What is Perfect Equality? A Global Perspective.

The topics of this post revolve around reducing gender-based inequalities and promoting women’s empowerment in the global market. It is important to construct one or multiple frameworks that the global society needs to implement in order to achieve these objectives. It is then even more crucial to criticize these framework constructs and eliminate further flaws that negatively affect the desired outcome. Will questions and concerns about inequality in small to mid-size businesses (SMB) ever get answered? Have these discussions that seek to provide us with a broader range of suggestions to combat the global-wide discrimination in the work force proven useful? Can awareness on gender equality create real positive change? Can raising women’s economic empowerment establish a quicker path to reaching perfect equality? What is perfect equality? And could a universal definition exist and commonly be agreed upon on all levels of a company, or of a society? How can a society that is conditioned to differentiate on the basis of gender eliminate that practice from the workforce? 

             

Martha Nussbaum, an advocate of gender equality and author of Women and Human Development: The Capabilities Approach, believes that it is not women’s inherent incapability to achieve, but rather, it is a woman’s individual capabilities to reach real opportunities of value in society. In order to begin answering some of the questions I have asked earlier, let us first take a look at what things of value are assigned to a woman in a given society; could women’s cultural values be measured against men’s cultural values to reach real opportunities? If so, how could one argue that an intangible item’s value has a hierarchy over another item? For example, while many in a given society may promote women’s empowerment, they may not assign any value if a woman wanted a career outside of her home. This is because if the value of a career does not traditionally enhance women’s empowerment according to the cultural context, then it has no value for real opportunity worth pursuing.

            

Once we begin to think about what things of value assigned to women in a culture look like, we must, second, ask ourselves about the individuals who are in positions to assign these values to others, as well as their decisions of the consequences if members choose to disagree to these pre-assigned values. When the power to establish values has an unequal distribution on the given genders, does that not negatively affect the opportunities given to individuals to achieve? What happens when women’s empowerment in the workforce is not considered to be a real opportunity for societies to pursue? When values are perceived to be male oriented, one form of inequality exists. From these observations, society situates itself between the preconceived notions of women’s insignificant role in the workforce, and the impact male-oriented roles in the workforce have on women’s opportunities to achieve. When these two ideas exist within the same cultural context, we can then assume that capabilities are structured to divert women from reaching heightened positions in global companies; gender is then a requirement (and a hurdle) for women to achieve any opportunities that are perceived to be reserved for men.

            

If we assume that in our current society, things of value assigned to women are pre-determined by individuals who are in positions of power, we must think about the origins of women’s preferences to assign value on. Having a career outside of the home versus dropping out of school is an example we will explore. To make more sense of this, if I am told while growing up that I should place value on one thing (dropping out of school) as opposed to something else (having a career outside of the home) because the first perceived choice is better for me, it is likely that I will believe that it is the best option. This preference that I have been told to prefer is then determined by my own evaluation as something of high value that I desire to accomplish. Actions give us information about one’s preferences, and what we prefer is typically what we also desire. But even when actions could show enough about one’s preferences, actions or preferences alone are not enough to determine what real capabilities one has, because societal commitments and expectations can conflict with women’s preferences. 

           

 External influences may ultimately decide women’s fate in the professional world, because pre-conceived notions of traditionally male dominated roles outside the household leave no room for diversity and may also create room for hostility. These external influences may ultimately determine women’s fate in society as well, because what are perceived to be female dominated roles inside in the household leave no room for freedom to decide other preferences otherwise.  Additionally, we must also note that while preferences can help us reach equality, they are also another form of inequality, sometimes simultaneously, that occurs. Taking away the luxury of deciding between preferences to reach opportunities is society’s way of exercising control on the basis of gender. By controlling the capabilities of an individual, societies (or those in power) then have the power to influence women on their preferences. 

            

Capabilities and preferences are a double edged sword. They are a means of ending inequalities society suffers from; the other side to that sword makes it a means of maintaining those imbalances. Capabilities and preferences tie into our cultural, social, and professional construction. These dynamics do not always blend well together when there is a change in traditional norms. The reason Martha Nussbaum and her discussions on inequalities was mentioned in beginning is because when Nussbaum first traveled to India, her ideas of spreading empowerment to village women came to a halt when she received much resistance. This was to be expected, as people are generally weary of accepting change. She was criticized for bringing western ideas into a culture that did not welcome such ideologies. She found the same resistance from women as she did with men. Through her research, she was able to link women’s preferences with how women only wanted what they were conditioned to want their whole lives. Issues like discrimination, abuse, and unfair treatment were normalized and accepted as fate. As a liberal feminist, Nussbaum believed that education is key to changing deep-seeded gendered ideas in society. Education is a very powerful tool that could change the course of practices, values, and beliefs. In particular, education for developing/developed nations creates real positive change on all levels of society. Through education, members of society can eliminate the negative practices of controlling minority members through their capabilities and preferences. Education is indeed a crucial tool for women’s development in the work force. 

