#401 Do we need a women's quota? - article written by Niels Brabandt
Do we need a women's quota?
Article written by Niels Brabandt
Eigth of March was International Women's Day.
If you didn't know this, as many people did, it shows how important the topic has become again today. Discussions started immediately when it appeared in adverts and on social media. We don't discuss uneducated, ranting derailments such as 'When is World Men's Day?' here because we expect a minimum level of reasonableness. However, there were soon questions about discrimination, its extent, where it is particularly evident, and what the data situation looks like today. The discussion about a women's quota also came up quickly.
Do we need a women's quota?
The Data
The Global Gender Pay Gap Report provides clear data. The study looks at 153 countries and shows an unequal pay gap for women of 31.4%. This aspect does not even include the fact that women receive only 68.4% of the positions in society and the world of work for the same performance. At the same rate, achieving true equality would take an average of 99.5 years. Of course, this is only an average figure. A look at the regions and their annual figures reveals a sometimes gruesome picture. According to the World Economic Forum (WEF) and the United Nations (UN), the following picture emerges with regard to the timeline for achieving equality in terms of region and year: Latin America 2081, Europe 2097, Sub-Saharan Africa 2125, North America 2131, Southern Asia 2191, Middle East/North Africa 2199, Eastern Asia/Pacific 2205, Central Asia 2249. The Gender Inequality Index (GII), which ranks from 0 (complete equality to 1 (complete inequality), is 0.439. The injustice is, therefore, scientifically proven. Incidentally, the gender pay gap in countries such as Germany, which often present themselves as particularly positive, is 18%. Even the adjusted figure, which only considers equal work and equal qualifications, excluding numerous other important factors, is a 6% gender pay gap. In addition, there is a 6.2% increase in violence against women. More than every twentieth female you know who lived peacefully is now experiencing violence. The situation is no better in trend industries either. In the artificial intelligence (AI) sector, the proportion of women is just 22% internationally (in Germany, it is 20.3%, which is below the international average).
Discrimination is, therefore, well documented. Anyone who disputes this is out of the discussion.
Quotas
Quotas are often difficult to deal with in discussions because people believe mandatory figures must be followed overnight. However, this is not the reality. Quota models and their objectives always follow a step-by-step model.
Targeted models start with support programmes. These are intended to promote certain target groups, as a diversified workforce demonstrably achieves better results. If the results here are not sufficient, you enter into voluntary commitments. They set targets, but these voluntary commitments are not legally binding. A breach of these has no legal consequences. If this is not enough, you can switch to Compliance/Regulatory. Binding internal rules are set here, but these also only have internal consequences. If this is not enough, industry standards are often set. This aspect is frequently fulfilled by chambers, associations or similar institutions - by doing so, you can expect consequences from external sources for the first time. Quotas from these organisations are by no means rare. A certain proportion of qualifications is often specified in tenders. Quotas are not a newfangled phenomenon but have been the standard for decades. If even that step is not enough, then the legislator intervenes. Various stages are passed through here. It starts with a soft quota, which means that you can fill a position according to the quota or leave it vacant until a suitable person fulfils the requirements. In the next step, you have a selective hard quota. Here, you only have to fill positions according to quotas in certain areas but not in all areas. Finally, as the last step, the completely hard quota is applied. Here you have to adhere to the quota firmly, unalterably and under all circumstances. This step is often taken as a measure when all other attempts have failed.
The following 7-stage model provides a general overview:
(1) Support programmes
(2) Self-commitment
(3) Compliance/Regulatory
(4) Industry standard
(5) Statutory requirement - soft quota
(6) Statutory requirement - selective hard quota
(7) Legal requirement - full hard quota.
More on this in this week's podcast; see links below.
Implementation
Start by looking at the facts in your organisation. External and internal support is essential here. Make binding agreements that are always based on figures, data, facts and scientific evidence. If 80% of the participants in a relevant training programme are female, but only 40% are represented in your company, questions about how this could happen must be answered. However, if only 10% of graduates are female, a hard, immediate quota of 50% would be unrealistic and demotivating. An active commitment to improving the overall situation goes without saying. Part of the decisive steps must be a bonus-malus principle. This aspect defines what happens when the quota is reached. A positive, motivating factor is effective here. However, the negative consequences must also be defined if these goals are not achieved. People notice very quickly when pseudo-goals are set without seriousness and behave accordingly.
Conclusion: Women's quotas are not necessary if they are based on proven facts and not on ropey behaviour, nepotism or arbitrariness. However, if this is the case, a quota becomes essential for the sake of fairness.
