photo by Pepi Stojanovski on Unsplash

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These Companies Are Tying Executive Bonuses To Diversity

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"What gets measured gets improved." Legendary management consultant Peter Drucker famously said these words 40 years ago and they're just as relevant today. Corporate America has taken this advice to heart. The business community has a long history of using bonuses to get their executives and employees to shape up and improve performance.

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We are holding ourselves accountable for creating a culture of inclusion and increasing representation across every team at Apple.

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Looking back. Stepping forward.

Data continues to inform our efforts to lead in building a workforce that represents our users and our world. We've made investments to strengthen the diverse communities both within and outside Google.

Read the report

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Data continues to inform our efforts to lead in building a workforce that represents our users and our world. We've made investments to strengthen the diverse communities both within and outside Google. Read the report

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7 of the most surprising facts about global gender gaps

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While progress on reaching gender parity has slowed in the pandemic, the Global Gender Gap Report 2021 reveals some areas of improvement and a few surprises.

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In 2015, the 193 member countries of the United Nations came together to commit to 17 Sustainable Development Goals. Goal 5 focused on gender equality and set the ambitious target of achieving gender equality and empowering women and girls everywhere by 2030. Five years later, large gender gaps remain across the world, and the early evidence suggests that the COVID-19 pandemic has had a regressive effect on gender equality.

How can we ensure that the role of women in the workplace and in society is central to efforts to rebuild economies in the COVID-19 era, and that women do not fall further behind? As world leaders at the UN General Assembly assess progress, look ahead to recovery, and commemorate the 25th anniversary of the Fourth World Conference on Women and the Beijing declaration, we offer our perspectives on the ten things everyone should know about gender equality.

1. Tackling the global gender gap will boost global GDP

Gender inequality is not only a pressing moral and social issue but also a critical economic challenge. A 2015 report from the McKinsey Global Institute (MGI), The Power of Parity: How advancing women's equality can add $12 trillion to global growth, explored the economic potential available if the global gender gap was narrowed. Five years ago, women generated 37 percent of global GDP despite accounting for 50 percent of the global working-age population. The research found that in a best-in-region scenario in which all countries match the performance of the country in their region that has made the most progress toward gender equality, $12 trillion a year could be added to GDP in 2025. That would be equivalent in size to the GDP of Japan, Germany, and the United Kingdom combined, and roughly double the likely growth in global GDP contributed by female workers between 2014 and 2025 in a business-as-usual scenario. Both advanced and developing economies would stand to gain considerably; all regions could achieve at least 8 percent in incremental GDP over business-as-usual levels. In a full-potential scenario in which women match men's participation in the workforce, their sector mix, and their full-time mix of jobs, the additional GDP opportunity could be $28 trillion, or an additional 26 percent of annual global GDP in 2025. That would be roughly equivalent to the GDP of the United States and China. As we note in item number 6, the COVID-19 pandemic has added new urgency-and new risks-to achieving the economic benefits of gender parity. We have updated our calculations accordingly.

2. Progress toward gender equality has been marginal since 2015; large gaps remain

Even before the COVID-19 crisis, global progress in tackling gender gaps-in both work and society-had been marginal since 2015. MGI mapped 15 indicators of gender equality in work (how men and women engage in paid work, how they share unpaid work, and their representation in high-productivity and formal jobs, and in leading positions in the economy) and society (essential services and enablers of economic opportunity like digital and financial inclusion, legal protection and political voice, and physical security and autonomy). Gender equality in society and gender equality in work are correlated based on MGI's analysis of 125 countries. While absolute scores on equality in society tend to be higher than those of equality in work for most countries, we found virtually no countries with high equality on social indicators and low equality in employment and labor markets. This suggests that solutions need to tackle both.

We aggregated the 15 indicators into a Gender Parity Score, or GPS, ranging from zero (no gender equality) to one (full gender equality). In the past five years, progress has been marginal. Gender gaps remain across all regions (Exhibit 1). In 2015, the global GPS was 0.60; today, it is 0.61. For gender equality in work, the overall score in 2019 was 0.52, up from 0.51 in 2015. For gender equality in society, the overall score in 2019 was 0.67, up from 0.66 in 2015. These trends are similar across regions. The Middle East and North Africa region experienced the biggest increase in gender equality, rising from a global GPS of 0.47 in 2015 to 0.50 in 2019. However, some regions have experienced declines in either gender equality in work or gender equality in society since 2015.

All is not doom and gloom-there are significant bright spots to celebrate. Maternal mortality is decreasing in most places, and literacy and secondary education enrollment are increasing in many countries. At work, too, most countries are making slow and steady progress in equality. McKinsey has conducted research on gender diversity in North American companies in partnership with LeanIn.Org on since 2015. The research finds that 87 percent of North American companies today report gender diversity is a top priority, compared with 74 percent in 2015, but this reported priority still needs to translate into more decisive action. Representation of women in the C-suite in North America has increased to 21 percent, from 17 percent in 2015.

3. Over the past two decades, while women in advanced economies have made large gains as workers, consumers, and savers, they have faced rising costs and insecurity

Although women in advanced economies of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development have made far-reaching gains as workers, consumers, and savers over the past two decades, much of this progress has been offset by rising costs and new forms of insecurity that disproportionately affect women. Between 2000 and 2018, women accounted for two-thirds of 45 million jobs created in 22 OECD countries, but many of these jobs were part-time or independent work that were less secure and offered lower pay and fewer benefits. In this period, female part-time employment increased by 2.3 percentage points, versus a 0.7-percentage-point increase in full-time employment for women. As consumers, women-and men-benefited from a sharp decline in the prices of many discretionary goods and services such as communications and recreation, but that was offset by rising costs of housing, healthcare, and education that absorbed 54 to 107 percent of the average household's income gains in Australia, France, the United Kingdom, and the United States. As savers, the outlook for women is also challenging. One study found that while women's median net wealth is higher overall than it was two decades ago, a large gender gap remains. In Europe, women's median net wealth is 62 percent that of men.

4. Women continue to work a double shift at home

While women face inequality in the world of work, they also face inequalities in the home. Around the world, women do three times as much unpaid care work as men. As one of many examples around the world, the "double shift" is a fact of life for millions of women in China, who go out to work but then do the lion's share of work in the home as well. On average, they work nearly nine hours a day, and only about half of that is paid. Putting the two together, on average women in China work almost one entire day a week more than men. In some countries like India, women do almost ten times as much unpaid care work as men. This phenomenon is by no means confined to developing economies; it is a consistent fact that women work a double shift in advanced economies, too. In the United States, for instance, women still do almost twice as much unpaid care work as men; 54 percent of women but only 22 percent of men report doing all or most of the housework. Even among individuals who earn the majority of their household's income, 43 percent of women who are primary household income earners continue to do all or most of the household work, compared with only 12 percent of men. In addition, working women are more likely than their male colleagues to have a working spouse: 81 percent of women are part of a dual-career couple and have two careers to balance, while only 56 percent of men are part of a dual-career couple.

