Millennials will be the ones to finally level the playing field for women at work – but it will take another 13 years to achieve gender parity in the workplace

• New research from ManpowerGroup reveals 94% of APAC business leaders believe Millennials will finally achieve equality of opportunity for women, but estimate it will take 13 years
• Biggest barrier to progress is entrenched male culture, admit male leaders
• Progress is glacial so ManpowerGroup has identified 7 practical steps to accelerate more women into leadership

AUSTRALIAN: 4 December 2015 – ManpowerGroup (NYSE: MAN), the world’s workforce expert, today published global research revealing that 94% of Asia Pacific (APAC) business leaders believe Millennials will be the generation to finally achieve equal opportunities for women in the workplace.  However, they estimate it will take another 13 years.  APAC leaders are the most optimistic compared to American and European leaders who believe it will take 17 and 19 years respectively.

The report, “Seven Steps to Conscious Inclusion: A Practical Guide to Accelerating More Women into Leadership,” takes a deep-dive into generational, gender and geographical divides on attitudes to achieving gender parity and provides practical solutions to make progress faster.  It draws on insights from more than 200 global leaders and identifies structural obstacles that need to be overcome. 

Key Findings:

• The most significant obstacle identified is an entrenched male culture, a barrier that both men and women acknowledge must change. Three-fifths (59%) of leaders interviewed said they believe the single most powerful thing an organisation can do to promote more women leaders is to create a gender-neutral culture, led by the CEO. 
• Flexible working is key to getting more women into leadership with two-fifths (42%) agreeing.  This requires a wholesale rethinking of the workplace, particularly a shift in focus from presenteeism to performance.
• No one is walking the talk or making the commitment: One-third (33%) of Millennial females said no one in their organisation is supporting women into leadership. At the same time, a third (32%) of male leaders, those with the power and influence to make change, said the responsibility is HRs, not theirs.

Click here to read the full press release.

A laissez-faire approach to gender parity is getting us nowhere

Author: Bridget Beattie, Executive Vice President, Asia Pacific Middle East at Right Management 

Excerpt from this post:

Having spent a number of years advising a range of private and public sector organisations on their talent strategies, I am keenly aware of the lack of females in leadership positions. The Workplace Gender Equality Agency has found that women comprise just 26% of the top three management hierarchy layers in Australian businesses. Alarmingly, one third (34%) of employers have no female key management personnel, and almost the same number (31%) have no ‘other executives / general managers’ who are women. 

We are stuck in a circular conversation about why we don’t have enough women in leadership. There has been a great deal of talk, but not enough action. At ManpowerGroup we have been able to shift the tide within our own company and today a third of our top executives and half of our emerging leaders are female.

We want to help other organisations achieve this, so we carried out some qualitative research to see what leaders from around the world were seeing, and what they thought was needed to really solve the problem. From our hundreds of interviews, it became clear that we need to move from a laissez-faire approach to meaningful action that achieves real results.   

Click here to read the full post on our blog.

Right Management is the global career and talent development expert within ManpowerGroup (NYSE: MAN).  We help organizations become more agile, attractive and innovative by creating a culture of career management and learning that nurtures future talent, motivates and engages people, and provides individuals with opportunities to increase their value throughout their careers.  We improve time to value through our expertise in organizational effectiveness, career management and individual development.  Our approach is centered on the fact that organizations thrive when individuals are successful in their careers.  We’ve spent the last 35 years identifying workforce challenges and developing innovative solutions, enabling our globally informed methods to be time-tested across more than 50 countries.