It’s An Unequal World for Women in Business: How You Can Gain a Strategic Advantage

It’s International Women’s Day. There is much to celebrate and so much more work to be done on behalf of women and girls!

Gender inequalities occur in all cultures, in developed and developing countries. The difference between women in the U.S. and developing countries is an order of magnitude. For many of us in the U.S. survival isn’t at stake; we have rights and know about them, and we can own property.

But when it comes to business and work, the difference is just a few degrees of separation.

For example, the International Finance Corporation reports that women around the world:

Have less access to equal employment opportunities and capital to grow their businesses.”

Had I founded my company Leadership Hand LLC in 1987 in the U.S., I would not have been able to get business credit in my name. Yes, you read that right: 1987. I would have had to go through my father, my brother or uncle as co-signers. Thank you to those who helped the Women's Business Ownership Act (H.R. 5050) pass in 1988 eliminating this requirement!

The National Women’s Business Council (NWBC) focuses on four pillars for women-led and women-owned businesses: access to capital, access to markets, job creation and growth. In its 2014 research on access to capital for high growth women entrepreneurs it:

Found a disparity between the amounts and types of financial capital men and women entrepreneurs use. Discrepancies regarding the use of external capital (that is, capital from sources other than entrepreneurs’ friends or family) are particularly notable.”

The U.S. has made progress increasing gender equality. But it’s not a quick path to success here or around the globe. It includes addressing the entire entrepreneurial ecosystem impacting women in business.

An Acknowledgment of Reality and Action to Create Parity

For women in business, the solution has to be both an acknowledgement of reality and action to create parity. You can gain a strategic advantage by leveraging your attributes and how you lead your business. Here are four steps to get you started:

1. Have a clear, compelling vision--one that pulls you and your employees forward. This is critical for every business.

What’s your gender advantage? An article by Anita Woolley and Thomas W. Malone in the Harvard Business Review reported that Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) research found the collective intelligence of a group is determined by three things:

• The average social perceptiveness of the group members.
• The evenness of conversational participation.
• The proportion of women in the group.

While I’ve worked with women who need to cultivate social perceptiveness and encourage conversational balance, I agree that women seem to have a leg-up when it comes to these attributes.

Leverage them by communicating the vision to your employees in a live conversation. Do not simply email it or post it on the company website home page. Create a way for them to provide input so that it becomes a shared vision. It will validate the vision or make it even better— a win win.

You and your employees need to identify values and soft-side skills, like communicating, coordinating, and behaviors that increase trust, that are essential to achieving the vision. This too is a conversation. What is the evidence—qualitative and quantitative—for how you demonstrate these? While the discussion should be rich, when you agree on the list, keep it simple and short.

Then comes the hard part: putting those values and skills into practice every day. You and your employees will need to find a way to regularly assess how all of you are doing. Focus on where you are doing well first and foremost!

Having an external advisor to help facilitate process can free you and your staff to participate more fully, to get a higher quality result, and to make the best use of your time.

2. Create a one-page, annual strategic plan for you. This isn’t the one for your business, but for you—to keep you focused on what’s important and to minimize distractions. You need to set your annual objectives and break them down into quarters. The juice though, comes from naming the single-most important mindset you decide you need, and the top three behaviors you’ll engage in to bring these goals to fruition. Revisit this plan weekly.

I regularly hear clients say how much they value our time together—to step back and hear themselves think, to think about what’s important, and to shift their perspective. Women frequently have so much on their plates, they don’t carve this time out or have simple structures to help them focus on what’s important. As a business owner like you, I know this challenge well and continually work to improve how I, and my business, are doing. You want and need your actions to be powerful and strategic to have the biggest impact.

3. Notice your own brilliance. So many women business owners and leaders who are super smart, committed to having a bigger impact, and eager to evolve, overlook their brilliance. You have become so masterful at something, or you executed an initiative so well, you don’t see it.

If you knew you had superpowers wouldn’t you want to know what they are?

Start noticing your everyday brilliance—it could be where you delegated well or where you stayed focused on the strategic and important. It could be where you were bold. however you choose to define that. Make this a practice.

The well-written article, The Confidence Gap, by Katty Kay and Claire Shipman for The Atlantic, talks about how women feel less confident. I agree with this too, but think it’s less about confidence and more about what we are paying attention to and how we pay attention. We always seem to see both sides, including where we could have done a better job. This attribute might well be why we have such a positive impact on peace.

So please, get busy attending to where you are brilliant. Claim your superpowers. Your confidence will increase and become a deep well you can draw from.

4. Help others notice their own brilliance. Start with your leadership team. Catch them doing right and well, not just as individuals, but when they are brilliant as a team. Then help them learn how to shine a light on their direct reports and beyond. That means you and they adopt an appreciative attitude and cultivate it in others. Appreciation, like trust, will transform your organizational culture and nourish your employee’s capacity.

Women in Business Are Doers

Are there men who share the attributes I’ve written about? Yes! Can men use these steps to gain a strategic advantage? Yes, go for it! But, I do see differences between how men and women lead. They are generalizations and for every gender generalization, there are exceptions! As the old adage goes: if it were easy, everyone would be doing it. What we know is that women in business are doers. You are breaking ground. Last year Ban Ki-moon, UN Secretary-General said at International Women’s Day:

Countries with higher levels of gender equality have higher economic growth. Companies with more women on their boards have higher returns. Peace agreements that include women are more successful. Parliaments with more women take up a wider range of issues - including health, education, anti-discrimination, and child support.”

Turn Your Attributes & Leadership Abilities into Your Business's Strategic Advantage

Women in business, turn your attributes and leadership abilities into your business’s strategic advantage. Acknowledge the reality that it’s an unequal world for women and girls, and take action to create parity and prosperity.

You need to for you. And the world needs you to: for men and women, boys and girls.

If this post resonates with you or even better, inspires you, please "like it" to let me know.

Beth Hand is the CEO of Leadership Hand LLC, a woman-owned business that helps mission-driven leaders worldwide achieve strategic results. She is the author of just released Hidden by Gender: What Women Need to Know  About Gender Bias to Shine in the Corporate Space & the Marketplace, the sixth book in the Leadership Hand® series with world class approaches for solving your business and leadership challenges. www.leadershiphand.com