Womens Forum Day 1 third session
October 12, 2007 by Chris | permalink
How increasing women's integration is changing the competitiveness picture
The most interesting thing for me from this session was the statement that when will finally have to make the case for non-diversity rather than diversity? When will we see a film about the need for men at all?’ a bit provocative, but the constant issue of rationalizing the case FOR diversity is tiring. IT seems soooo obvious that i canot imagine that anyone does not see this.
Liswood continued with making an observation that there is no such thing as a glass ceiling, it is just a thick layer of men. The sooner we recognize this and then strategize how to get thru this layer, the sooner the layer will thin out.
She continued with a description of the Ark and what is known as cognitive diversity.
She challenged the notion that only having women in a company makes it better. She suggested that the real underlying notion is that those firms which have more women have better processes as a whole and are fundamentally better run, so therefore there is more diversity anyway. I find this one of the most compelling statements so far. If we think about running a company well, then the other bits that SHOULD be, will be.
I wonder why Arup, which has an average of 30% female staff, does not have 30% senior leaders as well.
