HBR Snippet: Gender Inequality in the Workplace

Here's a short summary of a Harvard Business Review article I enjoyed reading.

HBR: What's really holding women back?

For years, culture norms have painted women as the primary caregiver - a viewpoint adopted by most people when attempting to understand the few number of women in the workforce. But, according to the HBR article, the underlying cause of the issue lies in functioning of the "contemporary corporate culture". For years, we've believed that an "ideal worker" is one who only prioritizes his/her job and that working long hours has many advantages, because of which employees have had to choose between excelling either at home or at work. Hence, both genders struggle in the pressurizing & highly demanding corporate culture.

The difference between the 2 genders comes into play when we talk about the provision of accommodations, like the ability to work part-time or take on "internally facing roles" - accommodations that men, on average, don't opt for, while women do, causing a derailment from their career paths - in a culture of "overworking and overdelivering". Hence, people wrongly reason the gender gap in career advancements to stem from the"work/family narrative" i.e. women struggle professionally because they choose their familial commitments over their job that demands very long hours.

Here's hoping for a better future: As and when more research about benefits of reasonable working hours becomes available, more employees will be inclined towards questioning their demanding schedules and ask a change in their professional lives. Employees, men and women, would no longer have to choose between home or work responsibilities.