The goal of Gender Equality, also known as sexual equality, is a very current and topical subject. It is the United Nations goal of the month for this month and it is marked by International Women’s Day on the 8^th of March, which has been celebrated for the last four decades. The negligence of gender equality occurs in all aspects of life including education, work, abuse and medical attention, just to name a few. This goal set by the United Nations is a call for action by all countries to achieve equality between the genders. Gender Equality is a fundamental human right. However, as of 2014, 52 countries still have yet to guarantee equality between the genders. This goal is necessary for the growth of a prosperous and sustainable world. The complete focus of the goal is to end all forms of discrimination against all women and girls, which the United Nations then divides into smaller targets to achieve over a period of time.

1. For Women to feel Empowered

Empowered women are happier women.

Women that are happier are more likely to make a positive contribution to society. They are more likely to vote, take part in voluntary work and participate in public activities. Not only that but happiness is contagious. Happier women are more likely to help others around them become happier. Happiness affects others in their network across “three degrees of separation” meaning, how happy we are has a measurable impact on the mood of our friend’s friend’s friend.
(the Guardian, 2019)

Accounting for 50% of the population, it is important that women feel they are equal in order for them to feel happy. It is essential to our society in order to ensure the sustainable development of the country. Women can have equal right to participate in education, society, economy and politically and it is important that they do.

The best way to empower women is by giving them the knowledge, skills and self-confidence to participate fully in the development process. The best way to give them these necessary skills is through education.
(Unfpa.org, 2019)

2. Economic Growth

Gender equality is crucial for the entire economy as it will boost economic growth.

“Improvements to gender equality would generate up to 10.5 million additional jobs by 2050 and the EU Employment rate would reach almost 80%.”
(European Institute for Gender Equality, 2019)

For far too long gender inequalities have been limiting women’s economic opportunities but we now have proof that gender equality is crucial for the economy. Gender equality means more people are educated, leading to more people working in the world and thus as a result boosts the money circulating in the economy leading to a better standard of living. Half of the economic growth over the past 50 years is attributed to girls having better access to education, as well as increased in the number of years of schooling between girls and boys.

3. Better work place

Women should have the opportunity to work wherever their strengths lie, not where society dictates them. If companies employed women on an equal basis then they would have a more diverse-skill set. This maximizes the skills and knowledge in the workplace and as a results leads to better decisions in the workplace, better productivity in the workplace and overall a better environment for workers.
(Economistfoundation.org, 2019)

Imagine if you have a team and you don’t let half the team play, that’s stupid! That makes no sense.
(Medium, 2019)

A better work environment benefits everyone :

• It means less staff turnover for the company. Employees are happy in work and feel they have a safe working environment, reducing costs for the company as they don’t have to spend as much money on training and development.
• Innovation excels. The happier the work environment is the higher innovation is as people are more likely to speak up about their ideas and these ideas bounce off one another.
• Better decisions are made for the company. The happier people are at work the more likely they are to contribute to decision making as they actually care about the company and as a result better and quicker decisions are made.
• Company goals are more likely to be met. If people have an enjoyable working environment they are more likely to work towards the company goals because they care about the company and the people in it.

If gender equality is not incorporated into the work environment the company limits itself. Having a happy work place will only be made possible if gender equality exists.

1. The Glass Ceiling

This is a metaphor used to describe how women are blocked from getting to the top. It is an invisible barrier that prevents women from achieving senior roles in the workplace. Women can see the high level corporate jobs but are kept from reaching the top. The glass ceiling isn’t based on the inability to handle a higher level job but applies to women as a group from reaching the top simply because they are women. In the survey by Korn/Ferry International, executive women were asked to name the greatest obstacle they had to overcome to achieve success; the most frequent response was simply “being a woman” (40%).
(Feminist.org, 2019)

In order to overcome this obstacle we need to:

• Recognise that it exits; In order to break the glass ceiling you need to recognise that it exists in your workplace.

• What you can do as an employee; If you recognise the glass ceiling in your workplace you need to address it. Do this through developing your awareness of the issue as the better you understand it the more opportunities you will identify to promote change. Once you know more about it and where it exists in the workplace raise your concerns about it by speaking up. Breaking the glass ceiling will take time therefore its important to be patient but also remain assertive.