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More on this topic in this week's podcast: Apple Podcasts / Spotify
For the podcast transcript, read below.
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Niels Brabandt is an expert in sustainable leadership with more than 20 years of experience in practice and science.
Niels Brabandt: Professional Training, Speaking, Coaching, Consulting, Mentoring, Project & Interim Management. Event host, MC, moderator.
Podcast Transcript
Niels Brabandt
It was World Women's Day. If you now say, oops, was it? Yeah. There we are. Now you have the reason why we talk about this topic. My email inbox was bombarded with emails about this fact, and immediately, we had discussions. Immediately, discussions started where people said, yeah.
We had World Women's Day, eighth of March, World Women's Day. However, is there really discrimination?
If so, what is reality? What is a fact? What is a bit of urban legendary?
What is an urban legend? What really happened? How how should we handle the situation? But one one question came very very often and the question was do we need a women's quota? Do we need it in politics? Do we need it in associations? Do we need it in free enterprise?
Do we need it in public offices? Where do we need it? Do we need it?
A massive discussion is good. Massive discussion going on about that. With the with the high demand of talking about the topic, and this is why we talk about this today. Very important here, we will not talk about emotions. We will not talk about your idea of society. We will not talk about my idea of society. We will talk about science, proof, evidence, and facts.
That is what is ruling in this world. Very important here is that you need to be able you need to be able to understand that there's a difference between your feelings and the fact that we have in the world. And let's let's get right into the data. You probably heard of the gender cape, the gender pay gap. And that's a global gender pay gap report. It examines in, for example, free enterprise, in education, in health, and politics, the difference between payment towards men and women.
And it looks into 153 countries. So it is definitely representative. And here the news, 31.4% less pay for women. And of course, you might now claim, well, well, well, well, well, well, mister Boban, of course, we know that there are countries where women get half, probably seventy, eighty, 90, one hundred percent less, 90% less than men. However, not in my country. In The UK or in The US or wherever you are right now, it is not the case. So maybe it is 80% somewhere, it is 0% here, and that's how we get to 31.4% in average. And I can tell you that is not the case because if we do not only consider the gender payer but also the social gap, women only have 68.4% of the position in society.
So you do not even allow people to be promoted, to succeed, to develop into a certain position. So we have one third less pay. We have so one third less pay for women. More than one third less position in society. And if we keep going like that and of course, you will now probably claim some some of you might claim that you might claim to say, well, I think we go in the right direction. So I think it is proceeding in the right direction. It is developing in the right direction.
And then people come, oh, do you know what happened hundreds of years ago? Well, things weren't better in the past for sure. However, if we keep going as we do right now, it takes according to the Global Gender Paker Report ninety nine point five years until we have true equality on this planet. And that by the way is the best case scenario. That means there will be no government that has problems with equal rights, diversity, women's rights, and only take a look into The US what's happening right there and you already see that this is not happening. The best case scenario is not happening. Very important is the World Economic Forum looked into and by the way, the United Nations as well, they looked into how is this developing in different countries because, of course, there are differences in different countries.
There's no question about that. And, of course, you might now think, well, let's do a short task here. Just think of which region do you think will do best when it comes to equal rights for women. And let's just think when it's ninety nine point five years in average globally, you probably think that some countries will take longer and others will take less long. And you're right with that. There are certain regions where the true equality will come quicker. And rank number one is Latin America.
And that is probably something you didn't expect here because many people think isn't there a problem with the machismo culture? And yes there is, however they still do better when it comes to equal rights for women. When we keep going as we do right now in Latin America equality will be reached by 02/1981. So that is still far away, way too far away, so we have to do way more. However, Europe is sixteen years later.
Rank two is Europe with 02/1997. And when you now think, well, with a hundred years from now, where is The US ranked? Shouldn't The US pop up somewhere? And first, we don't look in The US as its as as as itself as a country. We look into North America. And I can tell you Canada is pushing it in favor of The US because The US is performing way worse. However, rank three is the Sub Sahara region in Africa, 20 1 20 1 20 5.
So a hundred years from now we will have equality in the Sub Sahara Africa region, something which most locally many people will not have expected. By the way, North America is twenty one thirty one, so more than a hundred years, hundred and six years and without Canada it would be even worse. However, from there, there's a huge gap from there. Southern Asia is the next one on the list with twenty one ninety one. That is a time that no one of us will ever see. When you listen to this right now, you will not be around at that time. Neither will I, by the way.
If you look at the Middle East and North Africa, it's 2199, so nearly the year February. By the way, East Asia and The Pacific is twenty twenty two twenty two zero five.
