IWD: Gender Parity isn't Just Women's Fight
by Alexandra Smith, Partner and Co-Founder of FuturePlus.
Guest post by Alexandra Smith, Partner and Co-Founder of FuturePlus.
This yearâs International Womenâs Day falls under a long shadow that illustrates quite how much more work there is to be done to achieve true equity and inclusion for women in business.
âCompetent white men must be in charge if you want things to work,â wrote President Trumpâs new public diplomacy hire, Darren Beattie, in October. The US administrationâs current âWar on DEIâ has made a divisive issue even more so, just when we need to focus on hearing different perspectives and finding common ground â for everyoneâs sake.
Women have been fighting for decades to cement and advance our position in the workforce, and weâre not going to stop now. But this isnât just a womanâs fight. Homogeneity in all corners of society creates groupthink, producing an echo chamber that reinforces existing biases, which in turn stagnate innovation and creativity. For women in the workplace and in the world of startups, this isnât just an issue about basic fairness â itâs about what makes the most business sense.
In 2023, a study of the Fortune 1000 list of the most successful companies found that while only 8% were led by women, those companies significantly outperformed their male-led counterparts in terms of revenue. Many of the worldâs most successful brands recognise that exclusionary culture is bad for business. Today, in the midst of significant pressure to roll back their DEI strategies, companies including Coca-Cola argue that doing so will certainly impact business growth and performance.
DEI isnât simply about promoting diversity and recognising that people from different groups and backgrounds need different things to thrive in the workplace. Itâs also about making sure that everyone has access to the same opportunities and creating a truly inclusive environment to enable that to happen. While thereâs certainly room for groups with common issues and goals to meet and support each other, women-only events, taskforces and committees canât solve a problem thatâs everyoneâs responsibility: including men. Iâve noticed that women and nonbinary people often outnumber men at DEI-focused events. We need them to join these discussions.
In the UK, according to the British Business Bank, for every ÂŁ1 of VC investment, all-female founder teams get less than 1p. All-male founder teams get 89p, and mixed gender teams get the remaining 10p. Is it any wonder, when only 13% of senior people on UK VC investment teams are women, and 48% of investment teams have no women at all?
The investment gap is not moving in the right direction, and â echoing Beattieâs suggestion that women simply arenât cut out for leadership â some commentators have suggested that the blame should fall at female foundersâ feet for a perceived lack of ambition in negotiations with investors. In my experience as a female founder, thatâs nonsense.
Thereâs no end to womenâs ambition, ability or anything else that makes us highly competent and successful leaders. But the playing field is still riddled with inequality and bias. My hope is that the global business community will continue to recognise the real benefits of supporting gender parity, and keep pushing back on the current weaponisation of DEI.
