Blocked roads

Creating barriers in the path of talented women is neither an eastern tradition nor a recipe for a stable society

Let us start with a simple experiment. Imagine we have two kinds of balls, blue and red, that we want to roll down an incline. In this experiment, there are more blue balls than red ones, and also the red balls are well known to do better on the incline. From a probabilistic perspective, we all should agree that there should be more red balls at the end of the incline.

Lets now contextualise this experiment in the real world of Pakistani academia. Imagine that there are two kinds of students, type X and type Y entering medical schools. There are more of type X, and they also outperform students of type Y. Once again, we would expect type X students to do better through the career paths and reach leadership positions more often than type Y.

Well not quite, it turns out.

Despite the fact that female students outperform male students nearly consistently in high school exams, and there are significantly more (sometimes twice as many) female students than male students entering medical schools and universities, there is not a single female vice-chancellor of a medical university in the HEC ranked top medical institutions of the country.

The loss of opportunity for those who both outnumber and outperform their male counterparts, yet never make it to the top, is our collective loss. The argument for gender parity, opportunity and equity is not just a moral and a social argument, though both of these arguments are extremely compelling for a just and a fair society. It is also an economic one. Economists agree that one of the biggest sources of economic success of Nordic countries including Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Finland is the emphasis on ensuring equal economic opportunity to both sexes. Development without an equal opportunity to grow is unimaginable and simply does not work. In Norway, by law, at least 40% of Norwegian boardrooms have to be filled by women. Some have argued that gender equity has been more profitable to Norway than its oil wealth.

In Pakistan, recent reports suggested that only 21 of the 559 companies listed on the Pakistan Stock Exchange have a woman director on their board. This comes to less than 4%, and while India has a long way to go, its representation is still twice as much as Pakistan. While the number in Pakistan is shameful, it is unsurprising and reflects a broader trend seen in other disciplines. The reason for this dismal fraction of women in key positions of corporate leadership, political office or in academic hierarchy, has nothing to do with quality, capability or ambition. The evidence actually points otherwise. Instead, it has to do with inertia and a fundamental sense of insecurity that the men in power seem to have. It has also everything to do with a notion of leadership that is typically attributed to those who happen to have a Y chromosome.

Yet, with an increasing awareness, and an understanding that status quo is hardly the way forward, there is also an increasing opportunity to chart a new course. A recipe for change has to include both men and women as equal participants. For men, the starting point is to develop an understanding and awareness, to face the evidence that connects fairness with success. It is us, men, who have to develop the strength to face our misogyny and ill-perceived notions of superiority, and a recognition that we can hold on to our best traditions of family, love, respect, and kindness and still embrace equity in the workplace. Equally critical is the active support and mentorship of colleagues, and an aggressive effort towards inclusion, and a break-down of systemic barriers. As many women in leadership position would argue, this goal is a team sport and the role of both inspiring and understanding women and men is critical to achieve this target.

Creating barriers in the path to success of talented and deserving women is neither an eastern tradition nor a recipe for a stable society. It is a product of insecurity of those in power, in a society that fails to recognise its own potential.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 4^th, 2017.

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