           

 Systems in India, as well as many other countries, re-enforce the present state of women’s under-development in businesses and corporations. Laws can be designed to worsen situations for certain members of society. When the government and societal expectations are not neutral, social construction is an essential factor of the gender inequalities that persist. If we define neutrality as impartial or unbiased in regulating preferences, we will often find that issues with law transparency or law application can be very difficult to implement in a society that will justify the support of one side over another.

            

Even if we live in a country (or work for a company) that practices a constitutional democracy in theory, women are still subject to be treated like second-class citizens in reality. For example, of the Fortune 500 companies, only 26 have female CEOs. Looking at a broader scope, according to UN Women, the majority of women leaders in the world make up to 22% of all national parliamentarians as of January 2015. On the bright side of things (even though it is not so bright) there were no women in the top executive ranks of the Fortune 100 in 1980; by 2001, 11 percent of those corporate leaders were women. According to the Center for American Progress, in recent years, however, the percentage of women in top management positions and on corporate boards has stalled. Women’s presence in top management positions today remains below 9 percent.

            

With these statistics in mind, what could perfect equality possibly look like? One way of measuring equality would be looking at the correlation between a nation’s competitiveness and its gender-based treatment or gender gap. The 2015 Gender Gap Index Report proves that because women account for half a country’s potential talent pool, its long term competitiveness depends significantly on its gender gap with education, politics, and economic opportunities.

            

As a global society, we must collectively work together towards ensuring capabilities, ensuring the variety in available preference, and ensuring a consciously neutral social construction that can minimize these unequal conceptions of women’s undervalued work. The promotion of economic equality between genders can be achieved when the ideologies on capabilities, preferences and social construction become a reality. Will that ever be achieved? Maybe not fully, but society in 2015 is achieving a more diverse image of the workingwoman. Society is now (very, very, slowly) beginning to understand the importance of women’s roles in the corporations they run, along with examining current and potential contributions of women in political and business leadership positions. 

        

Women in leadership positions see a gendered reality of their struggles as they emerge to become the new faces of global leadership. This emerging diverse pool challenges the gender norms of what was once a male-only environment, thus concluding that capabilities that shape a successful leader are not, or should not be, gendered by nature to a specific group. As global leaders ourselves, we must keep in mind that the goal is to not only to increase the number of global women leaders over time, there must be a goal to include diverse leadership capabilities that can prosper organizational success. 

I will ask again: what would perfect equality look like? And how could we get closer to it? First, women’s underrepresented status in business development and globalization must change in order to change the male-oriented focus of these roles. Second, discussions on such topics must  eventually expand on a larger scale of research topics to help better understand gender contexts in companies. Finally, looking at the current positive impact on women’s increase in leadership roles is a trend companies and societies need to appreciate and pay attention to. The Global Agenda Outlook highlights a deepening Income Inequality that extends to gender as the top trend for its 2015 report. Hiring a more diverse pool of leaders that encompass more women in the playing field could provide a more promising outlook in re-shaping the ways people are paid and treated in the work force.

Who could forget Emma Watson’s famous “HeforShe”’s UN speech where she bluntly stated that no country in the world can yet say they have achieved gender equality (not even you, Iceland!). We must not stay hopeless, because women have more access to education than ever before, and are surpassing men in educational achievement in some regions of the world. According to Harvard Summer School’s blog on Gender Inequality and Women in the Workplace, trouble stirs when young adults attempt to balance work and family life, and women end up taking responsibility for all care-giving burdens. Although the blog claims that men’s contribution to housework and childcare has increased significantly since the 80’s, it still does not compare to women’s contributions.

   

The “Closing Gender Gap” insight report agrees to this shift in values and new norms, men’s expectations to care-giving are changing in the same ways women’s expectation as models in the workforce are increasing. However, women still bear most of an unequal share of the work at home. This is what is called the double (or second) shift – working all day, and then returning home to work all evening. Advocates such as Emma Watson urge an inclusive invitation for all to speak up and be part of this universal movement to achieve equality. These cultural shifts cause a positive change in companies and governments. As the gender gap and women’s development become a higher ranked priority, light is shed at better ways to address, measure, and manage gender inequality.