5. Women face growing challenges from automation

Growing automation adoption adds to the challenges that women face in the workplace. MGI research found that the share of women whose jobs are replaced by machines and will likely need to make job transitions due to automation is roughly the same as for men: up to one in four over the next decade may have to shift to a different occupation. Between 40 million and 160 million women globally may need to transition between occupations by 2030, often into higher-skill roles (Exhibit 2).

The particular challenge for women is that long-standing barriers make it harder for them to adapt to the future of work. Women and men alike need to develop (1) the skills that will be in demand; (2) the flexibility and mobility needed to negotiate labor-market transitions successfully; and (3) the access to and knowledge of technology necessary to work with automated systems, including participating in its creation. Unfortunately, women often face long-established and pervasive structural and societal barriers that could hinder them in all three of these areas. Women may have less time to refresh or learn new skills or to search for employment because they spend much more time than men on unpaid care work. They may also face financial constraints in doing so. And they may not have the professional networks and sponsors that could make it easier for them to navigate job transitions, among other factors. Moreover, women tend to have less access to digital technology and lower participation in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields than men. If women make these transitions, they could find more productive, better-paid work; if they don't, they could face a growing wage gap or leave the labor market altogether.

6. The challenge for women is now even greater as they experience economic fallout from COVID-19

Although the early evidence suggests that the COVID-19 infection has been more deadly for men than women-the death rate for men in countries like China, Italy, and South Korea has been almost double the rate for women-women's economic prospects have been hit the hardest. On employment, our research has found that women's jobs globally are 1.8 times as vulnerable to this crisis as men's jobs. Women make up 39 percent of global employment but accounted for 54 percent of overall job losses as of May 2020. Globally, part of the reason is that women are disproportionately represented in industries that are expected to decline the most in 2020 due to COVID-19 (Exhibit 3). Another factor is that during the pandemic, even more unpaid care work such as childcare and home schooling fell to women as nurseries and schools closed; in the United States, for example, the amount of time women spend on household responsibilities has increased by 1.5 to two hours, according to one study. The pandemic may have had noneconomic consequences for women, too-some reports suggest that the prevalence of violence against women from an intimate partner may have increased during lockdowns. If no action is taken to counter the gender-regressive impacts of COVID-19, we calculate that global GDP growth could be $1 trillion lower in 2030 than it would be if women's unemployment simply tracked that of men in each sector. That hit to growth could be even larger if increased childcare responsibilities, a slower recovery, and reduced public and private spending on services such as education and childcare force women to leave the labor market permanently. However, if action is taken to advance gender equality, $12 trillion could be added to global GDP in 2030 compared with the baseline, as noted earlier; this implies a $13 trillion potential compared with the gender-regressive scenario in which global GDP slides back by $1 trillion in 2030. A middle path-taking action only after the crisis has subsided rather than now-would reduce the potential opportunity by more than $5 trillion.

7. We can grow our way out of some gender equality issues but not others

Even if policy makers and companies manage to craft a robust economic recovery from the COVID-19 crisis, there is no guarantee that a resumption of economic growth will help revive progress toward gender equality. For many years, it has been clear that economic growth (rising per capita GDP) does not lift all segments of the population-we cannot grow our way out of some aspects of gender equality.

In MGI's 2015 power of parity report, we identified ten "impact zones." These are the largest concentrations of gender inequality, where action to tackle gender gaps would have the most impact. In five global impact zones, gender inequality is high whether women live in an advanced or emerging economy: blocked economic potential (including women's participation in leadership positions and formal work), time spent in unpaid care work, fewer legal rights, political underrepresentation, and violence against women. Today, for every 100 men in leadership positions globally, there are just 37 women. One in three women globally, including in developed countries like the United States, has experienced violence from an intimate partner at some time in her life. In these impact zones, economic growth alone is insufficient to guarantee progress; sustained and proactive interventions will be needed.

In contrast, in some geographies, economic growth could help advance gender inequality in five regional impact zones where certain aspects of gender inequality are most prominent. They are low labor-force participation in quality jobs (in South Asia, the Middle East and North Africa, and sub-Saharan Africa), low maternal and reproductive health (in sub-Saharan Africa), unequal education levels (in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa), financial and digital exclusion (in South Asia, the Middle East and North Africa, and sub-Saharan Africa), and girl-child vulnerability (in China and South Asia). For many of these impact zones, economic growth can increase the provision of services that could help improve outcomes. In Africa, for instance, rising per capita GDP should enable more healthcare provision, reducing maternal mortality. As countries increase their standard of living, girls typically attain increasing levels of education. In developed countries, women are now outperforming men academically on many dimensions. In the United States, for example, women receive 57 percent of college degrees, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, and have higher overall average GPAs (but still lag behind men in STEM graduation rates).

8. Companies that are gender and ethnically diverse outperform their peers

Advancing gender equality is not just an opportunity for countries; companies also stand to gain. McKinsey research on Diversity Matters (2015), on Delivering through Diversity (2018), and most recently in May 2020 on Diversity Wins examined whether companies with higher levels of both gender and ethnic diversity have greater economic performance. The 2020 research examined a data set of more than 1,000 large companies in 15 countries and found that companies in the top quartile for gender diversity were 25 percent more likely to have above-average profitability than companies in the fourth quartile. Companies in the top quartile of ethnic and cultural diversity were 36 percent more likely to outperform on profitability. The highest-performing companies on both profitability and diversity had more women in line roles (that is, owning a line of business) than in staff roles on their executive teams. The research also found a penalty for bottom-quartile performance on gender diversity: companies in the bottom quartile for both gender and ethnic diversity were 27 percent more likely to underperform the industry average than all other firms.

Given all the competing priorities arising from the current pandemic, there is a significant risk that inclusion and diversity may recede as strategic priorities for organizations as companies focus on recovery. Downgrading diversity could well be a mistake, compromising performance and thwarting efforts to strengthen recovery over time.

9. The corporate career pipeline for women is leaky, especially early on

Over the years, our research with LeanIn.Org has found some progress in the advancement of women through the corporate pipeline in North America. In the 2019 Women in the Workplace report, we found that, of entry-level workers, 48 percent were women, compared with 45 percent in 2015. Women made up 21 percent of the C-suite, compared with 17 percent in 2019. However, as these numbers show, women are underrepresented at all levels of organizations, and the pipeline is leaky between the entry level and the C-suite. The biggest obstacle to women on the corporate ladder is a "broken rung" in the first step up to the manager level. For every 100 men hired or promoted to manager, there are only 72 women-and only 58 black women. After this initial degree of drop-off, it is very difficult for women to make up the ground lost. If differences in promotion rate are aggregated across five years, this equates to a difference of one million women in leadership roles.