(Mindtools.com, 2019)

2. Attitudes Towards Women

The attitude that “a man’s job is to earn the money, a woman’s job is to look after the home and family” needs to change.

Only 22% of women and 33% of men believe that men and women have access to equal opportunities in the labour market and this is due to the attitude that people have towards women in the workplace. This comes down to the traditional sense that men are more work-orientated and women are more family-orientated. However, times are changing as women are having kids much later and less of them, there are opportunities for women to take work off during pregnancy, therefore, this attitude that women are not as capable as men in certain positions needs to change with the times.

Many people still maintain this old fashion thought that there will be negative effects of the children and the family if women go out and work. This is a huge obstacle that needs to be addressed. People need to get rid of this attitude as it has actually been proven that children in fact benefit from having a working mother. In a study from 2015 it was shown that women who were raised by mothers that worked both inside and outside earned a higher income than women that were raised by mothers that worked just in the household. Women raised by working mothers were more likely to hold supervisory roles in the workplace. As for men, if there mother worked outside the home they were more likely to contribute to household chores and to care for family members.
(Hbs.edu, 2019)

“WORKING BOTH INSIDE AND OUTSIDE THE HOME GIVES YOUR KIDS A SIGNAL THAT CONTRIBUTIONS AT HOME AND AT WORK ARE EQUALLY VALUABLE.”
(Hbs.edu, 2019)

3. Gender Pay Gap

The difference between the average gross earnings of female and male employees is known as the ‘gender pay gap’.

It will take 202 years for this gap to close.

Women earn less than men in nearly every single occupation. This is a huge obstacle facing gender equality and one that is increasingly being addressed more. Men earn more as they are more likely to gain a senior position. This comes down to the reasoning that women are less capable as they will need time off to have children and also to mind their children.

The solution to this obstacle is simple: stop paying women less than men for the same role.

Our society is becoming more aware of business practices and whether they are ethical or not. With boycotts, pressure groups and just normal consumers all taking a stand against businesses that are unethical it is now more than ever essential that businesses practice good ethics. There is a positive correlation between good ethical practices and sustainability. Equality and diversity are at the heart of this and is what many employees look for from employers. At the heart of every business are their labor force and if an employee in today’s market feels discriminated against, they would not hesitate to try

find another job and publicize the company’s bad practices. By having a good ethical code enforced from the top right down through the ranks a company is helping itself to become prosperous and sustainable. Men who disregard the issue of gender equality often fear the scales tipping away from them in favor of women, which is why in many companies have been slow to implement the changes needed to encourage equal opportunities for all. However, this is not the case, gender equality is about leveling the playing field in order to benefit both the individual and the company and reaching maximum efficiency.

Before world war II very few women were in the workforce and if women were it was predominantly women of colour or very entry level

positions. During the war most men had gone off to fight giving women the opportunity to take on positions with greater responsibility than ever before. During this time, a new sense of independence and freedom was unleashed within woman. When the men returned from the war women were not willing to give up their roles in high positions with equal pay thus paving the way for women in generations to come. This change in women in the workplace continued flourishing throughout the years that followed leading up to present day.

The top positions across international organisations however are still predominantly male

dominated. In a survey of 400 women seventy percent saw the male-dominated corporate culture as a significant block to their success. It seems obvious that women simply have not advanced to the top ranks in direct proportion to their participation in the work force (Bass and Avolio, 1994). For our parents and their generation, the glass ceiling was still rigidly in place. Women could work and advance but only to a certain point before it was deemed a man’s job. In the workforce today the power is in the employees’ hand. Our generation have more flexibility with travel, working hours and certain criteria that are important to us that our employers must meet. The company must sell themselves as well if not better than prospective employee does as we have more options.

The millennium working woman will account for 25% of the workforce by 2020. The millennium woman is highly educated and a lot more confident than generations before her. A millennium woman often finds an opportunity for career progression the most attractive trait of an employer and are a lot more aware of

equality and diversity within a company (Kaplan, 2019). In order to be competitive, now and particularly in the future, organizations will need to create a culture and a work environment that attracts and retains a new generation of workers. This is especially true for organizations who wish to attract, retain and promote women, who should one day occupy a higher number of senior positions.

