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A Procter & Gamble boss: There's a 'false narrative' used to 'justify' the gender gap

Carolyn Tastad, group president of North America at Procter & Gamble. Source: WEF
Carolyn Tastad, group president of North America at Procter & Gamble. Source: WEF

We may think we have made great strides in gaining equality in the workplace and in one of the most powerful industries — politics — the number of female political leaders has increased. But in business, the number of female CEOs of Fortune 500 companies has tumbled by 25% in 2018.

At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on a panel called Female Leadership at a Tipping Point, Carolyn Tastad, group president of North America at Procter & Gamble outlined that there is a common “false narrative” that is used by society and companies for the woeful gender gap for women in senior leadership positions.

“There is a false narrative and there are false bias assumptions we are using as justification for the lack of progress. There are a number of things we have to do differently,” said Tastad.

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“The first thing we have to do is stop some of the labelling that is happening, typically, negatively towards women in terms of working through things.”

Tastad said that “many people hear about women’s confidence or lack of confidence” and that stems from a study that showed that men will apply for jobs even if they only possess 60% of the requirements in a criteria. Meanwhile, women will only apply for jobs if they have 100% of the criteria.

She said that, as an example, has led to people thinking that the issue is with women having less confidence and needing to be more “assertive,” when it in fact should be addressed as to why women have to do more to go for a job.

“Many organisations have 50/50 representation in the junior levels but in the middle of the organisation that tips. And now we talk about ‘we don’t want fake promotions to close the gap.’ But then previously that was enough to close the gap?,” she said.

“We’ve got to get rid of this notion that women have to behave differently. We’ve got to be very intentional in our talent planning — reverse engineer it. If you narrow it down to specifics and maths, it can be done.

“We need equality based policies. We need to find ways for men and women to be equal partners at home to enable quality in the workplace.”