Women of color are especially underrepresented in the North American workforce and face the steepest drop-offs. In North America, 18 percent of entry-level positions are held by women of color, but their representation in the C-suite is 4 percent, according to our 2019 Women in the Workplace research. These outcomes are mirrored in the day-to-day experiences of women of color in the workforce-56 percent of black women say they and their peers have equal opportunity for growth, compared with 69 percent of white women. Women of color also experience more workplace "microaggressions." For example, 40 percent of black women and 30 percent of Asian women say they needed to provide more evidence of their competence than others, compared with 28 percent of white women and 14 percent of men.

We find similar trends across the world. Across Asia-Pacific, for instance, there is only one woman in leadership positions for every four men. In some countries in East Asia, there are only 12 to 20 women leaders for every 100 men.

10. All stakeholders need to work together to maintain and accelerate progress on gender equality

There is a huge amount to do, particularly given that the automation age and now COVID-19 mean that women face new challenges on top of old ones. The only way to breathe new life into efforts to meet Sustainable Development Goal 5 is for the main stakeholders to work together on comprehensive solutions to the complex issue of gender inequality. As governments design stimulus programs and companies look for restart strategies in the wake of the pandemic, it will be important not to ignore potential gender consequences; indeed, it's time to double down by putting gender at the heart of these initiatives to capture opportunities. More data will be needed to ensure greater transparency and understanding of gender consequences.

National governments can enable change on a broader front using the law. For instance, they can remove legal barriers against women working (such as regulations prohibiting women from working night shifts) and can enforce laws protecting women from violence. The policy tool kit is wide-ranging, from financial support for women such as cash transfers, to tax regulations, childcare programs, and ensuring that public infrastructure is built and designed with gender in mind. The importance of reducing the gender gap in who takes responsibility for caregiving cannot be overstated, and governments can play an important role here. Some governments have enacted quotas to ensure a minimum level of women in leadership roles. Others have accelerated gender equality through incentives for women's education, entrepreneurship, and business lending, for instance. Nongovernmental organizations also have an important role to play, for example in shaping attitudes and social norms. Many governments and NGOs have developed fruitful partnerships with companies to scale new solutions quickly. Finally, stimulus programs can be used to help invest in women and girls.

Companies can act on a number of fronts starting with their own employees, attracting, retaining, and promoting women and understanding where the pinch points in the talent pipeline are greatest. Leaders need to champion gender diversity, ensuring that hiring and promotions are fair and fostering an inclusive and respectful culture. In the COVID-19 era, many companies are exploring family-friendly policies, including flexible and part-time positions, to support workers experiencing an increased childcare burden, as well as rethinking performance reviews and promotions. Companies can use this moment to design and put in place policies and practices that can support women in the long term. Companies can also use their supply chains and procurement practices to support women-owned businesses and hold suppliers accountable to diversity and inclusion targets.

Individuals need to make a contribution, too, from advocating for themselves in their own careers to helping others advance through sponsorship and mentorship. At work, they can be proactive in supporting talented women and speaking up if they see unconscious bias or microaggressions. In their personal lives, they can explore their own biases, both conscious and unconscious. If they have families, they can aim to raise sons and daughters who are not constrained by gender. If they are investing, they can back companies that are driving gender equality in a way that is consistent with their values.

Five years after the introduction of the Sustainable Development Goals, progress on gender equality has been modest at best, and now the effort to narrow gender gaps faces new challenges in the form of automation trends and the regressive impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. With only ten years left to meet Goal 5, progress needs to accelerate. Achieving equality for half the world's population is a global imperative that risks being undermined by competing priorities in a complex world and by the challenges of recovering from the pandemic. Creating more opportunity for women and the next generation is an aspiration and a very real goal that can lift the global economy as well as contributing to a more just society. It is a goal we need to meet collectively.

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Ten things to know about gender equality

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Since 2015, progress has been marginal, and now COVID-19 has hit women hard. We offer ten facts about gender equality that everyone should know.

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The Business Case for Diversily and Inclusion

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The Business Case for Diversily and Inclusion

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This is a follow-up post from the "If your boss is still asking about the "business case" for diversity, your company's in trouble" article
Here's all the data you need to put together the D&I "business case" pitch deck. For the love of sweet baby goddess, stop wasting your precious time doing research that's been done too many times before.

1990: Harvard Business Review published " From Affirmative Action to Affirming Diversity " in which it stated, "In business terms, a diverse work force is not something your company ought to have; it's something your company does have, or soon will have. Learning to manage that diversity will make you more competitive."

1991: The Academy of Management published " Managing Cultural Diversity: Implications for Organizational Competitiveness" and concluded managing diversity gives organizations a competitive advantage.

2009: American Sociological Association published " Diversity Linked To Increased Sales Revenue And Profits, More Customers " and shared their incredible finding that "companies reporting the highest levels of racial diversity brought in nearly 15 times more sales revenue on average than those with the lowest levels of racial diversity."

2010: Kellogg School of Management published " Better Decisions through Diversity " in which it linked heterogeneity to innovative ideas and better team performance.

2013: Deloitte published " Waiter, is that inclusion in my soup? " in which they tied diversity and inclusion to better business performance (83%), responsiveness to customer needs (31%), and team collaboration (42%).

2013: Center for Talent Innovation published " Innovation, Diversity, and Market Growth " in which it found that publicly traded companies with 2D diversity (exhibiting both inherent and acquired diversity) were 70% more likely to capture a new market, 75% more likely to see ideas actually become productized, and 158% (no, that's not a typo) more likely to understand their target end-users and innovate effectively if one or more members on the team represent the user's demographic.

2014: Deloitte published " From diversity to inclusion" in which it stressed the importance of both diversity and inclusion in building high performing organizations and called diversity a business imperative: "And this means that diversity is no longer a "program" to be managed - it is a business imperative."

2014: Stephen Frost, in his book, "The Inclusion Imperative" notes that "discriminating against women, homosexuals, and disabled people is costing $64 billion dollars a year in the U.S. alone."

2015: McKinsey & Company publishes " Why Diversity Matters," in which it notes that "Companies in the top quartile for racial and ethnic diversity are 35 percent more likely to have financial returns above their respective national industry medians,"

2017: Deloitte's Global Human Capital Trends report shows the rising priority level of D&I among executives compared to previous years. Over two-thirds of executives rate D&I as an important issue while 38% of executives report their CEOs (not HR) being the primary sponsor of D&I initiatives. The report also highlights the alarming reality gap which shows most companies' D&I maturity levels being "very low."

2017: Boston Consulting Group (BCG) revealed its research that shows companies' "Total Societal Impact" has proven to be a statistically significant in creating a reliable growth path, a reduced risk of negative, even cataclysmic, events, and, most likely, increased longevity.

2017/2018: McKinsey & Company released another set of research findings that once again confirmed the statistical significance of having gender- and race-based diversity leading to better financial performance. It reminded the reader that "Creating an effective inclusion and diversity strategy is no small effort and requires strong, sustained, and inclusive leadership. But we, and many of the companies we studied, believe the potential benefits of stronger business performance are well worth it."

Want to add to this list? Email us at hello@visionawaken.com

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Compilation of Diversity & Inclusion "Business Case" Research Data

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This is a follow-up post from the " If your boss is still asking about the "business case" for diversity, your company's in trouble " article Here's all the data you need to put together the D&I "business case" pitch deck.