Two the year 02/2005. And Central Asia, again, a big gap.
It's the year 02/1949. And when you when you look at that data, it simply means we have to do something. And by the way, there there there is more data to this. There is a gender inequality index, GII, which is also examined by the United Nations Development Programme, the UNDP. And this gender inequality index looks at how are we doing. Are we rather more equal or are we rather less equal? And zero means we have total equality worldwide, and one means we are totally we we are in total and utter injustice.
And now just guess, where are we? Are we 0.8, so more into in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in So that 0.4 with a tendency towards 0.5, so it is still very much into inequality.
You could now say: Hey, we're more than halfway through. Well, more than halfway through, looking at the time we spent so far, it is still thousands of years ahead until we have equality, and we need to do better than that. Because if you would say let's say you sit at your job and you say, well, I think our sales numbers are not great, but in two hundred years, they will be better. Anyone will think you're a lunatic. Anyone will think that you are not doing too well. Anyone will think that you probably have issues and you didn't understand what your job is. You don't you don't get paid to deliver results when you're not not even, around anymore.
And by the way, now, of course, because I know that we have German listeners as well who listen to my German podcast and then listen to the English one afterwards. And by the way, Germany, gender pay gap, 18%. And when you now take the gender pay cap, when when you often that's something you often hear where where people say, well, is there any kind of gender pay gap where you can look into clean data where the data is just net data, simplified data, adjusted data? So you only take people who have the same job with the same level of qualification. So first, when you take that number, your way of scientific working is debatable at best because you ignore everything people had to endure on the way there. Many people don't have access to education or not equal access to education. They don't get treat the same way, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.
But even if you take only that number of the people who do exactly the same job, with exactly the same qualification, if you ignore any other inequality around the gender pay gap is still 6%, It is still that one twentieth more than one twentieth less pay for absolutely no reason anymore left. You still pay them less. And of course, you can now say, well, they just negotiate. They need to learn to negotiate better. And that's not that's not how how things go. You don't ignore inequality and then say you need to be better at negotiation. And by the way, in addition to all of that, at the moment, we have a rise 6.2% more violence against women.
And when you now say, oh, 6.2% isn't too bad, it doesn't sound like a big number, look around you. Look around you in your circle of friends, acquaintances. Look around in your office, your job, your corporation. And you probably know more than 20 female people then. 6.2% means that when you look around you and you count your female individuals you know, every twentieth woman that lived in peace last year, this year gets beaten up. And when you then tell me, oh, it's not too bad, is it? When you look into every twentieth female individual now has to has to endure violence while not to endure that before, that is a shocking number, and we need to act on that. And by the way, if you now say, well, usually there are trend jobs which are the the newer jobs, and in these newer jobs, we are always doing better with equality. Do we?
So I looked into the artificial intelligence industry, the AI industry. Internationally speaking, 22% are women in this industry, in this area. And if you design AI algorithms and only one fifth of women is a representation, then you will have inequal then you will have inequality enshrined into artificial intelligence, and then it gets really, really dangerous. So be aware of this fact. And by the way, Germany, Twenty Point Three Percent of Germany is below the international average, not doing too well here. Taking this together up to this point, discrimination, that that is proof to that. If you say there is no discrimination, you really are not someone who can take part in the discussion.
If you think there is no discrimination, you ignore the facts, you disqualify yourself as a person, especially as a leader, you lose your social legitimization immediately, and then you can simply not be considered a person to work with. And by the way, if you are one of these people, I I can tell you what happened already is peep no one's following you.
They all do what they want. They say yes when you're in the room, they're not. And as soon as you leave the room, they're they're just laughing about you. They just think your ignorance is so utterly appalling that they just wait for the moment, either that you leave or retire or both. So be aware that if you deny the facts, you are not the person we can talk with. Very important is if you now talk about quota, people think it's like a switch that goes on or off. And that is not how things work.
Different quotas and countermeasures we can do against inequality have a seven level program, and we will talk I I will talk you through this right now. So the the typical quota is that people think, oh, from tomorrow, we will simply have 50% people here who don't belong here, in my opinion, but they got the job via a quota. And that's not how things work. That's not how anything in this quota world works. Level one. Step one is always you have promotional programs. So for example, you have a talent pool, you have a mentoring pool, you have a peep you have a pool a pool of people in your organization where you say these people get into a specific treatment, they get a specific program to boost their careers.
