The Tribune

By IAN FERGUSON

FOR many years now, women have fought for equality in the workplace. There are compelling voices who claim that the ‘all boys club’ in Corporate Bahamas has been deliberate in excluding strong, educated Bahamian women, relegating them to administrative and middle management responsibilities. Despite these assertions, women have flooded the Bahamian workforce in large numbers and at all levels, bringing with them their vast skill sets, great powers of persuasion and, certainly, some amount of baggage.

Naturally, as we have this conversation, some stereotypical traits and generalisations will be made of both sexes. While we understand that every human being is uniquely different, research bears out that there are stark differences between the ways that men and women operate in the workforce.

As of late, men are told to think like a woman and women are told to act like a man. Though we may not avow that men are from Mars and women from Venus, or that either of the sexes needs to affix their behaviours to that of the opposite sex, we will state that each brings a different set of values, beliefs and behaviours to the work climate, and that our everyday opportunity is to leverage this diversity.

Most experts agree that a balance of gender in the workplace is ideal; studies show that women tend to excel in some areas and men excel in others. We cannot deny the great success of women entrepreneurs and senior executive leaders in our corporate environment. I often hear comments made by male leaders (sometimes in jest), affirming that the best MAN for certain jobs is the WOMAN.

Today’s business culture more often, though, associates masculine attributes with success, and we often think that the man will bring a greater degree of stability, logic and gravity to the organisation. While the statistics still bear out that women earn 80 per cent of what their male counterparts do, there is still no evidence to suggest that hiring more men will drive a company’s bottom line.

So as we celebrate gender diversity in the workforce, we share some of the compensatory qualities of women on the front line and women in leadership:

• Women are usually stronger with networking, sponsoring and supporting each other. They are more typically the ones to share ‘green’ energy and promote workplace harmony, teamwork and fairness.

• Women bring a higher degree of empathy and flexibility for accommodating working scenarios as their own home, work, community, family, church balancing act has amply equipped them to make the necessary adjustments.

• Women, seemingly from the Garden of Eden, have been blessed with persuasive skills. They are able to more effectively convince the forces at work to lean in one direction over the other. While some of these tactics may be likened to ‘witchcraft’, they work nonetheless.

• Women are more intuitive in bringing in all points of view. This allows for more collaboration and win-win situations. Women, then, are more inclined to investigate both sides to see if both parties can actually have a desirable outcome.