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Maybe it's happened to you with a stranger at a party, or with a casual acquaintance at work. If you're really lucky, it's happened to you during a job interview, or within minutes of meeting the roommates your college assigned you.

You clicked with them.

It can happen whether you're shy or outgoing, whether the topic of conversation is one you're into or one you're barely familiar with. But the experience of clicking is unforgettable. Everything the other person says resonates with you. Your speech rhythms match. Conversation flows like rushing water, unimpeded by a single awkward silence and unruffled by even a moment of annoyance, puzzlement, or misunderstanding: the social equivalent of a flawless, gold-medal ski run.

The experience of clicking can seem, in short, near-miraculous...which is just the sort of challenge neuroscientists like. Insinuating that something can't be explained has the same kind of effect on researchers as waving a red flag in front of a bull. Of course they're going to hunt for the neurobiological underpinnings of clicking, and 2018 is shaping up to be a banner year for that.

If clicking with someone feels like you're "on the same wavelength," it turns out there's a good reason for that. In what's called "interpersonal synchronization," people click in an unspoken meeting of the minds about how long to linger before a museum painting or when to get up from the coffeehouse table. Such synchrony occurs when an overheard remark triggers in both of you a simultaneously raised eyebrow, when what you see on your companion's face reflects the feelings and thoughts inside your own brain. Your body language matches, what catches your attention catches his, you become impatient at the same time about the same things.

In a 2018 study of one version of syncing, neuroscientist Pavel Goldstein of the University of Colorado Boulder and colleagues enlisted 22 heterosexual couples, ages 23 to 32, and administered mildly painful heat on each woman's arm. As her partner offered comfort and sympathy, the researchers measured brain activity in each partner.

Simply being in each other's presence caused their brain waves to sync, as measured by EEG, particularly in wavelengths called the alpha-mu band. These brain waves are a mark of focused attention. Each couple was in sync, mirroring one another neurologically in terms of what they were focusing on-her pain, his efforts to comfort her (maybe second thoughts about volunteering for scientific experiments). When the man and woman held hands while she experienced the mild burn, synchrony, or what scientists call "brain-to-brain coupling," reached its zenith.

Seeing someone you love suffer is (hopefully) an unusual experience, but neural synchrony occurs in mundane situations, as well. In a 2018 study, 42 volunteers watched short video clips (ranging from America's Funniest Home Videos to an astronaut discussing seeing Earth from space, journalists debating a Barack Obama speech, and a homemade wedding film) while scientists measured their brain activity with fMRI. The scientists had previously mapped everyone's social network, noting who was whose friend, who was a friend of a friend, who was a friend twice removed, and so forth.

Brain activity while viewing the clips was "exceptionally similar among friends," said psychologist Thalia Wheatley of Dartmouth College, who led the study. "But that similarity decreases with increasing distance in the social network." In other words, friends were most similar in their patterns of neural activity, followed by friends of friends, and then friends of friends of friends. Those neural patterns, Wheatley said, suggest that "we are exceptionally similar to our friends in how we perceive and respond to the world around us. You click more with friends than with non-friends, which fits with our intuition that we resonate with some people more than others. There seem to be neurobiological reasons for that."

The brain regions with the most similar activity among friends included subcortical areas such as the nucleus accumbens and the amygdala, which are involved in motivation and processing emotions. There was also remarkable similarity in areas involved in deciding what to pay attention to, and regions in the inferior parietal lobe that have been linked to discerning others' mental states, processing the narrative content of stories, and generally making sense of the world.

Wheatley calls it neural homophily (the idea that like befriends like). Responding to the world in a similar way, as measured by brain activity, underlies the phenomenon of clicking: It's why you and that stranger at a party or assigned roommate laugh at the same things, want to chat endlessly about the same topic, and see the logic in the same argument. If two people interpret and respond to the world in similar ways, they're easily able to predict one another's thoughts and actions, Wheatley said. This increased predictability makes it easier to interact and communicate, which makes conversations and shared experiences more enjoyable. It also makes friendships more likely.

But homophily also describes how birds of a feather flock together, where the "feathers" are things like age, ethnicity, and education level: People tend to become friends with those of the same demographic characteristics. That raises the question of whether demographic traits cause particular neural patterns. If so, then similar brain-activity patterns in friends would simply be the result of people with similar education levels, ethnicities, and other traits-perhaps including ideological beliefs, recreational interests, and cultural preferences-gravitating toward one another. In other words, maybe those traits made people friends, and the neural activity was secondary, a mere bystander to the actual cause.

The scientists knew they had to settle that, and they think they did. Wheatley and her colleagues used standard statistical techniques to measure whether neural patterns were a so-called independent variable, not a mere reflection of something else (such as a demographic variable). They were. Even when controlling for similarities in age, gender, nationality, and ethnicity, brain-activity patterns were more similar between friends than friends of friends and greater-degrees-of-separation friends. "All of these were less predictive of friendship than neural response," Wheatley said.

There's a chicken-and-egg problem, however: Which came first, clicking due to neural synchrony or friendship? "We can't tease those two possibilities apart because our study looked at only one moment in time," Wheatley said. "Only a longitudinal study could tell us" whether people seek out (probably unconsciously) those with similar neural patterns and become friends, or whether friendship causes people's neural patterns to become more similar. She is conducting further studies to see whether shared experience drives neural similarity. In this case, people who are thrown together by forces beyond their control (like the roommate assignment lottery), and don't initially see the world in the same way, come to do so and go on to adopt other people's views.

Alternatively, "Maybe we look for people who are just like us in how they perceive and respond to the world, and find ourselves in an echo chamber," Wheatley said. She also plans to study strangers, measure their neurological responses to video clips, and see if similarity predicts whether they become friends when they meet.

Brain-to-brain coupling

The emerging understanding of clicking might shed light on some social mysteries. People whose conversations with strangers and even acquaintances are riddled with awkward silences might have neural patterns that are out of sync with almost everyone else's. They don't find the same things interesting, their attention rarely lands where others' does, and as a result they don't click. (This describes some people on the autism spectrum, but clicking has not been specifically studied in this population.)

Short of connecting brains with electrodes to sync their activity, there might be a way to increase your chances of clicking. We feel more connected with people whose postures, vocal rhythms, facial expressions, and even eyeblinks match our own. Maybe clicking can be triggered from the outside in: Consciously sync the actions you can control-posture, expression, and the like-with other people's, and your brain activity may follow. Click.

The complex things we do together-playing soccer, architecture, creating the internet, not to mention simply getting along-require us to quickly coordinate our actions. According to a paper in Trends in Cognitive Science in 2012 by Uri Hasson and colleagues, "Despite the central role of other individuals in shaping our minds, most cognitive studies focus on processes that occur within a single individual." They called for a shift "from a single-brain to a multi-brain frame of reference." They argued that we transmit signals that allow the neural processes in one brain to couple to those in another, creating a social network that leads to "complex joint behaviors that could not have emerged in isolation."
This article was originally published in the August issue of Mindful magazine. Read the original article.
Greater Good wants to know: Do you think this article will influence your opinions or behavior?

