It seems every business publication today has an aspiration to help women ascend the corporate ranks; to gain the recognition they deserve and in the process, reduce the imbalance our nation continues to experience between men and women in business.

Although there is value in us endeavouring to correct the issue, we need to be careful that we don’t a) compromise the advancement of the many women who are progressing in this respect nor b) overlook the fact there are many thousands of women around the country who are doing a superb job alongside their male counterparts and feeling OK about it.

My concern is that if we push the barrow too hard, we will turn the conversation into a debate about women’s ‘need’ for recognition rather than the ‘value’ an organisation will gain when its makeup reflects the diversity of its stakeholders.

While our track record remains under the spotlight, there is less evidence of our major employers’ reluctance to employ women; albeit there may be fewer women ready and willing to put themselves forward for more senior roles due to many things including the time required to raise a family.

In years past, the issue was addressed by the ‘women can do anything’ campaign. Today it seems to have advanced beyond the ‘we are getting it wrong’ to ‘women deserve recognition’. However, if we want to fix it, we have to move on from ‘raising the awareness of the gender imbalance’ to ‘the opportunity and importance of an organisation’s makeup representing its customer or stakeholder base.’

If the discussion matured to this point, we would see a much larger number of businesses seeing the risks and opportunities associated with the imbalance in a clearer light rather than thinking about ‘how to be seen to be doing the right thing’ which will bring about little change for anyone.

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