When Companies Invest In Women, Everybody Wins

By Priya Krishnan

On March 12, 2024

According the International Women’s Day website, the goal of the 2024 #InspireInclusion campaign is to “collectively forge a more inclusive world for women.” They want everyone to “imagine a gender equal world that is free of bias, stereotypes and discrimination, as well as diverse, equitable and inclusive.”

While I wholeheartedly agree, I am still amazed this is still a goal in 2024 and not our reality.

Gender Equality In The Workplace

In 2020, I decided to write my sons a letter about the day, as I wanted to share my thoughts on the topic. I wanted to let them know I thought it was a bit shocking to have to designate a day to acknowledge the importance of half the world’s population. I told them if we want women to truly be treated as equal to men, we need to shape the hearts and minds of boys like them. I let them know that at that time, women were being paid 23% less than men to do the same job. This gender pay gap still exists in all 50 states in 2024.

The World Economic Forum acknowledges that gender equality in the workplace widens considerably after women have children. This is an issue that can be solved by shared parental leave policies and access to child care benefits, which support all working parents. Because of such gender pay gap discrepancies, it’s usually the woman or mother who is the one to leave the workforce after having a child.

Going back to my letter, I wanted my sons to know that women were and could be ambitious and career-minded while still being nurturing and caring, as they had hopefully seen with me. I also wanted them to know the burden of raising a family didn’t have to fall solely on the woman/mother. It wasn’t the case in our household, as they saw with their father as well as their grandfathers before that.

The Economic Business Case For Women At Work

One of my passions is talking about the economic business case to keep women in the workforce. Women can be driven to succeed while still being there for their families and others around them.

Gloria Steinem reportedly once explained: “The story of women’s struggle for equality belongs to no single feminist nor to any one organization but to the collective efforts of all who care about human rights.”

I agree that equality is not a feminist notion—women study, have ambition and have higher graduation rates and corresponding debt than men. So why should the burden of fighting for equality be only on women when all of society can benefit?

When companies and society “invest in women,” there is a return on that investment. Keeping women employed helps them personally and professionally. Employers also benefit from their productivity, and even the government benefits from the taxes they pay. But how can women go back to work unless they have access to child care support?

In October 2023, Claudia Goldin, a professor at Harvard University, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics for her research into women’s income and employment. After analyzing over 200 years of data, she showed the bulk of earnings differences between men and women in the same occupation arose with the birth of a child.

I founded a child care company in India to help women make decisions about returning to work after having children. My role today is working with employers to see the value in providing access to child care benefits for their working parent employees.

There is a constant flow of discussion around the child care crisis and its effect on businesses and families. Now is the time for employers to step in to offer that support. By supporting working parents, especially women, women can remain dedicated, engaged, productive and equal in all ways to their male counterparts.

Equal Pay Is Everyone’s Responsibility

There are so many quotes by women on the topic of equality, like this one from Mozambican politician and humanitarian Graca Machel, who is credited with saying, “Equal pay isn’t just a women’s issue; when women get equal pay, their family incomes rise, and the whole family benefits.”

It was much harder for me to find quotes on the subject by men. Here are two that stood out and echoed my thoughts to my sons:

“Achieving gender equality requires the engagement of women and men, girls and boys. It is everyone’s responsibility.”—Ban Ki-moon, South Korean politician and diplomat who served as the eighth secretary-general of the United Nations between 2007 and 2016.

“Equality is not just the right thing to do. It’s smart economics. How can an economy achieve full potential if it ignores, sidelines or fails to invest in half its population?”—Robert Zoellick, American public official, lawyer and former president of the World Bank Group.

Conclusion

Going back to that letter to my sons, my final plea was when they see something that doesn’t seem fair, to ask themselves, “What am I going to do about it?” Any business leader can also follow this advice.

Celebrate the girls and women around you and respect what each of you brings to the table—the perspectives might be different, so think about what you can learn. If you start now and are part of encouraging every girl and woman you know to be at the table, the world won’t need just one special day to recognize women and their achievements.

This piece was republished from the Forbes.