Gender Neutral Quotas

Most companies looking to balance genders in their workforces set a target for the number of women in the organization. Royal Dutch Shell, for example, has committed to having at least 20% women in top management in the long term.

Aside from the low number and all the arguments around merit, this approach is problematic for two reasons.

First of all, it completely ignores the huge variations in gender representation across the different functions of the organization. Companies proudly tout women's successes in areas such as HR or communications, where women can sometimes account for 85% of positions, while keeping quiet about the fact that there are only 10-15% women employees in operations. They then average that 80% to argue that they may overall be balanced. Problem solved.

Well, no actually. Having too many women in PR is surely as bad as too few in manufacturing.

The second problem is that quotas are very excluding of men, who usually don't react very positively to years of having to push the percentage of women.

Which is why I welcome the recent announcement by the medical equipment company Medtronic that instead of targeting a proportion of women in the workforce it is targeting a balance. Their target is not a set number. It is a range. Anything between 40/60 and 60/40 of either gender is acceptable. Anything outside of that range is not considered balanced.

I like the approach because it solves both problems. As Sebastian Malinski, Medtronic Europe's Director of Talent Management & Inclusion, explained to me, "Our goal is to ensure that both genders flourish in our work environment... This range was created to underline that under-representation of either gender is an area for improvement. So, for example, the thin talent pipeline of women in some line roles is as suboptimal as a thin pipeline of men in some staff functions — or vice versa."

More generally, it offers a goal that men can be enthusiastic about as well. Unlike a quota for women, a target balance is something both genders can relate to. It makes me think of a comment made by the male, right wing Minister of Industry in Norway who imposed the first gender rules on Norwegian company boards in 2008. His legislation was similarly gender 'neutral' to Medtronic's target balance: it required a 40% minimum of either gender. "That," he said at the time, "will protect men in the future."