I read an interesting article this morning in The New York Times proclaiming the percentage of women in the workforce may surpass men for the first time. The article touches on the various societal and familial ramifications of this trend but I believe there is further commentary that can be done.
As Layoffs Surge, Women May Pass Men in Job Force[registration to NYTimes.com required]
This is a complex and loaded topic for sure. Over the years, the majority of the organizations I have worked with all express some commitment toward creating and maintaining diversity within their ranks. Whether they classify diverse populations by ethnicity or by gender or by a combination, workforce analysis and reporting is consistently done on this topic. The audience for these diversity metrics range from CEOs to Heads of HR to Talent Acquisition teams. Among the most common segmentations is diversity by positions/titles [Manager, Director, VP, SVP, etc]. Infohrm has devoted an entire Issue-Based Report on the topic of Diversity so as to better enable our members to assess and report out on the diverse composition of their workforce. In the report, we recommend organizations analyze by age, tenure and promotion rates. I have also seen some very telling pay differential analysis when overlaying performance and tenure in combination with workforce composition.
Additionally, the article suggests women are historically in lower paying and more recession proof industries [education, healthcare, etc]. So it is the loss of men in the workforce [men represent 82% of all job losses] in industries such as manufacturing that have increased the percent of women [49.1% of the total workforce] in the workforce and not an actual increase in hiring. So as always, I leave with more questions than answers. Are women ascending in the ranks of their respective organizations? Are the positions men are being laid off from being filled with women? Outsourced? Left vacant? It is a never ending rabbit hole of questions and analysis. I work every day with our members to challenge them with questions and assist them in creating more insightful and impactful analysis. Ultimately though, the story is never in one metric. As such, I found it a bit misleading and sensationalized that this one metric [women as percent of total workforce] is being heralded as an insight into the future of our workforce.
As diversity measurement becomes more sophisticated and moves away from primarily a compliance function to a more strategic imperative, companies will come up with more meaninful proxies for measuring diversity. For example, many progressive companies are building experience/knowledge databases which will better position them to understand the true diversity drivers of success.