Gender Equality Is Smart Business by John McDonnell

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Diversity of thinking makes for better teams. That’s now an established fact, in addition to being common sense. Why? Because diverse teams by definition mean more diverse ways of thinking, producing more options for decision makers to consider.

Having more varied team members to choose from increases a team leader’s chances of assembling the best team as a whole, balancing, for example, approaches that are analytical, experimental, practical or relational.

With the value of diverse thinking in mind, consider an obvious but big question: How does the fact that you are a man or a woman influence your life? In almost every way, right? Yet in my 30-plus years of working in over 140 countries in the global spirits industry, and in my service on corporate and educational boards, I’ve typically seen a lack of proportionate female representation on boards.

Women continue to outnumber men as a percentage of the total nation at 50.8%. They are reported to earn almost 60% of undergraduate degrees in the country and 60% of all master’s degrees. And yet, although American women hold almost 52% of all professional-level jobs, they are lagging substantially behind men in terms of their representation in leadership positions.