If men and women were the same, we’d have nothing to trade

"Male characteristics and values are largely responsible for driving people to the top of the tree but feminine values are fast becoming the only way to stay there."

Allen & Barbara Pease, Why Men Don't Listen and Women Can't Read Maps

This November, European Union institutions will finalise a directive to put more women on company boards.

Selana in the board room at the United Nations (UN) Headquarters in Vienna during the UNCITRAL working group II meeting in October 2022.

The glass ceiling for women on company boards has been an issue for a long time due to various reasons and being a woman on board means you are usually the minority on a board. In this article, I want to highlight what female directors can do to gain more influence on boards that are dominated by males.

In 2021, around 30 per cent of non-executive board members of the largest listed companies in the EU were women. The pace has slowed considerably since 2016 and in seven countries women still make up less than one-fifth of all non-executive board members. In about one-fifth of companies, non-executive boards are still exclusively male, including more than half the companies in Estonia, Cyprus and Hungary.

In the EU, fewer than one in ten chief executives and board chairs are female (8.5 per cent and 7.8 per cent respectively in October 2021). Women make up only about one-fifth (20.2 per cent) of senior executives.

Despite the above statistics, in a gender-balanced board with a more diverse and collective mindset incorporating a broader range of perspectives, female board members can work successfully amongst male colleagues. What we all need is to recognise that females are different from males and they offer a different value system.

Generally speaking, females value respect, harmony, team work, collaboration while males value authority, discipline, and competition. These differences leveraged in a gender-balanced workplace will create more values and mutual gains.

Personally speaking, female characteristics are my biological makeup. For example, I have a tendency to focus on emotions rather than reasons; use intuition rather than facts, statistics and data; live in harmony rather than deal with conflict; buy on impulse rather than comparing costs. These characteristics can make my male colleagues think that I am a scatterbrain and I agree that being extreme on any of the above female characteristics will hurt my company.

So, I have a couple of choices. I would adopt a moderate approach and improve my male characteristics such as reading directions, being direct and concise, figuring out how mechanical things work, using facts, statistics and data, reading labels and comparing costs, and challenging assumptions and opinions. And at the same time, I will also communicate with my team and trade with my colleagues as long as we can agree on how we complement each other.

In my opinion, quitting is lose-lose; behaving like a man is win-lose; maintaining the feminine system while adapting and/or trading the male value system is a win-win solution for the benefit of everyone on the board. What would you prefer?

REFLECTION:

What are the gender characteristics you possess?

Which valuable characteristics of the other gender you would like to have?

What would you like to do about it?