Photo Credit: WXN

🧑🔎 New WXN Report Reveals the Hard Truth About Gender Gaps--and the High Costs of Stagnation in Leadership 👩

Wednesday, 20 November 2024 12:00.PM

- The GAIL Report highlights the evidence-backed business case for immediate and sustained progress for professional women -

As many companies scale back their inclusion efforts and as near-stagnant advancement of women in leadership positions continues, WXN (the Women's Executive Network) and its Global Alliance for Inclusive Leadership (GAIL) partners today unveiled The GAIL Report: An Actionable Guide to Advance Women in the Workplace, urging organizations to double down on inclusion.

This extensive report examines the mounting body of research that shows diversity strengthens company performance, profitability and culture, and offers tangible steps to help companies of all sizes implement evidence-based strategies to take advantage of those benefits.

"This is a critical moment of reckoning for companies across North America and the world. Women's progress is already glacial at best, with parity on boards a decade away and well over a century before gender parity is achieved across the globe. But the longer organizations wait, the longer—and the more—they can suffer," said Sherri Stevens, Owner and CEO of WXN. "The GAIL Report underscores that, when women rise into leadership roles, they drive broader success for both profit and people."

The GAIL Report outlines the concerning state of women in the workplace, with data showing that full gender parity may be 95 years away in North America – and 131 years away on a global scale. While women hold just over one-third of board seats in Canada's biggest companies, racialized women have just 4.1% representation on S&P/TSX Composite company boards, and for Black women, representation is a mere 1.2%. Today, just one in ten Canadian CEOs and one in four executives are women.

This report is both a wake-up call and a resource for companies to make and continue sustainable, meaningful and measurable investments in their inclusion efforts, with key findings highlighting:

• Boardroom representation: Boards with a critical mass of at least 30% women outperform all-male boards or boards where women hold token roles.
• Executive leadership: Female CEOs are linked with a 20% boost stock price momentum, and female CFOs correlate to a six percent rise in profitability.
• DEI burnout: This unique phenomenon is exacerbated by recent cuts during company layoffs that target DEI roles at nearly double the rate of other roles.
• The role of allies: Women shoulder much of the work to bridge gender disparities, yet male allies have the greatest opportunity to advance women.
• Employee resource groups: A highly effective way to develop skills, boost reputation and drive market growth, there is a high cost to getting ERGs wrong.
• Talent innovation: Diverse teams can create a competitive talent advantage by driving better retention rates, employee engagement, innovation and more.
• Gen Z inclusivity: Companies that don't address critical Gen Z challenges risk losing out on opportunities for innovation, technological advancement and reach.

With these findings, WXN urges companies to take a sustainable and informed approach to inclusion, using The GAIL Report as a springboard to review policies, practices and programs. This follows their ongoing challenge to organizations across North America to embrace ambitious targets: achieving full gender parity on boards and at least 40% female representation in executive leadership roles by 2030, inclusive of Black women, Indigenous women, women of color, women with disabilities and LGBTQ+ women.

SOURCE: WXN (Women's Executive Network)

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