Triple Bottom Line
Gender Equality and Our Future
Yael Nevo, gender equality business consultant, speaker, instructor, and founding director for Gender Rise—a London-based gender consultancy. With 20 years of experience in the equity space, Yael breaks down the gender structure and explains ways we can all make our businesses better for our planet, our people, and, yes, our profit margins. An episode you should not miss! https://www.gender-rise.com
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Yael Nevo, gender equality business consultant, speaker, instructor, and founding director for Gender Rise—a London-based gender consultancy. With 20 years of experience in the equity space, Yael breaks down the gender structure and explains ways we can all make our businesses better for our planet, our people, and, yes, our profit margins. An episode you should not miss! https://www.gender-rise.com
See our private video lessons, join our mastermind and see how our bots profit in bull/bear markets.
Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.
Triple Bottom Line |Episode 19 |Gender Equality and Our Future|
[Upbeat theme music plays]
Female Voice Over
[00:02] Welcome to the Triple Bottom Line, where we reveal how today's business leaders are reaching a new level of success with a people-planet-profit approach. And here is your host, Taylor Martin.
Taylor Martin
[00:17] Hello and welcome, everybody. Today we have on our show Yael Nevo. I have to say I've been thinking about this podcast for some time ever since her and I connected, because she's a gender equality business consultant and the founding director for Gender Rise, which is a London-based gender consultancy that works with companies, venture capital firms, and angel investors all over the world. With 20 years of experience in this field, I am just really excited to have her on the show and to help level us up in this area, in this space. Yael, can you tell our listeners about how you started in this area and how your career brought you to where you are now?
Yael Nevo
[00:58] Sure. Thank you, Taylor, and great to be here. Thank you for having me. I've been working and studying in this field for about 20 years. My background is in human rights and international development. I've been working in these international organizations, local charities, been really activist for many, many years. Throughout the time that I was working, I could really see a clear gap between the feminist agenda of the organizations that I was working in and basically the kind of internal ways that these organizations were running. Initially I was kind of – how is it possible that there's such a gap? Then at some point I realized that I recognized a gap in the market. About four years ago I launched a gender consultancy, and I've been doing this ever since. I've been helping companies achieve real and sustainable gender equality by a deeper understanding of the gender dynamics that run them, both internally and externally.
Taylor Martin
[02:10] I think there's a lot of people out there listening that might be thinking – maybe they won't admit it, but they might be thinking, why is gender so important? Why are we talking about it now?
Yael Nevo
[02:22] Yeah. There's a lot of answers [laughs] and there's a lot of ways to answer this. The reason that I started doing this about four years ago is that it kind of felt like there was something in the air. Mind you, I actually started doing this work a few months before the whole Me Too thing blew out. It kind of felt like it was just time, and these stories were really kind of coming up and coming up. One reason to do it is because this generation and the next generations, they're just asking for it. It's just time. There's also a lot of research showing that gender equality is one of the most kind of high priorities for millennials and Gen Z's. In terms of companies, in terms of attracting talent, in terms of retaining talent, that is a really good reason to start that.
[03:15] Also, gender equality makes companies better. There's so much evidence that companies have better retention rates. They have a higher return on sales. They have higher value of shares. They have better decision making processes. There's just so much evidence to it.
Taylor Martin
[03:33] It's the seed that changes the landscape. Can you tell us a little bit more about how gender goes beyond male and female, how it's broken down?
Yael Nevo
[03:45] Yeah, of course. I think a lot of the time when people think gender, they think about women. When talking about gender equality, we initially think about women or maybe LGBTQI-plus. Yes, women are part of this discussion, and obviously, the people who are underrepresented are the ones that get the attention. Also, men have gender. More importantly, what I'm trying to do is to move the conversation into a higher level. When I talk about gender, I talk about gender as a social structure. It's basically the whole way of people interacting with each other, the way that they take on roles, the way that they present themselves in society. If we think about gender as a social structure, and within that, individuals interact, then we are actually able to kind of address the issue on a deeper level.
Now, the social structure that we have, the gendered social structure that we have still unfortunately is patriarchy, which is a word that gets thrown around a lot. I don't think that a lot of people really understand the value of really talking about what does patriarchy mean. Obviously, one way to look at patriarchy is to kind of think, okay, man in position of power that have more access to resources and influence. There's a deeper way of looking at patriarchy, which is to understand the values that drive this gendered social structure. When we talk about patriarchy, think about values like competition, like rationality, like dominance, like aggression.
Now, it's really, really important again to say, I'm not saying that only men are capable of being rational, or on the contrary, that only women can be caring or emotional. I'm not saying that at all. I'm just saying that the values that we perceive to be masculine within this kind of structure of patriarchy are the ones that get rewarded. These are the ones that – these are the values that we measure success accordingly. That is how basically our businesses work according to these values.
