How can business advance gender equality across the value chain by engaging men as allies?

@Chiara_Condi fully agree - it needs to be a holistic approach. one of the challenges I think is to maintain momentum and focus. Keeping it on the leadership agenda, embedding it into every opportunity such as inductions, townhalls etc and also creative communications are key to this in large organisations!

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@Abi - thanks! Yes I think it’s a great campaign! Skol is one of AB InBev’s largest brands in Brazil.

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Yes! Thank you for raising this issue…it is going to become increasingly important - and tricky for organizations to navigate the issue of intersectionality. e.g. Will ERGs become meaningless? Will monitoring/tracking diversity ratios become more difficult?

I did some research with colleagues about [masculinity contests](http://How Masculinity Contests Undermine Organizations and What To Do About It) at work - workplace cultures that are dominated by norms of hyper masculinity, like cut throat competitive environments. There are really negative outcomes in such organizations both for the company itself and for the employees. But notably, in such companies, there are few women in leadership.

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@coopermarianne That is really interesting Marianne, making those links is so important.

Just returning to the issue of how to help engage men through self reflection - have any of you seen effective self assessments or surveys that have helped kick start this process? Im aware that HeForShe and PWC produced a gender IQ quiz, and that there are others out there, but interested in your views…

Thanks @Marianne - although I work in an 83% female workforce and I promise that women can be just as tough on each other as men :slightly_smiling_face:

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I think it’s important to frame these transitions as ones that can provide added value to a workplace, rather than as a loss of power (i.e. expanding opportunities for an entire community/workplace, rather than redistributing opportunities or resources such that everyone ends up with a smaller share). It’s not necessarily true that men lose out as a result of more equitable opportunities for women.

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To add, we do have to be careful for intersectionality to not be used to justify sticking to the status quo by simply paralyzing the conversation. Intersectionality should be used to see injustices and inequities and how they interact and then how you can address those issues to promote social justice and in this discussion gender equality.

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For the future, I’m really curious how corporations who are working on their culture of equality are seeing this translate to the ways they choose to sell their products. I think is part of walking the walk. I think consumers will respond better to companies that both get more women in the board room and staff levels and improve policies, but also don’t rely on dated stereotypes to sell their wares or charge ā€˜pink taxes,’ etc.

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Totally agree @DanSeymour the actual reality of the inequality we are trying to address is multidimensional and focusses a lot around who has the power and privilege and how this can be shared more equitably.

@Dan - Really great and important point. It was good to see this covered in the 2018 McKinsey Women in the Workplace report that i think @Marianne contributed to. It’s a topic we definitely want to understand more about to inform our work on Diversity & Inclusion.

https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/gender-equality/women-in-the-workplace-2018

@RobBaker Power and privilege so often left out of these debates and is absolutely key.

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Very important point - ā€˜as Rania Anderson notes in her book ā€˜WE’ 'Both men and women unconsciously and consciously thwart the efforts and advancements of women’

This is a really important point. For change to last, gender inclusive practices need to be baked into workplace policies, the culture etc. so that it becomes part of the DNA (so to speak) of the organization and is not dependent on whomever happens to be in leadership at that moment.

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Agreed Isabel, and even if there is a small decrease in relative power in the workplace that could be offset by gains in terms of involvement and satisfaction in the homeplace (which many millennials seem to desire).

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@Nikkivdg your second challenge here is definitely one I’ve discussed with many multi national companies - the need to have a consistent values based global framework but which is sufficiently flexible to be owned and led by local teams to be appropriate for local context.

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@Fabio - I think that’s a key point - the complexity of the intersectionality discussion does risk paralysing us - and turning off people we need as allies who throw their hands up at the laundry list of identities we want them to consider and support. We still haven’t found the right way to present the issue in my view.

Having said that, the important thing is to make sure that our D&I discourse and efforts aren’t overly captured by one group among the broader groups we are focusing on. That is a real threat which does happen and to an extent is happening.

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Agreed. Masculinity contest cultures involve both men and women.

@AliceAllan - one excellent book for men who want to start reflecting on gender equality and what they can do is https://davidleser.com/books/women-men-and-the-whole-damn-thing/

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