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Maybe it's happened to you with a stranger at a party, or with a casual acquaintance at work. If you're really lucky, it's happened to you during a job interview, or within minutes of meeting the roommates your college assigned you. You clicked with them.

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The 2019 EM2030 SDG Gender Index

In the 2019 Global Report "Harnessing the power of data for gender equality: Introducing the 2019 EM2030 SDG Gender Index", we introduce the 2019 SDG Gender Index. The index is the most comprehensive tool available to explore the state of gender equality across 129 countries (covering 95% of the world's girls and women), 14 of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and 51 targets linked to issues inherent in the SDGs.
The 2019 SDG Gender Index finds that, with just 11 years to go until 2030, nearly 40% of the world's girls and women - 1.4 billion - live in countries failing on gender equality.
Another 1.4 billion live in countries that "barely pass". Even the highest-scoring countries have more to do, particularly on complex issues such as climate change, gender budgeting and public services, equal representation in powerful positions, gender pay gaps, and gender-based violence. No country in the world has reached the "last mile" on gender equality.

2019 Global Report Overview

Section 1: A foreword from EM2030's partners: The African Women's Development and Communication Network ( ), The Asian-Pacific Resource & Research Centre for Women ( ), Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation , the Committee for Latin America and the Caribbean for the Defense of Women's Rights ( ), , International Women's Health Coalition ( ), , ONE Campaign , Plan International , Women Deliver .

Section 2: Key findings from the 2019 EM2030 SDG Gender Index.

Section 3: Introducing the 2019 EM2030 SDG Gender Index, the approach, what makes this index unique and how the findings should be interpreted.

Section 4: Key global findings, patterns and comparisons of index scores between and within the different regions: Asia and the Pacific, Europe and North America, Latin America and the Caribbean, The Middle East and North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa.

Section 5: Regional overviews of index scores and gender equality context, and thematic deep drives on 1) inequalities in girls' education, 2) women in science and technology research positions, 3) girls' and women's physical safety, 4) legal barriers for women, 5) women in government.

Section 6: Leaving no one behind: multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination of girls and women.

Section 7: Recommendations for actions.

Section 8: Annexes including the indicator framework, methodology and design of the index.

Download 2019 SDG Gender Index Graphs

SDG Gender Index, Issues, Figure 1

SDG Gender Index, Country Scores, Map, Figure 2

SDG Gender Index, Number of Girls and Women Living in Countries by Index Score Grouping, Figure 3

SDG Gender Index, Countries by Index Score Grouping, Figure 4

SDG Gender Index, Index Scores and National Per Capita Income, Figure 5

SDG Gender Index, Global Scores by Goals, Figure 6

SDG Gender Index, Index Scores Asia and the Pacific, Figure 7

Proportion of Ministerial/Senior Government Positions Held by Women, Figure 8

Secondary Education Attainment Among Women, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Figure 9

SDG Gender Index, Index Scores Europe and North America, Figure 10

Women in STEM Research and STEM Expenditure, Europe and North America, Figure 11

Extent of Freedom of Association and Collective Bargaining Rights in Law, Figure 12

SDG Gender Index, Index Scores Latin America and the Caribbean, Figure 13

Proportions of Women Justices on a Country's Supreme Court of Higher Court, Figure 14

Women's Perception of Feeling Safe Walking Alone at Night and Female Homicide Rates, Figure 15

SDG Gender Index, Index Scores Middle East and North Africa, Figure 16

Proportion of Women Who Have Made or Received Digital Payments in the Past Year, Figure 17

Extent of Legal Barriers That Women Face in Work and Land Ownership, Figure 18

SDG Gender Index, Index Scores Sub-Saharan Africa, Figure 19

Climate Vulnerability Score in Sub-Saharan Africa, Figure 20

Proportion of Ministerial or Senior Government Roles Held by Women, Figure 21

Awareness, Attitude Towards, and Prevalence of Female Circumcision by Ethnic Group of Household Head in Nigeria, Figure 22

Median Earnings by Selected Characteristics in the United States, Figure 23

Global Estimates of New HIV Infections Among 15-24 Year Olds by Sex, Figure 24

Employment Rates for Persons With and Without Disabilities by Sex in 51 Countries, Figure 25

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2019 Global Report (En,Fr,Sp) - Equal Measures 2030

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In the 2019 Global Report "Harnessing the power of data for gender equality: Introducing the 2019 EM2030 SDG Gender Index", we introduce the 2019 SDG Gender Index. The index is the most comprehensive tool available to explore the state of gender equality across 129 countries (covering 95% of the world's girls and women), 14 of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and 51 targets linked to issues inherent in the SDGs.

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Almost 90% of people are biased against women, according to a new index that highlights the "shocking" extent of the global backlash towards gender equality.

Despite progress in closing the equality gap, 91% of men and 86% of women hold at least one bias against women in relation to politics, economics, education, violence or reproductive rights.

The first gender social norm index analysed data from 75 countries that, collectively, are home to more than 80% of the global population. It found that almost half of people feel men are superior political leaders and more than 40% believe men make better business executives. Almost a third of men and women think it's acceptable for a man to beat his wife.

The UN Development Programme (UNDP), which published its findings on Thursday, is calling on governments to introduce legislation and policies that address engrained prejudice.

"We all know we live in a male-dominated world, but with this report we are able to put some numbers behind these biases," said Pedro Conceição, director of the UNDP's human development report office. "And the numbers, I consider them shocking.

"What our report shows is a pattern that repeats itself again and again. Big progress in more basic areas of participation and empowerment. But when we get to more empowering areas, we seem to be hitting a wall."

Conceição said the data show that perceptions and expectations in society about the role of women are prejudiced against them.

"While in many countries these biases are shrinking, in many others the biases are actually sliding back. If you take the overall average of the information we have, we show that on average we are sliding back - that biases, instead of shrinking, are growing back."

The figures are based on two sets of data collected from almost 100 countries through the World Values Survey, which examines changing attitudes in almost 100 countries and how they impact on social and political life. The figures cover periods from 2005-09 and 2010-2014, the latest year for which there is data.

Of the 75 countries studied, there were only six in which the majority of people held no bias towards women. But while more than 50% of people in Andorra, Australia, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway and Sweden were free from gender prejudice, even here the pattern was not one of unmitigated progress.

Sweden, for example, was one of several countries - including South Africa, India, Rwanda and Brazil - in which the percentage of people who held at least one bias increased over the nine years the data covered. More than half of people in the UK and the US held at least one bias.

"UNDP is very conscious of the backlash against women's rights. We are aware and we are concerned, so we think the report ... is an answer to push back the pushback," said Raquel Lagunas, acting director of UNDP's gender team. "We cannot pick and choose, [saying]: 'These human rights are for women, and these ones are not.'"

