The Guyana Water Inc. (GWI) has over the years been repeatedly condemned for the substandard service often provided to citizens. Recently however, the condemnation leveled against them was based on the public unveiling of their leadership team. Posted with what was obliviously a lack of insight and gender lens, the all-male board of GWI made apparent what many inclusivity hires and sessions have tried to hide, it is still a man’s world.
Across the public and private sector, men continue to be the predominant faces on leadership teams, with nary a woman in sight. In 2015, the make-up of male centred boards for several institutions had resulted in calls by civil society members to do away with this regressive and discriminatory practice. As we can see, the needle has still not moved.
A flimsy excuse that is often offered in situations such as these is that there are not women available to take on these leadership positions. Even if this were true (which it is not) the question institutions should be asking themselves are: Is our environment one that actively recruits and encourages women to stay with us? Is it free from sexual harassment and abuse? Does it offer mentorship and other growth opportunities for women? Are we rewarding and promoting women at the same pace with which we do men?
In Guyana and around the world, women and girls steadily outperform men and boys in educational attainment. This has even resulted in the now popularized male feminist idea that there is a “feminization” of our education system that unfairly leaves men and boys behind. It is a very rich idea as female educational attainment rarely translates to them actively participating in the labour market and earning higher income stability than males. A 2020 IDB report, “Mind the Gender Gap” reported that the labour market participation gender gap was greatest in Guyana, where women had 44 percent lower participation than men in the labour force, despite attaining higher educational levels across the board.
There is a diverse pool of capable women who are very well suited to function in leadership positions. Of course, elevating qualified women to take on these roles, would be seen as challenging set gender beliefs of men being at the head of the table.
So, often what you end up with is a board that is predominantly male centred with a woman or two added in as dressing. Referring to women in this way is certainly patronizing to their skills and experience, but the reality is that they rarely, if ever, have any real decision making powers on these boards. They are just there as check boxes of inclusion, with the need for optical managerial diversity being the driving force.
It is for reasons such as these that there needs to be more focus on implementing gender quotas for boards and other leadership positions, particularly in the public sector. While having gender quotas are not necessarily the best strategy in ensuring that women are fairly represented amongst all levels in the workplace, given our current trajectory, it is a necessity. Quotas aid not only in rectifying women’s underrepresentation in prominent positions, but also ensure that their presence in these positions is not merely tokenistic.
As much as it would be very easy to continue to target GWI for what is clearly a lack of conscious and progressive leadership, the reality is that the situation is not one that is new or unique to them. It is also not something that many here see as an issue, as diversity continues to be thought of solely in ethnic terms. Surely, ethnic balance in institutions is needed, as at the end of the day, we must ensure that people making the decisions look like and represent those affected by said decisions. However, ethnic balance is not the only thing that needs to be considered.
Certainly, we have as a society come a very long way in moving away from gender discrimination in the academic and labour market, but we are nowhere close to where we need to be. Women and girls still are affected by gender stereotypes and biases that brand them as only being suited for caretaking and supporting roles rather than ones for leadership. While it certainly was good that so many were able to readily identify the issue with GWI’s all-male board in 2021, we must ensure that these calls for gender balance are maintained for all institutions. Moving away from patriarchal systems of power means ensuring that the labour force actively recruits, mentors and elevates women to positions of power and do not continue to relegate them to the shadows.
