Paradigm for Parity: A Call to Action for Gender Equality

“The Toolkit” outlines several steps to improve gender balanced recruitment within a company, including understanding the baseline, improving your intake, and managing with a diversity mindset. The Paradigm for Parity® coalition is comprised of business leaders, board members, and academics committed to addressing the corporate leadership gender gap.

1. Understand the Baseline

1. Current seniority snapshot
2. Historical comparison snapshot
3. Time in role analysis
4. Hiring (three-year look-back)
5. Promotion (three-year look-back)
6. Employee engagement survey
7. Post departure interviews

2. Improve Your Intake

• Institute blind résumés
• Create gender-neutral job descriptions
• Establish diverse interview panels
• Utilize pool-based hiring
• Create a sourcing mechanism for bringing talented women of all backgrounds back on board
• Require diverse hiring slates
• Establish a diversity recruiting office

3. Manage with a Diversity Mindset

• Combine unconscious bias training and a manager playbook
• Create clear and accountable diversity objectives for individual managers
• Institute slate-based promotion processes with full consideration of all diversity candidates
• Cascade the “Plus One” tactic: This tactic requires all senior managers to add one diversity candidate to their leadership teams or executive committees
• Create benefits to reduce “Other Time” barriers: Women of all backgrounds often face more responsibilities at home (children, aging parents, etc.)
• Adopt the 70 percent rule: Make it a requirement that no single majority group (gender, ethnicity, etc.) can represent more than 70 percent of the participants