Lagunas said it was difficult to predict whether attitudes have changed more recently, but suggested the report's findings "may make the road ahead more difficult".

"We can see big progress in the next five years [in some countries] and still at the same time see pushback in other countries," she said.

"We need to invest and double efforts to address the hardcore areas of power - political power, economic power - and we think, we hope, this publication is going to have impact in the countries we [UNDP] work, and open conversations with governments, because gender equality is a choice."

The report comes as rights campaigners call on world leaders to accelerate action to meet global targets on gender equality.

"As representatives of leading organisations championing gender equality, we're raising the alarm about the pace of progress. There is no time left for business as usual: gender equality can be achieved for billions of girls and women by 2030, but it requires everyone to move faster," read an open letter, signed by nine presidents and CEOs of organisations including Plan International, Women Deliver, the One Campaign and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

"We've found that, if the current pace continues, 67 countries - home to 2.1 billion girls and women - will not achieve any of the key gender equality targets we studied by 2030."

These countries are not just the poorest. If trends over the past two decades continue, the US will be among them.

In June, a gender index published by the Equal Measures 2030 partnership found that no country was on track to achieve gender equality by 2030, the deadline to achieve the UN sustainable development goals.

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Nine out of 10 people found to be biased against women

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Almost 90% of people are biased against women, according to a new index that highlights the "shocking" extent of the global backlash towards gender equality. Despite progress in closing the equality gap, 91% of men and 86% of women hold at least one bias against women in relation to politics, economics, education, violence or reproductive rights.

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Gender inequality is not only a pressing moral and social issue but also a critical economic challenge. If women-who account for half the world's working-age population-do not achieve their full economic potential, the global economy will suffer. While all types of inequality have economic consequences, in McKinsey Global Institute (MGI) report, The power of parity: How advancing women's equality can add $12 trillion to global growth, we focus on the economic implications of lack of parity between men and women.

A "best in region" scenario in which all countries match the rate of improvement of the fastest-improving country in their region could add as much as $12 trillion, or 11 percent, in annual 2025 GDP. In a "full potential" scenario in which women play an identical role in labor markets to that of men, as much as $28 trillion, or 26 percent, could be added to global annual GDP by 2025. MGI's full-potential estimate is about double the average estimate of other recent studies, reflecting the fact that MGI has taken a more comprehensive view of gender inequality in work.

Even after decades of progress toward making women equal partners with men in the economy and society, the gap between them remains large. We acknowledge that gender parity in economic outcomes (such as participation in the workforce or presence in leadership positions) is not necessarily a normative ideal, as it involves human beings making personal choices about the lives they lead; we also recognize that men can be disadvantaged relative to women in some instances. However, we believe that the world, including the private sector, would benefit by focusing on the large economic opportunity of improving parity between men and women.

A look at some of the highlights from our report:

MGI has mapped 15 gender-equality indicators for 95 countries and finds that 40 of them have high or extremely high levels of gender inequality on at least half of the indicators. The indicators fall into four categories: equality in work, essential services and enablers of economic opportunity, legal protection and political voice, and physical security and autonomy.

We consider a "full potential" scenario in which women participate in the economy identically to men and find that it would add up to $28 trillion, or 26 percent, to annual global GDP by 2025 compared with a business-as-usual scenario. This impact is roughly equivalent to the size of the combined Chinese and US economies today. We also analyzed an alternative "best in region" scenario in which all countries match the progress toward gender parity of the fastest-improving country in their region. This would add as much as $12 trillion in annual 2025 GDP, equivalent in size to the current GDP of Germany, Japan, and the United Kingdom combined, or twice the likely growth in global GDP contributed by female workers between 2014 and 2025 in a business-as-usual scenario.

Both advanced and developing countries stand to gain. In 46 of the 95 countries analyzed, the best-in-region outcome could increase annual GDP by 2025 by more than 10 percent over the business-as-usual case, with the highest relative regional boost in India and Latin America.

MGI's new Gender Parity Score (GPS) measures the distance each country has traveled toward gender parity, which is set at 1.00. The regional GPS is lowest in South Asia (excluding India) at 0.44 and highest in North America and Oceania at 0.74. Using the GPS, MGI has established a strong link between gender equality in society, attitudes and beliefs about the role of women, and gender equality in work. The latter is not achievable without the former two elements. We found virtually no countries with high gender equality in society but low gender equality in work. Economic development enables countries to close gender gaps, but progress in four areas in particular-education level, financial and digital inclusion, legal protection, and unpaid care work-could help accelerate progress.

MGI has identified ten "impact zones" (issue-region combinations) where effective action would move more than 75 percent of women affected by gender inequality globally closer to parity. The global impact zones, which are globally pervasive issues, are blocked economic potential, time spent in unpaid care work, fewer legal rights, political underrepresentation, and violence against women. The regional impact zones, concentrated in certain regions of the world, are low labor-force participation in quality jobs, low maternal and reproductive health, unequal education levels, financial and digital exclusion, and vulnerability of female children.

Six types of intervention are necessary to bridge the gender gap: financial incentives and support; technology and infrastructure; the creation of economic opportunity; capability building; advocacy and shaping attitudes; and laws, policies, and regulations. We identify some 75 potential interventions that could be evaluated and tailored to suit the social and economic context of each impact zone and country. Tackling gender inequality will require change within businesses as well as new coalitions. The private sector will need to play a more active role in concert with governments and nongovernmental organizations, and companies could benefit both directly and indirectly by taking action.

How does your country rate on gender equality? Explore our comprehensive data set on gender equality and economic growth in different regions and countries around the world on Tableau Public.

Would you like to learn more about the McKinsey Global Institute?

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How advancing women’s equality can add $12 trillion to global growth

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Gender inequality is not only a pressing moral and social issue but also a critical economic challenge. If women-who account for half the world's working-age population-do not achieve their full economic potential, the global economy will suffer.

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A new study released today by Catalyst demonstrates that companies with a higher representation of women in senior management positions financially outperform companies with proportionally fewer women at the top. These findings support the business case for diversity, which asserts companies that recruit, retain, and advance women will have a competitive advantage in the global marketplace.

In the study The Bottom Line: Connecting Corporate Performance and Gender Diversity, sponsored by BMO Financial Group, Catalyst used two measures to examine financial performance: Return on Equity (ROE) and Total Return to Shareholders (TRS). After examining the 353 companies that remained on the F500 list for four out of five years between 1996 and 2000, Catalyst found:

* The group of companies with the highest representation of women on their senior management teams had a 35-percent higher ROE and a 34-percent higher TRS than companies with the lowest women's representation.

* Consumer Discretionary, Consumer Staples, and Financial Services companies with the highest representation of women in senior management experienced a considerably higher ROE and TRS than companies with the lowest representation of women.

"Business leaders increasingly request hard data to support the link between gender diversity and corporate performance. This study gives business leaders unquestionable evidence that a link does exist," said Catalyst President Ilene H. Lang. "We controlled for industry and company differences and the conclusion was still the same. Top-performing companies have a higher representation of women on their leadership teams."

