The Business Model and women
The business model and women
James Damone worked for Google as an engineer from 2013 until a few weeks ago when he was fired for writing a 10 page memo criticising Google on a number of issues. The main one was that, in his opinion, citing principles of evolutionary psychology argued that women are unsuited to be good engineers because they are more interested in people than ideas.
Couple that with the Facebook and Apple policy of offering to freeze eggs of female employees in an effort to attract more women into the workforce. The idea being that women could put of parenthood until their late 40s and thus have a longer career.Now think about the fact that women are paid, on average, 20% less than their male counterpart. In some instances the gap is way bigger.
None of these lack any business sense but what they do highlight is women have a rough time of it in their career paths.
Why?
Has it got to do with women and wanting babies. No. It has to do with innovation. In business we all learn that innovation and sales equals success. We must innovate to survive and grow. The business graveyard is full up with good companies that failed to understand this or to act.
So, for a business to weather the storm of longevity it must change. Yet the whole business model, the way we do business, the template that we all work to, has not changed in hundreds of years. Some tinkering around the edges has occurred: flexitime, work-sharing, crèches at work etc. but by in large we have failed to innovate the very system that we all work to. Fifty percent of the workforce is female yet the system is still based on the model that men do the work and women work for a few years and then start a family. They get paid less because of the understanding that they will someday leave for parenthood.
The system, as we now have it, does not base women in the centre of our work force.
Women should not have to choose between parenthood and a career, it should be possible to integrate the two. Our business model is outdated and needs a twenty first century response.
Freezing eggs is not innovative, it is a self absorbed , badly thought answer that puts the organisation first and parenthood a poor second.
All this from companies that strive on innovation. Pity they did not have their thinking hats on when they came up with that Orwellian idea.
It is because women are not centre stage that we get the Damone view as mentioned in my first paragraph. It is not up to women to solely come up with the answers. It is up to businesses to innovate here. Imagine a business model where 100% of the workforce is included in the business system. To companies big and small, to communities and organisations it is time to innovate, sell us the idea and thus succeed.
