The importance of debunking myths about gender
Many myths and biases operate against women in our institutions in different sectors of the economy. If unchecked, these biases can become barriers in enhancing the performance of the relevant institutions. These barriers can be eradicated if we create a level playing field and provide equal opportunities for career enhancements, disregarding the gender of the individual. As a first step in that direction, it is imperative to sensitize senior policy makers about the negative consequences of such barriers.
As a start, recently a training program was organized under the umbrella of Assessment & Strengthening Program, a USAID funded project at Lahore University of Management Sciences with the aim to break out of the institutional myths that work against women’s career growth. The main theme of this program was ‘Development & Leadership: Gender dimension’. About 21 participants attended this program; the participants were almost equally divided between women and men (11 men and 10 women) and they came from all parts of the country such as Peshawar, Quetta, Lahore, Islamabad, FATA, representing different sectors of the economy.
The program was designed to search for ways to tackle the challenges of integration of the sexes at the workplace in order to improve institutional performance. This was considered absolutely essential not only from the standpoint of increasing operational efficiency of our institutions but also to make Pakistan a prosperous country by through the effective utilization of available human resources. This program sought to demonstrate that leadership ought not be the exclusive prerogative of men. Women, it was felt, were equally equipped with the necessary qualities to lead institutions.
There was no doubt in the minds of the organizers that without an abiding faith in the rule of law, meritocracy and equality of opportunity, it would be difficult to remove the operating institutional biases working against women at the workplace. Therefore, topics like democracy and governance, development policy and gender, gender in the context of constitution & law, leadership and development of effective teams were stressed in the program. In the knowledge economy, it was acknowledged that physical traits were not what made a leader effective. Instead, there was a wider recognition intellectual endowment that contributed to the effectiveness of a leader.
In view of the above, the fundamental questions that the program aimed to address were whether or not there were any major differences in the psychological and leadership profiles of men and women. Secondly, it was posited that teams with a healthy mix of women and men will emerge as high performance teams as compared to single sex teams. To test this hypothesis two different types of teams were formed— the first kind had both sexes and the second kind were single sex teams.
What did the results of these two experiments show? First, it was quite interesting to discover that there were not many differences in the psychological profiles of women and men. From this it could be easily inferred that if men could handle institutional leadership positions effectively then women could occupy positions of power as well. Even though the sample was small, the diversity in the sample was good enough to draw a general conclusion that the allegation that men made more effective leaders than women is clearly a myth.
Secondly, another question raised by men in the program was related to the posting choices in high security risk areas. Most men were of the opinion that women were either reluctant or couldn’t handle jobs at such places. When a response was sought from women they unanimously affirmed that, if given the opportunity, they wouldn’t shy away from taking leadership responsibilities in such areas. Therefore, to deny women leadership positions using the excuse that they are reluctant to work in ‘hard’ areas, is a misinformed assumption.
Thirdly, with regards to assessing the teams’ performance, it was noted that at the start of the team performance exercise, it was generally believed that the men’s team will outperform all other team combinations. At the end of the exercise, it turned out that those two teams that had a mix of women and men emerged as high performing teams when compared to teams made up of exclusively women or men. Thus, this myth was also proven to be a misplaced one in the face of empirical evidence.
What kind of conclusions can be drawn from the preceding results? First, that women in institutions are denied leadership positions not because they lack competence, courage or communication skills but because of operating biases in the day-to-day running of our institutions. We need to remove such biases and create equality of opportunity based on merit, for the growth of women in our institutions— particularly public sector institutions.
Lastly, and most importantly, if we can create balanced teams that comprise of both women and men, institutional performance can be considerably enhanced due to the synergy of forces. To build stronger and more effective institutions, creating teams comprising of both genders at the policy making and operational level, will be the way forward. In conclusion, it must be emphasized, that the biases against women at the workplaces must be debunked if we wished to make our country prosperous.
The writer is a Visiting Professor at Lahore University of Management Sciences. Email:[email protected]