"The Catalyst study confirms my own long-held conviction that it makes the best of business sense to have a diverse workforce and an equitable, supportive workplace," said Tony Comper, Chairman and CEO of BMO Financial Group, sole sponsor of the research.

A Note on Methodology Catalyst divided the 353 companies into four roughly equal quartiles based on the representation of women in senior management. The top quartile is the 88 companies with the highest gender diversity on leadership teams. The bottom quartile is the 89 companies with the lowest gender diversity. Catalyst then compared the two groups based on overall ROE and TRS.

"It is important to realize that our findings demonstrate a link between women's leadership and financial performance, but not causation," said Susan Black, Catalyst Vice President of Canada and Research and Information Services. "There are many variables that can contribute to outstanding financial performance, but clearly, companies that understand the competitive advantage of gender diversity are smart enough to leverage that diversity."

About Catalyst
Catalyst is the leading research and advisory organization working to advance women in business, with offices in New York, San Jose, and Toronto. As an independent, not-for-profit membership organization, Catalyst uses a solutions-oriented approach that has earned the confidence of business leaders around the world. Catalyst conducts research on all aspects of women's career advancement and provides strategic and web-based consulting services on a global basis to help companies and firms advance women and build inclusive work environments. In addition, we honor exemplary business initiatives that promote women's leadership with our annual Catalyst Award. Catalyst is consistently ranked No. 1 among U.S. nonprofits focused on women's issues by The American Institute of Philanthropy.

About BMO Financial Group
BMO Financial Group-founded in 1817 as Bank of Montreal, Canada's first bank-is one of the largest financial services providers in North America, offering a broad range of retail banking, wealth management, and investment banking products and solutions. BMO serves clients across Canada and in the United States through its Canadian retail arm, BMO Bank of Montreal; BMO Nesbitt Burns, one of Canada's largest full-service investment firms; Chicago-based Harris Bank, a major U.S. mid-west financial services organization; the Harris wealth management group, and Harris Nesbit which provides investment banking services across the U.S.

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Catalyst Study Reveals Financial Performance is Higher For Companies with More Women at the Top

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A new study released today by Catalyst demonstrates that companies with a higher representation of women in senior management positions financially outperform companies with proportionally fewer women at the top. These findings support the business case for diversity, which asserts companies that recruit, retain, and advance women will have a competitive advantage in the global marketplace.

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https://www.gendereconomy.org/the-debate-about-quotas/

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McKinsey Study: Delivering Through Diversity

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McKinsey Study: Delivering Through Diversity

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Our latest research reinforces the link between diversity and company financial performance-and suggests how organizations can craft better inclusion strategies for a competitive edge.

Awareness of the business case for inclusion and diversity is on the rise. While social justice typically is the initial impetus behind these efforts, companies have increasingly begun to regard inclusion and diversity as a source of competitive advantage, and specifically as a key enabler of growth. Yet progress on diversification initiatives has been slow. And companies are still uncertain about how they can most effectively use diversity and inclusion to support their growth and value-creation goals.

Our latest study of diversity in the workplace, Delivering through diversity, reaffirms the global relevance of the link between diversity-defined as a greater proportion of women and a more mixed ethnic and cultural composition in the leadership of large companies-and company financial outperformance. The new analysis expands on our 2015 report, Why diversity matters, by drawing on an enlarged data set of more than 1,000 companies covering 12 countries, measuring not only profitability (in terms of earnings before interest and taxes, or EBIT) but also longer-term value creation (or economic profit), exploring diversity at different levels of the organization, considering a broader understanding of diversity (beyond gender and ethnicity), and providing insight into best practices.

Diversity and financial performance in 2017

In the original research, using 2014 diversity data, we found that companies in the top quartile for gender diversity on their executive teams were 15 percent more likely to experience above-average profitability than companies in the fourth quartile. In our expanded 2017 data set this number rose to 21 percent and continued to be statistically significant. For ethnic and cultural diversity, the 2014 finding was a 35 percent likelihood of outperformance, comparable to the 2017 finding of a 33 percent likelihood of outperformance on EBIT margin; both were also statistically significant (Exhibit 1).

Several other findings on gender diversity, ethnic diversity, and diversity around the world are also interesting.

Gender diversity

Gender diversity is correlated with both profitability and value creation. In our 2017 data set, we found a positive correlation between gender diversity on executive teams and both our measures of financial performance: top-quartile companies on executive-level gender diversity worldwide had a 21 percent likelihood of outperforming their fourth-quartile industry peers on EBIT margin, and they also had a 27 percent likelihood of outperforming fourth-quartile peers on longer-term value creation, as measured using an economic-profit (EP) margin (Exhibit 2).

For gender, the executive team shows the strongest correlation. We found that having gender diversity on executive teams, specifically, to be consistently positively correlated with higher profitability across geographies in our data set, underpinning the role that executive teams-where the bulk of strategic and operational decisions are made-play in the financial performance of a company.

Executive teams of outperforming companies have more women in line roles versus staff roles. We tested the hypothesis that having more women executives in line roles (typically revenue generating) is more closely correlated with financial outperformance. We know from research, such as our Women in the Workplace 2017 report, that women are underrepresented in line roles. In our data set, this holds true even for top-quartile gender-diverse companies experiencing above-average financial performance. Yet these top-quartile companies also have a greater proportion of women in line roles than do their fourth-quartile peers: 10 percent versus 1 percent of total executives, respectively (Exhibit 3).

Ethnic and cultural diversity

Top-team ethnic and cultural diversity is correlated with profitability. In our 2017 data set, we looked at racial and cultural diversity in six countries where the definition of ethnic diversity was consistent and our data were reliable. As in 2014, we found that companies with the most ethnically diverse executive teams-not only with respect to absolute representation but also of variety or mix of ethnicities -are 33 percent more likely to outperform their peers on profitability. That's comparable to the 35 percent outperformance reported in 2014, with both figures being statistically significant (Exhibit 4).

The penalty for not being diverse on both measures persists. Now, as previously, companies in the fourth quartile on both gender and ethnic diversity are more likely to underperform their industry peers on profitability: 29 percent in our 2017 data set.

Ethnic and cultural diversity on executive teams is low. We focused on our US and UK data sets to examine ethnically and culturally diverse representation among US and UK companies, considering the pipeline starting with university graduates. Black Americans comprise 10 percent of US graduates but hold only 4 percent of senior-executive positions, Hispanics and Latinos comprise 8 percent of graduates versus 4 percent of executives, and for Asian Americans, the numbers are 7 percent of graduates versus 5 percent of executives. In the United Kingdom, the disparity is even greater: 22 percent of university students identify as black and minority ethnic, yet only 8 percent of UK executives in our sample do.

Black women executives are underrepresented in line roles and may face a harder path to CEO. As discussed, within our US and UK data sets, overall representation of women on executive teams shows an apparent bias toward staff roles. Among our US sample, not only do women hold a disproportionately small share of line roles on executive teams but also women of color (including Asian, black, and Latina women) hold an even smaller share.

