Wow! A woman at the helm! I still remember, vaguely, the first time I heard in one of my multiple flights: ‘This is your captain speaking. Welcome to such and such’. A woman’s voice?
I have these questions. How important is that Marissa Mayer as the CEO of Yahoo? How important is this for Yahoo? How much for gender equality? For Silicon’s Valley male dominance? For Talent management? For women in leadership? How different are these questions?
There are some token items, issues. They all are real and potentially just a token. It all depends on the intention behind the same statistics.
These are some examples of parameters or ratios or numbers: number of woman on the Board; awards for excellence men vs. women; employee engagement scores; people- centred/Customer centred numbers; Black empowerment indexes or coefficient; minority presence.
Behind all these ratios lies a spectrum from political correctness to true progress. It’s trophy employees vs. true diversity. The numbers are the same. The meaning can be miles away from each other.
The ratios and the numbers are not the same as true culture. We need those numbers as traffic lights. But traffic lights are not the same as traffic.
Diversity is not a ratio.