After a few decades of asking women to adapt to organizations, companies are starting to adapt their organizations to women. They are asking managers to learn new skills to manage a new more gender-balanced workforce and customer base. “We have spent decades thinking that the lack of balance in business was caused by women doing the wrong thing or saying the wrong thing or even wearing the wrong thing. This led to an elaborate panoply of “fix-the-women” “empowerment” programs. But now that women represent 60% of the educated talent on the planet, and half the incoming recruits of many companies, this argument is wearing thin. Half the population can’t be “wrong”, says Avivah Wittenberg-Cox, CEO of 20-first, one of the world’s leading gender consulting firms. 

In one of the first major studies on the role of the CEO in driving change on diversity and inclusion, London King’s College with the support of KPMG UK did research analyses on how CEOs of global organisations explain the need for action on gender to themselves and to others, and the kinds of leadership behaviours they use to help make change happen.

The report outlines what CEOs see as the challenges for achieving gender parity in their organisations, and explores the reasons why CEOs believe that gender parity is a goal worth pursuing. It highlights six critical leadership behaviours through which CEOs can support gender parity and shows how talking about gender parity in more personal and emotional terms can help ensure leaders leave a legacy of gender parity in their organisations.

Read the full report “Winning Hearts and Minds – How CEOs talk about gender parity”