By Sonali Maheshwari
Each year, International Women’s Day serves as a powerful global reminder of the women’s achievement, progress made towards gender equality. It prompts the fact that the fight for gender equality is far from over while highlighting the importance of empowering women and promoting them in all aspects of life, including business.
Women, especially those belonging to underrepresented groups, continue to face barriers like equal pay, access to education and healthcare, and representation in leadership positions. Furthermore, despite progress, gender disparity is starkly evident in rural areas. Rural women are more affected by climate change, depletion of natural resources, poor infrastructure, limited access to productive resources, income generation activities, services and financial opportunities.
This year’s #InternationalWomen’sDay theme #InspireInclusion underscores the crucial role of inclusion in achieving gender equality. Inclusion goes beyond mere representation of diverse groups. Rather it’s about creating such systems, processes, practices and policies that actively allows access and opportunities to all sorts of diverse populations, in all its forms. It is an intent to embrace and enable all to make meaningful contributions. By championing inclusion, organizations and communities can harness the full potential of diverse perspectives, leading to better decision-making and innovation. Besides, it encourages everyone to recognize the unique perspectives and contributions of women from all walks of life, including those from marginalized communities.
The significance of this theme can’t be overstated for the workplace. Forbes data says that while women make up 47% of the total workforce, they only make up 28% of the professional leadership positions. It shows women make up a relatively significant portion of the workforce, they continue to face systemic barriers and disparities in the workplace including wage gaps, limited career advancement opportunities, and discrimination. This is especially true for women who are at the intersections of other under-represented groups.
Addressing the challenges women face is essential not just to promote gender equality, but it’s also an investment in a culture that puts equity and inclusion at the forefront to have immeasurable benefits not just for women, but for any marginalized group striving for equality. This will unlock the full potential of businesses and economies but shall be also instrumental in building a healthy planet for future generations.
Inclusion is key for fostering equal opportunities for advancement, recognition, career growth and levelling the playing field for gender & other characteristics of a diverse population.
Some of the key proven results are:
Enables and equips teams and individuals to make informed decisions. And leads to better engagement, motivation and soaring productivity leading to enhanced business outcomes and organisational success. Cultivates a sense of belonging thereby reducing turnover rates and retaining valuable talent within the organization.
Plays a pivotal role in making well rounded decisions while allowing and providing equal and meaningful space for a diverse array of voices, perspectives and experiences.
Besides, professional growth fosters individual well-being especially women and other marginalised groups resulting in a healthier and more positive work environment for all.
Concepts like gender mainstreaming, gender inclusive and responsive policies, gender budgeting, gender segregated data and reporting and measurement are key concepts to bring in desired changes towards gender parity. Along with this, let all of us start building a landscape with inclusion at its centre and start investing and accelerating it in all possible directions.
All this strongly calls out each of us to understand, reflect and take needed actions towards creating environments as well as enabling those environments where all individuals, regardless of gender, feel valued, respected, and empowered to succeed.
The writer is a social development professional with two decades of professional experience. She has extensive experience in curating and leading behaviour change and policy shaping interventions, focusing developmental themes such as Women Empowerment, Adolescent & Youth Development, Gender Equality, Child Safety, Public Health, Worker Wellbeing.
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