Having equal opportunities for both men and women within a company is no longer a unique selling point for a company it’s the minimum level to which all companies should try build upon. In a Ted Talk with Michael Kimmel he says that companies should stop asking how much gender equality will cost them and instead focus on how much gender inequality is already costing them. The more gender equal companies the happier, their labour force, easier time recruiting, higher rates of productivity, lower turnover rates and higher job satisfaction (Kimmel, 2015). As Malala Yousafzai said, “We cannot all succeed, when half of us are held back.”

Women more often in more recent years are being celebrated for their hard work and achievements in an organisation. With international women’s day being celebrated in offices internationally, women in business awards being hosted and grants specifically for women looking to start their own business. However, there are still tremendous obstacles in the way of equal opportunities and employers play a vitally important role in this Companies are keen to champion women’s empowerment. Board members attend diversity panels, female leaders are invited to give inspiring speeches however gender equality in the workplace shouldn’t be just a tick the box exercise to quieten protesters.

Below I have listed five key steps for improving gender equality in organisations:

• Re-evaluate job specifications for the senior management team

In many cases where women aren’t in roles of senior management a company should look at the barriers to entry that have been constructed

for women. L’Oréal is one of the most forward thinking and progressive companies when it comes to gender equality and has won many awards for their work and commitment to equal opportunities. In the 140 countries where it is present as of 2016, women represent 70% of total workforce, 46% of the Board of Directors, 33% of the Executive Committee and 48% of the Management committees (huard and JOYAUX, 2019).

• Remove the gender pay gap

The gender pay gap has been widely debated and publicised for years and will continue to

be if the culture of secrecy is continued within companies. A culture of transparency needs to be introduced which challenges a company to be open and honest about their pay gap. Buffer is leading the way in this change by providing a salary calculator. Since 2013, they have shared salary details for each employee and provided a salary calculator to allow anyone to quickly calculate what they could earn at Buffer and see the compensation for each role. Their core value “default to transparency” is at the heart of this and they have a transparency dashboard on their website with equity, salaries, revenue etc all available for the public to see(Buffer.com, 2019).

• Make work/life balance a priority for your employees

A significant hurdle that prevents women from reaching the top roles is lack of available child care support. Childcare can be extremely expensive with travel

costs on top of that in many cases for families with low wages it is almost not worth working. Companies can often oversell how family friendly they are even when they don’t have the support in place this can lead to frustration and early exits from a company. Seventeen of fortune 100 companies offer childcare facilities in the office to take the pressure off working mothers. If a perk like this was seen as standard a lot more woman would have the opportunity to progress further in their career while also balancing family life (Whyman, 2019).

To relieve working mothers parental leave for fathers should be promoted to allow fathers to become more involved in the childcare duties and allow the woman to focus on furthering her career.

• Make hiring processes equal

From lower level staff right up to senior management there must be a balance between men and women. It is not enough to have one token female on the board of directors that is shown off every time there is an issue with equal opportunities

between men and women. This begins with the hiring process and ensuring there are no barriers to entry for women or any biases in place.

The tech industry has always had a reputation for being predominately male dominated however Duolingo is looking to change this. In 2018 their incoming graduate software engineers reached a 50:50 gender ratio. Duolingo has made it clear that it didn’t happen by chance and is down to a new recruiting strategy that changed the way they approached hiring software engineers.

• Harassment needs to be identified and immediately stopped

8 in 10 Americans think that sexual harassment happens in most workplaces. But only then

1 in 10 believe it’s happening in their own office. More than 80% of companies have made no effort to discuss appropriate conduct, hold training or change policy in the wake of #MeToo and #TimesUp (Yahnke, 2019). Companies need to provide training in order to educate their staff on what is considered inappropriate, how to be better equipped to deal with it and prevent incidents from occurring. Many employees in the company may react badly to this insisting they are aware of what is appropriate and what is not, in this case the tone from the top must be fully in support of the training. If an incident of harassment occurs there needs to be a complaint system in place and that every employee knows how to utilise it correctly and can remain anonymous if desired.

University actions

As one of the leading universities in Ireland, DCU has campaigned for many things over my time here. With 16,000 (2015) students in the university, getting our point across is not difficult when there are hundreds of students pulling together. The three actions I want to appoint to Vito Moloney Burke, President of DCU Student Union are to:

1. Appoint a Gender Equality Officer (GEO) in DCU Student Union
2. Strive for a gender balanced Student Union
3. Promote a Gender Equality Week to raise money for women’s education in developing countries.

