Tricia Stitzel worked her way up the corporate ladder, becoming the first female CEO in Tupperware’s company history. Prior to joining the company, Stitzel attended Rollins College and worked at the school’s MBA career development program. In the following article, Tricia Stitzel discusses why women in leadership roles is more important than ever, wage gap differentials and how women have the power to reverse these trends.
The Global Gender Gap Report 2020 presented some sobering and economically depressing results. The chief among them was that women won’t achieve the same pay as men until 2277. According to the report it’ll take 255 years to reach a point internationally where men and women see pay equality.
This report also states that figure is moving in the wrong direction, increasing by 55 years on the previous figures. Gender parity is sitting sub-60% for economic participation and opportunity.
What does this mean?
Tricia Stitzel says a number of things:
The pay gap between men and women is increasing
Across the global labor market, the number of women in work remains stagnant, these numbers increased post-pandemic
Especially in developing economies, fewer women are in paid employment
Not all of the news is terrible, though.
Tricia Stitzel says that across the four key focus points for gender equality—health, education, economy, and politics—only women’s economic representation is regressing.
Globally, we should reach education equality by 2034. Health, between genders sat at 96.1% in 2020—almost equal. Tricia Stitzel says that increased political representation for women has helped get the estimated due date for reaching political parity under the 100-year mark.
Although, Tricia Stitzel, previously of Tupperware explains that 40 of the 153 countries ranked in the Global Gender Gap Report 2020 (GGGR 2020) have achieved gender parity already.
There is more good news, too. Across the OECD, emerging economies, and developing nations, women have the power to change this figure and drive economic parity—and to do it this century.
Tricia Stitzel explains below why now is the most crucial time to have women leadership:
Women and the Widening Economic Gap
The GGGR 2020 points to three key areas delaying the global drive towards economic gender parity.
Loss of Employment Through Automation in the Workplace
Tricia Stitzel explains that women are more highly represented in roles which are becoming automated by emergent technologies.
A UK report from the Office for National Statistics demonstrates that up to 1.5 million jobs in the country are at risk of automation—and 70% of those jobs are held by women. While a further 16% are held by young people, they are more likely to move into other roles as they grow their careers explains Tricia Stitzel, formerly of Tupperware.
The World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs report backed up these findings. It also provided risk analysis of keywords related to core job skills. Roles containing the words “machine”, “equipment”, and “operate” indicate the highest risk for automation says Tricia Stitzel.
Reversing the Trend…
These same reports indicate that roles seeing the lowest risk of automation are those involving keywords like “management”, “planning”, “advisor”, and health-related phrases like “treatment” and “patient”.
These roles are inherently difficult to automate, requiring a combination of hard and soft skills best handled by people—and not machines explains Tricia Stitzel.
By increasing the number of women represented in management and advisory roles, there would be a significant decrease in economic gender parity regression.
Lack of Representation in Roles with Significant Wage Growth
The technology industry may be the first to come to mind when people discuss professions where wage growth is the most significant. But engineering fields, leadership, and people management roles fall into the same category.
Tricia Stitzel says that these professions are experiencing the highest wage increases. Growth and opportunity in these areas are outpacing the rate at which women are taking up these roles, which—in turn—means a future impact on women’s earnings and a loss of opportunity.
The Future of Jobs report also notes that there are significantly less women moving along the talent pipeline towards executive and leadership roles.
Reversing the Trend…
Increasing the number of women in engineering, people management, and leadership roles—in fact, across all industries—builds an inclusive culture. Tricia Stitzel explains that research says an inclusive culture makes a company six times more likely to be innovative.
Lingering Bias
Traditionally, women played the role of caregiver—and still continue to be overly represented in unpaid work, childcare, and housework. These important roles equate to more than 20% of the GDP for most OECD countries.
Despite the high value of women’s traditional roles, they continue to be an unspoken hindrance in the economic sector. The deliberate exclusion of women in industry may be long gone, but toxic cultural and behavioral beliefs live on.
Reversing the Trend…
Antiquated beliefs around women in the workplace have been disproved time and again—most recently in McKinsey’s Diversity Report.
The report revealed that companies demonstrating strong gender diversity at the leadership level were 21% more likely to be profitable, when compared to those companies demonstrating poor diversity.
In essence, companies that role model gender inclusion perform better.
A 2018 report from the Harvard Business Review agrees. In the venture capital industry, a study showed that when firms increased their female partner hires by 10%, they saw a 1.5% spike in fund returns and almost 10% more profitable exits for the year.
Homogeneity across the board can be a profit killer, the study showed.
Rate of acquisitions fell by 11% in firms where the partners had attended the same university. Likewise, the rate of success in firms where all the partners were of the same ethnicity was 26.4% lower than at firms with a more diverse partnership group.
Closing thought
Tricia Stitzel is a leader on the front of women in leadership roles and wage gap differentials. She will continue her efforts to promote equality in the workplace for all.