Line roles versus staff roles on executive teams tend to differ in their ability to propel individuals to the CEO position, with line roles the more likely incubators of future CEOs. In our US sample, black female executives, specifically, are more than twice as likely to be in staff roles than in line roles, and our sample denotes an absence of black female CEOs. Other studies have found that black women suffer a double burden of bias that keeps them from the uppermost levels of corporate leadership. Underrepresentation on executive teams in general, and in line roles in particular, could be an important piece of this story.

Diversity around the world

The correlation between gender and ethnic diversity and financial performance generally hold true across geographies, though with some variations in certain regions. Our data yielded some noteworthy findings concerning the country-level differences in executive-team diversity:

Australian companies lead the way when it comes to the women's share of executive roles (21 percent). The share in the United States is 19 percent and in the United Kingdom is 15 percent. The same holds true for board positions, with Australian companies at 30 percent, US companies at 26 percent, and UK companies at 22 percent-and for women at the whole company level. The disparity among these countries is interesting, given that women's participation in the workforce is similar in all three and given that they dominate among top performers, representing 47 percent of the data set but more than 70 percent of the top-quartile companies.

The picture on ethnic and cultural diversity on executive teams is nuanced. Among our sample, South Africa has the highest levels of diverse representation on executive teams, with 16 percent of executive positions held by blacks. However, this must be understood in the context of local demographics: South Africa's population is 79 percent black, but among large corporations, the impact of South Africa's complicated social history means that the large majority of global and national corporate entities are led by white executives (69 percent in our sample). As our work considers the local context with respect to ethnicity, we therefore evaluated South Africa's diversity from this perspective, defining black South Africans as the minority. Singapore, the United Kingdom, and the United States follow South Africa with 11 to 12 percent of ethnically diverse executives.

When considering ethnic-minority representation in the broader population, British executive teams seem closer to achieving a "fair share." This, however, masks huge variations within the UK data set, in which a large proportion of companies have no ethnic minorities on their executive teams (or boards) and a handful of companies have particularly international executive teams. Ethnically diverse representation on UK and US executive teams increased by an average of six and five percentage points, respectively, since 2014. However, this was offset by declines in other geographies, leading to an overall lower increase of one percentage point across regions (Exhibit 5).

Delivering impact through diversity

Our research confirms that gender, ethnic, and cultural diversity, particularly within executive teams, continue to be correlated to financial performance across multiple countries worldwide. In our 2015 report, our hypotheses about what drives this correlation were that more diverse companies are better able to attract top talent; to improve their customer orientation, employee satisfaction, and decision making; and to secure their license to operate-all of which we believe continue to be relevant.

Companies report that materially improving the representation of diverse talent within their ranks, as well as effectively utilizing inclusion and diversity as an enabler of business impact, are particularly challenging goals. Despite this, multiple companies worldwide have succeeded in making sizable improvements to inclusion and diversity across their organizations, and they have been reaping tangible benefits for their efforts.

We found that these companies all developed inclusion and diversity (I&D) strategies that reflected their business ethos and priorities, ones that they were strongly committed to. Four imperatives emerged as being crucial:

Articulate and cascade CEO commitment to galvanize the organization. Companies increasingly recognize that commitment to inclusion and diversity starts at the top, with many companies publicly committing to an I&D agenda. Leading companies go further, cascading this commitment throughout their organizations, particularly to middle management. They promote ownership by their core businesses, encourage role modeling, hold their executives and managers to account, and ensure efforts are sufficiently resourced and supported centrally.

Define inclusion and diversity priorities that are based on the drivers of the business-growth strategy. Top-performing companies invest in internal research to understand which specific strategies best support their business-growth priorities. Such strategies include attracting and retaining the right talent and strengthening decision-making capabilities. Leading companies also identify the mix of inherent traits (such as ethnicity) and acquired traits (such as educational background and experience) that are most relevant for their organization, using advanced business and people analytics.

Craft a targeted portfolio of inclusion and diversity initiatives to transform the organization. Leading companies use targeted thinking to prioritize the I&D initiatives in which they invest, and they ensure there is alignment with the overall growth strategy. They recognize the necessity of building an inclusive organizational culture, and they use a combination of "hard" and "soft" wiring to create a coherent narrative and program that resonates with employees and stakeholders, helping to drive sustainable change.

Tailor the strategy to maximize local impact. Top and rapidly improving companies recognize the need to adapt their approach-to different parts of the business, to various geographies, and to sociocultural contexts.

Paying rigorous attention to all four imperatives (Exhibit 6) helps to ensure that inclusion and diversity will support a company's growth agenda. In our experience, companies tend to fall short on leadership accountability for meeting goals, on building the business case, and on the coherence and prioritization of the resulting action plan.

It is worth noting that while progress on representation can be brought about relatively rapidly with the right set of initiatives, embedding inclusion within the organization can take many years and often requires action outside the organization. Companies that do this well can create a strong corporate ethos that resonates across employee, customer, supplier, investor, and broader stakeholder groups.

This work sheds light on how companies can use inclusion and diversity as an enabler of business impact. It is important to note, however, that correlation does not demonstrate causality, which would be challenging to demonstrate. While not causal, we observe a real relationship between diversity and performance that has persisted over time and scale, and across geographies. There are clear and compelling hypotheses for why this relationship persists including improved access to talent, enhanced decision making and depth of consumer insight and strengthened employee engagement and license to operate. We encourage businesses to examine the case for inclusion and diversity at a more granular level to craft an approach that is tailored to their business, learning from leading diverse companies around the world as to ways to do this with high impact.

The business case for diversity continues to be compelling and to have global relevance. There's an opportunity for promoting diversity in senior decision-making roles, and specifically in line roles on executive teams. Although levels of diverse representation in top teams are still highly variable globally-with progress being slow overall-there are practical lessons from successful companies that have made inclusion and diversity work. Creating an effective inclusion and diversity strategy is no small effort and requires strong, sustained, and inclusive leadership. But we, and many of the companies we studied, believe the potential benefits of stronger business performance are well worth it.

Download Delivering through diversity, the full report on which this article is based (PDF-7 MB).

About the author(s)
Vivian Hunt is a senior partner in McKinsey's London office, where Sundiatu Dixon-Fyle is a senior expert; Sara Prince is a partner in the Atlanta office; Lareina Yee is a senior partner in the San Francisco office.

The authors wish to thank Treina Fabré and Saif Hameed for their contributions to this report.

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Our latest research reinforces the link between diversity and company financial performance-and suggests how organizations can craft better inclusion strategies for a competitive edge. Awareness of the business case for inclusion and diversity is on the rise.

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Research from Accenture on the ROI of disability inclusion

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Enabling Persons with Disabilities (PwD)| Accenture

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Accenture strives for an inclusive and accessible workplace that enables & provides jobs for persons with disabilities (PwD). Learn about our PwD programs.

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Research from CPID on the business case for diversity and inclusion. 

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A new recipe to improve business performance