Empowering Women to Advance in Their Own Ways
Showing Employers the Benefits of Empowering Women
Women have spent most of modern history empowering women in whatever ways they could. One of the most common contemporary iterations is to promote career advancement outside of the “acting male” paradigm, the stereotype applied to women who became or began acting – or were, the stereotype doesn’t distinguish – harder, more assertive and aggressive than it was thought women should be. One route to the more organic growth it to take advantage of a social network for women populated with the highly successful and motivated.
But a recent study by management consulting firm Accenture also found that women are more likely to attempt to advance their careers through seeking training and networking at the job site and anywhere they can find it if – as opposed to men who are more likely to just look for a new job. This fact has at least two important lessons for those of us wonderings about new ways for empowering women in the workplace.
The large majority of companies does not offer training or networking opportunities that target women specifically, meaning they are missing out on an opportunity to invest in and retain their employees. There are certainly mutually beneficial strategies to get these types of opportunities implemented so that employers can realize a low-cost investment in productivity and women can gain training and resources to advance their careers. Women with professional clout can push for these measures to help empower women in the workplace.
Second, there is a correlation between the way company cultures have been structured male-centrically and the ceiling on female advancement up the corporate ladder. Some would say that women’s likelihood to seek training and networking reflects our tendency to favor coordination and collaborative problem solving. Regardless, a system that doesn’t yet create situations to capitalize on this drive is not necessarily deliberately sexist; but it is sexist none the less. The shape of the workforce in the United States is absolutely changing and women are more equally represented. The potential of this mass of woman workers for U.S. productivity cannot be fully taken advantage of unless corporate cultures adjust and make empowering women more of a priority.