And that's that's for example a program where you can say half of the half of the seeds are given to female people. So very important is of female any kind of minorities, Either women or minorities. That's usually the formulation we we have here. So promotional programs are the very first level. However when you now start this you will of course see after a couple of years there will be results. And when you have results then people probably think, when I look into where we started and where we ended, that is not really the same quota because people for different reasons jumped off the program. So maybe you see it wasn't too successful. And the second level here is that you have a self commitment.
It's usually some sort of negotiated agreement inside your organization where you sign a piece of paper or you probably do it in your whole industry, that you say we aim to do x. So the good thing is you have something where you committed to something but it has no legal consequences. So if you offend that same that that that commitment, that self negotiated commitment you have within your organization, within your industry, if if you harm that, if you violate the rules from there, there there will be no consequences for that. This is why we usually step up to level three. Step number three is compliance and regulatory. Compliance and regulatory means you have internal rules with certain standards about x y z, maybe including some certain quotas. And as soon as you violate compliance rules, you have internal consequences.
It has an internal impact on your career. However, it has no impact in the real world out there. So you won't end up in court for it. It's a compliance and regulatory issue which is step number three. Step number four is an industry standard. An industry standard, I give you very very simple example here, an industry standard which many people aren't aware of. When, for example, and that happened to one of my clients.
With one of my clients, they had five people in vocational training. You know that in Germany, the vocational training is a very strong area, and we train our people very, very well, which is one of the reasons why we have certain very high standards when it comes to working and, delivering actual results. These industry standards guarantee that the standards are upheld. And one of my clients, they had one of the leaders, I didn't know that person before, never said in any of my trainings or coachings, that person behaved so well towards the trainees that three out of five left. They quit. They handed in their notice and continued their vocational training at a competitor's site.
And that's possible. No problem.
You can choose where you want to have your vocational training. What they didn't know that two weeks later, they received a letter from the Chamber of Commerce. Chamber of Commerce in many countries is something which is voluntary. In Germany, it's obligatory to be a member of it, and they set certain rules. And the letter said, three out of five of your vocational, training people quit. And we need to talk with you about this because we need to know what happened. And by the way, if you do not show up to talk with us, so please agree a time with us, if you don't show up, we hereby revoke the right that you can train people and actually give them degrees at the end of the two and a half or three and a half year training program.
That is a massive competitive disadvantage when you are not allowed anymore to train your own talent in Germany because these trainees work for way less money and they work brilliantly well after usually a very short time when you pick the right people. So they then, of course, could have said, that's none of your business, and then you lose the right to do and deliver vocational training. But, of course, they they went there. They talked through it, and so many things came to light that this leader who was responsible and accountable in this case for the actions lost his job. And by the way, from what I heard, what happened there, very rightly so. Well done, this this organization. So industry standards are the first moment where you face some sort of public scrutiny.
However, only within your industry. You won't end up in court. You don't offend laws. It's just an internal industry rule. And there are many of these rules set by chambers or other regulatory bodies. And, by the way, it is good that we have these bodies. So for example, when you in certain countries have public tenders, when they say, hey, we are having a public tender, public bid.
Please put in your proposal. We want that you build a bridge from a to b paid by the taxpayer. And then often in these public tenders, they have a certain quota where they, for example, say, we must have at least 30%, fifty %, seventy % of the people participating in this project being people who studied engineering and actually got the degree or got some sort of qualification or they can prove they have a certain amount of years of experience or x y z. They put very strict rules in there. And by the way, I like this. I like to walk or drive across bridges who were built by people who know what they are doing. And by the way, there is a very strict industry standard.
For example, in the medical field, when you run hospitals, when you run care homes, often there are quotas of what kind of qualification these people need to have. And you appreciate this because you do not want to be dealt with when you have people who don't know what they're doing. So industry standards are a very important part. And that's level four, step number four. From step number five, lawmakers step in. Step number five is where everything begins. Step number five is a so called soft quota.
Soft quota means you can put someone in the seat, but you can also leave the seat empty. So a typical, soft quota rule could be so in the future, you give that seat x a a so let's say, bought level seats. Bought levels need to be either 50% women or the seat reserved for women needs to be empty. So you have no one sitting there, which usually makes it difficult to come to conclusions then and make decisions. So soft quota means you can put someone in there either fulfilling the quota the the quota demands or leave it empty. And sometimes soft quotas have a big advantage. So for example, when people say we have someone, but this person at the moment is bound in a different contract, They have a notice of six months.
Then they said they want to have a bit of a time off and travel the world, so they are only available by another six months later. So six months notice, six months traveling the world. So they are available next year. You can then say we hire the person. At the moment, the seat is empty, but next year, that person will show up. However, soft calls, of course, can also be misused and saying, oh, we have someone, but we don't tell you yet that what you have is no one. You just try to, wobble on and try to get away with it.
