The issues surrounding gender bias are enormous. One of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals is Gender Equality; and it means the balance of the representation and treatment of men and women. To achieve gender equality, days like International Women’s Day are set aside to; celebrate women’s wins and challenge the issues they constantly face.
IWD every year comes with a theme and for this year, it is ; Gender equality today for a sustainable tomorrow: #BreakTheBias. In order to break the bias however, one must understand what the term means.
What is gender bias?
Gender bias simply means preferring one gender over another; and in this case, it’s the society choosing males over females for leadership positions, job opportunities, and so much more.
Have you wondered why men are more present in fields such as engineering, medicine, and politics? And although women are present as well, the percentage gap is alarming? Even the women in these fields are subjected to second-hand positions such as assistants and secretaries.
Also, don’t you wonder why women are in an automatic disadvantaged position once motherhood kicks in? It’s almost as though no one believes a woman can be capable of performing excellently when she has children. In fact, there are jobs that do not condone motherhood of any kind in the organization. That is, a woman working there cannot decide to be pregnant or give birth; as it is believed that it would affect her productivity at work.
When IWD was celebrated a few days ago, many organizations took to the internet to ‘celebrate’ their women workers; but several of them still pay women less for the same jobs their male counterparts receive more for. Do they also believe women are not worth a good pay? Others even have a weak balance in their gender inclusivity, i.e their male workers could be seventy five while their female workers are only ten. Even with this uneven ratio, hardly would these women be in leadership positions.
Dangers of gender bias.
In this vein, we should look at the dangers of gender bias, but how do we that, when recently; Nigerian lawmakers wanted to pass a bill that would restrict the inclusivity of women in the Assembly, and women’s enablement to make their foreign husbands citizens of the country. This proposed bill instigated a protest, for a U-turn to be made on the bills. Thankfully, the bill didn’t get enough votes to be passed into law.
If a country can even think of taking this step, how much more in organizations and in homes? It is now news that issues of gender biases in homes are very hardly talked about. For instance, society frowns upon women being more ambitious than their husband; and even some husbands believe they own their wives and can enforce any decision as the ‘head of the house’. The dangers of gender bias are alarming, so the need to break these biases are pertinent. If these biases are broken, what are the benefits that could be gotten?
Inclusivity and diversity
Women are great managers and leaders and it is evident in countries like Finland. You can also see this in organizations where women are easily made leaders. The fact that women are seldom considered for leadership roles that they deserve, goes a long way in showing that cultural and societal evolution is stagnant in many places.
Often, one of the reasons given for non-inclusion of women is that, ‘they won’t perform well.’ On the other hand, several men who have been “included’ since inception are grossly underperforming . One then wonders why being a woman should be a limiting factor to achieving goals.
Also, inclusivity and diversity in the workplace would enable growth. All hands on deck, all hands on board will push for more productive results.
Article written by Sola Tales