I participated in a webinar call through Catalyst today on how to engage men in gender initiatives. Catalyst has written a research paper on this topic, Engaging Men in Gender Initiatives - Stacking the Deck for Success and today’s call brought together three male panelists who did great work in gender diversity for their respective companies.

The research indicated that the first step to engaging men in gender initiatives is to help them recognize that inequality exists in the workplace. Men often underestimate gender as a barrier for women in the workplace and I know from personal experience that during a great many conversations with male colleagues and friends I’ve had to convince them that these issues actually still exist. In fact today one of the panelist’s quoted a study where 73% of CEOs did not believe the glass ceiling was an issue for women working in their organization.  

Other research out there suggests that more diverse teams led to better decision making and an increased bottom line in corporations so why is it so difficult to engage men in this space?

The Catalyst research stated that men are reluctant to step up and champion gender initiatives through fear of losing their own status or approval amongst their male peers. So, what does motivate men to action when engaging in gender initiatives? A strong sense of fair play and social justice was quoted as the motivation of the men in the research who took an active role in gender and diversity in their companies. The panelist’s today all spoke of a personal experience that pushed them towards engaging in equality and diversity issues.

So what can we do to help men become engaged in this space? We can appeal to the morals and values of fair play in the workplace in our business plans. We can help men understand that by championing for equality and diversity in the workplace they are gaining more than they are losing. We can start the dialogue in our organizations to close that gap between awareness and action. We can encourage metrics to be put in place to help drive the agenda forward.

It takes individual acts of courage and leadership to defy biases and effect change. Let’s all do our part to engage one diversity champion at a time.