1. The appointing of a gender equality officer in DCU Student Union would create a role for male or female, solely dedicated to developing an equal environment for all genders. The gender equality officer would work with secondary schools to promote courses in our college that would not normally be recommended to certain genders. For example, the promotion of STEM courses in DCU to girls around the country. A recent event with DCU and I WISH measured these statistics:

● 59% of girls say they don’t know enough about STEM

● 93% of teachers say self-belief in girls’ own ability is a major challenge to STEM promotion in schools

● 90% of teachers want to see workshops for girls to enhance resilience and confidence

● The more STEM-related events a girl attends, the more likely she is to choose STEM subjects to Leaving Cert level and beyond.

The GEO could set up workshops for TY students to encourage them to take part and learn about STEM subjects, to hopefully lead to gender balanced STEM courses in the coming years for DCU.
There is a relevant gender inequality in education courses, i.e. Bachelor of Education, Bachelor of Early Childhood Education and Bachelors in Post-Primary Education. These courses are generally populated with females as teaching jobs are historically considered female occupations. It is essential that younger males are made aware of the importance of male role models in education.

2. It is important to promote a gender balanced student union in DCU for students. This can be achieved very easily but it is also very important to realise the issues in appointing members solely based on their gender. Members of the student union should be appointed based on their qualities as a person and what they can bring to DCU to make it a better environment for students to be in. The best candidate should be appointed but trying to balance the student union with males and females should also be considered.

3. Gender equality week is a great way for DCU to promote the importance of treating every gender equally. During this week, the gender equality officer would take lead in organising activities and promoting awareness of different genders and what DCU are doing to accommodate everyone in the college, no matter what gender. The introduction of gender-neutral toilets in the new U Building has encouraged the acceptance of every gender in DCU. This promotion can continue during gender equality week with academic talks by females in STEM and males in Education to promote the importance of both genders in each profession. Another way of spreading awareness of different genders is an exhibition on the theme of gender. How genders are not black and white anymore, there are many more genders than male and female, each of which should be treated with equal respect and dignity.

Personal actions

As a 20 year old university student living in Ireland, I believe the best thing I can do to diminish gender inequalities is to complete my education to the best of my ability. The three courses of action I have chosen to take are to:

1. Encourage more females to take up historically male professions
2. Discourage jobs being given based on gender and not ability
3. Help other women

1. Historically, women quit work when they got married, in order to manage running a household and look after a family as a full-time housewife. Nowadays, many women work full-time jobs outside of the home, with the same qualifications as men. This change in society has meant that women are searching for high jobs that were historically male dominant. As a young student, I would like to prove that women can obtain and keep highly ranked jobs, just as well as men can. I would like to prove that just because we are women, it doesn’t mean that we are incapable of doing a job, just as well, if not better than a man and that our gender should not determine whether we are given the job or not. Personally, I would like to be an accountant and hopefully move up to be a financial director and then CFO, these jobs are historically male jobs and females would have been assistants or secretaries in these offices. I want to prove society wrong.

2. It is important in today’s world to hire people based on their ability. Often, companies are worried that by hiring a man instead of a woman, they will be seen as sexist. The only issue with not hiring a woman instead of a man is if she is suited better to the job role than him but is disregarded, solely on the basis that she is a woman. I want to prove that I am just as suitable for a job as a man. With new legislation regarding joined parental leave, instead of solely maternity leave, women being of usual circumstances to have a baby should still be hired if they are better suited to the job than a man.

3. For me, this is the most important thing I can do to help achieve an equal gender world, help other women. I will help my friends, my peers, family members and women of my community to work together to achieve our goals. Many people are battling daily issues, together we can fight for gender equality. We need to join together as women. Women need to be given feedback on how they can do things differently to get closer to achieving their goals. We need to be cheered on and encouraged to reach for the goals, and to do it for the ones who said you couldn’t. It’s easy to sit back and say, “I’m not going to make difference to achieving gender equality on my own”, but the more we raise our voices and join together, the more impact you as an individual will make. We all have the power to make a difference, and I am going to use my power to help remove gender inequality from this world.

• https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/gender-equality/
• https://www.unfpa.org/female-genital-mutilation
• https://www.un.org/en/spotlight-initiative/

Bass, B. and Avolio, B. (1994). Shatter the glass ceiling: Women may make better managers. Human Resource Management, 33(4), pp.549-560.

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