The next thing is when the lawmakers that that's by the way step six. Level sorry. That's step five. Level five is the soft quota. Level six is the selective hard quota. Selective hard quota means that you say, okay. 50% of all jobs in production need to be given to women.
That's just one example for a quota. So you don't put the quota across all jobs. You put it into certain jobs.
A selectively hard quota. And that's level six, step number six. And step number seven, of course, you can now imagine level seven is the completely hard quota. Hard quota means you say all jobs 50% needs to be for women. That's just one example. So you have seven different levels from one, promotional programs to two, self commitment via three, compliance and regulatory then four, industry standards for example by chambers, five, the soft quota, six, the selectively hard quota and seven, the hard quota. So don't tell me that quota is the big monster out there that by tomorrow give jobs to people who do not belong in this seat in in these seats.
And by the way, The United States at the moment are the perfect example where people get put into seats where they don't belong. When you have someone, let's say, in defense where you really need to know what you're doing, in every of these jobs you need to know what you're doing, when when you take a four star general off the job to take a Fox News news commentator on the job, Tell me something about meritocracy and putting qualified people in the right seats. So you see what happens if sometimes the wrong people get the job. The question now is how do you implement all of this? So first, step number one is you look into the facts in your organization. Get the data out of your organization. Always use an external view because internal views can be blindsided or they can be motivated by political sciences and whatnot.
Always have an internal and external view on the data you have in your organization. From that you derive a commitment that needs to be fulfilled with certain goals that are in writing and signed by the people. And these must be based, very important here, on real world available data. I give you a very simple example. Let's say you have a special a a very specialized IT field and you say by tomorrow, come on, 50% of all jobs we give to women, and then every single company in your industry follows your example. You might face a problem Because when, for example, in your specialized field only 10% of university graduates are female, how does every single organization need to how do you want to fulfill the 50% quota when only 10% of all graduates are female. So always and very important here, you do not act based on feelings, you do not act based on I heard something, you do not act based on a non reliable press release.
You work on science, data, and facts. So contact universities, ask about numbers, and ask about different fields and qualifications you need. And, of course, it doesn't need to be a university degree. It can be university degree, can be certificate, can be experience, can be references, etcetera, etcetera, but it needs to be based on facts. Look at the numbers and then choose a goal that can be realistically fulfilled. Nothing is more frustrating when people say we need to hire 50% female people now and they say well we only have 3% graduates in this field, how should I do this? And then usually, you come to completely non realistic hiring situations.
So you always orient yourself on the real you always get an orientation from the real world numbers. And by the way, you act proactively on making the situation better, encouraging more women to get into field x y z. Speak up for that. Be a public advocate here. And by the way, after you have this agreement, you, of course, need to check if it has been fulfilled or not. So you need a bonus mailer's principle. Bonus means as soon as someone fulfills the quota and or reaches the goal, what's in it for them?
So what is in for them when they fulfill the goal? And also you need to tell them what happens if you don't fulfill the goal. People very quickly see when there is no consequences. Bonus means something in favor of your mail list means something is held against you. So when you do not fulfill the quote and I give you a situation in one major UK law firm in which I work, we were sitting at the table and I hear one of the talks, One guy said, when the person said, well, we actually had a goal for you. You have zero women in your team. And he said, yeah. Yeah. That's that's correct.
And then they asked him, so what's your goal for next year? And he said, still zero. Okay. Wow. So I asked him why? And he immediately start yeah. You know, it's so difficult. And then they get pregnant and then they can't work.
It immediately went into straightforward discrimination by phrase one. And as soon as that law firm then put in a quota and said you only get your full bonus when you fulfill the goal, immediately that person found the talent. As if it is magic. So you see, people need to know that there are consequences when things go right. And by the way, you do not jump from absolutely no regulation to the hard quota. I gave you enough steps you can do in between. Taking all this together, wrapping it up.
Women's quotas are not originally necessary in the beginning when every single person acts based on facts, proof, evidence, and not by cronyism, nepotism, someone you personally like, or just arbitrary decisions in giving a favor to someone where they don't deserve the favor. However, when you act based on non logical facts and discrimination kicks in, then a quota for justice sake, for justice reasons, is necessary and essential for your business's success. And I wish you all the best of results implementing that in your organization. And if you now say, oh, that was quite some work, I think. I think we have to do quite quite some work here. We need help. Or I just like to discuss something with you.
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