“All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and right,” says the UN Declaration of Human Rights of 1948. And yet the struggle for equality in practice is still going on. Indeed, the issue is particularly explosive today, with mass protests against racism spreading around the world following the killing of black man George Floyd in a police operation in the USA. The all-embracing concept of equal treatment does not just relate to the colour of skin, however – it also concerns disabled and non-disabled people as well as the different genders and their sexual orientation.
That even parity between the genders is still a long way off is demonstrated by the Gender Gap Report, recently published for the 14th time already. According to the experts, it will be another 95 years before the gender gap just in politics is closed. Things are progressing much faster in education, where parity is set to be achieved in just 12 years. Currently it has been reached in full in 40 of the 153 countries rated. In business, though, progress has come to a halt. While the situation in OECD countries continues to improve, in emerging and developing countries the picture is worsening. The report indicates that gender parity stands at only 57.8 per cent at present. The researchers reckon it will take no less than 257 years until 100 per cent is reached. One of the greatest challenges preventing the closure of the economic gap between the genders is the under-representation of women in aspiring roles. In cloud computing, for instance, just 12 per cent of managers are women. The number one country for gender parity is Iceland, according to the Gender Gap Report – for the 11th time in a row. View more information on investment solutions on the topic “Profiting from the aspiration for diversity”.
According to the “Delivering the Power of Parity” study published by consultancy firm McKinsey in 2015, the equal treatment of women in business and society clearly pays off. The analysis, which was conducted in 95 countries around the world, comes to the conclusion that investment in this sector could boost global economic output by USDtn 12 in 2025, equivalent to additional growth of 11 per cent. The Washington Peterson Institute for International Economics sees the female gender as a success factor in business. It calculates that a rise in the proportion of women in managerial roles from zero to 30 per cent would deliver a 15 per cent increase in net profits.
The aspiration for gender diversity in business thus brings real added economic value. It is not only with regard to parity between men and women that it makes sense to tap into the available talent pool, however: widely differing characteristics in terms of origin, religion, disability or sexual orientation also need to be taken fully into consideration. The headwind caused by demographic change is reason enough for this. According to a recent analysis by the OECD, in Switzerland the proportion of those aged 65 or over will climb above 30 per cent of population in the 2050s, while that of those aged 85 or over will double to ten per cent by 2045. The larger talent base that equality would deliver could safeguard the welfare standards achieved to date for future generations as well.