Taylor Martin
[06:10] Yeah, it's almost like as if you have blinders on and you just can't see who's in front of you, the team or the person or whatever, and you're really just looking at what they're doing, the values, as you said, the competition, rationality, dominance, and aggression. It really seems like that is gender.
Yael Nevo
[06:28] That is gendered, I would say. I would measure these values as masculine, because they are kind of a result of how men have been dominating the public sphere for centuries. These are the values that we consider to be a way to be successful in life. Instead of perceiving these ways of behaviors or values, and then subsequent ways of behaviors as normal, this is how you do business, I want to say no, this is a masculine way of doing business, which doesn't really work, because here we are addressing some really, really big challenges in our society and environment, etc. It's time to move from seeing this as the normal and start putting question marks and asking can we un-gender this in ways that can lead to a gender equality but also resolving some bigger issues.
Taylor Martin
[07:32] Un-gender this, I love that. It's like we're moving the discussion about gender equality away from the individual into more of social structures, right?
Yael Nevo
[07:42] Yes, exactly.
Taylor Martin
[07:43] I can't imagine. I know you've worked with a lot of different organizations and companies. How do you manifest this in the work, in the business environment? What do you do?
Yael Nevo
[07:52] There's different ways that I approach this issue, but basically, I guess the best way to describe it is that I create a balance between those masculine values that we talked about. I bring feminine values – and I'm putting feminist in quotes here again – into business modeling. For me, one of the things that I'm really interested in is say what if we take say a feminine value like care, which again, men are absolutely able to be caring. I'm just saying that it's perceived as a feminine value. What if we consider this to be a key success indicator and we actually bake this into the business model?
For example, you can use – the way that I do it is that I use the GOST model, which is basically an acronym for goal, objectives, strategy, tactic. It's basically a way to bring a big idea into smaller and smaller ways to measure and quantify and something that is tangible, that you can actually follow and track and see your progress.
For example, if we take the value of care – so let's say a company has a goal of being a caring company. Then one of their objectives, for example, could be we want to have an ethical supply chain. That is one way to be caring, for example. Then we can have a tactic that would go, okay, we're going to talk to all of our suppliers. Let's say we have 10 suppliers in all the different countries, and we're going to do a survey and talk to them and see what are their needs. Then we're going to work with them, alongside local charities and local expert to help them close their gaps on environmental and employee issues. Then we sign a new contract where they [inaudible 09:58]. Then we track and monitor this.
It's basically taking something that is really big and abstract – what does it mean to be a caring company or what does it mean to incorporate the feminine value into our business modeling – into a really tangible, measurable way of doing it. That's just one example of caring. I think you can take it in different directions.
Taylor Martin
[10:24] I'm sure every company is different. Every company has different means. There are different people, different cultures, different maybe societies in which they're running and operating in. What about some of the gender gaps, like in terms of pay, representation, parent leave, and all that kind of stuff that's headlines right now?
Yael Nevo
[10:42] The way I see it, these are direct results of this masculine business model that prioritize things like strong, hierarchal organization structure, closing sales versus nurturing relationships, or over-nurturing relationships really. They prioritize profit over people, stuff like that. They have this mindset of bigger, better, faster, stronger. This would be, in my view, the masculine model. This directly leads to gaps in pay – gender gaps obviously in pay and representation and paternal leave. That is something really important to understand, that men are discriminated against as well, as part of this modeling – things like LGBTQI-plus rights, sexual harassment, etc. Again, it's the model that is – I gender it masculine, and therefore the gaps influence different gender groups in different ways.
Taylor Martin
[11:45] Speaking of these models, more of a traditional business model I think we've defined and we all know, because we've lived in it for so long. What's the next thing in terms of building a new model?
Yael Nevo
[11:57] We started talking about it in terms of how to incorporate feminine values into business modeling and considering it to be a key success indicator. You can think about it as a progressive model, a feminine or a feminist model. You can think about it as triple bottom line. I don't see a lot of difference between all of them, because all of them basically have decentralized organizational structure, prioritizing building relationships instead of closing sales, for example. They focus on collaboration rather than competition. We talk about empowerment rather than power over valuing work-life balance, well-being, creativity. It's a much more circular way of working and creating businesses.
Taylor Martin
[12:55] Can you dive in more into that? I really like this idea of this progressive model. I'm sure there's more structure to it. We could probably talk about this for hours easily. Can you just dive a little bit deeper in that? I feel like that is a pivoting point of where we're at right now in our society.
Yael Nevo
[13:13] I feel like these things are needed. You know what? I was in a conference a few months ago with really, really big companies, very progressive ideas. It was all about how we're going to tackle the biggest challenges of today, from climate change to data security and all these really, really big things that businesses are now dealing with. Some of these things, some of the solutions that the companies or the people that were speaking were talking about would be considered, as far as I'm concerned, to be a more feminine or a much more balanced way, in terms of gender and modeling, of shifting. I feel like we're missing the gendered aspect of it. I think that companies that really, really think about environmental impact is definitely a feminine model, because if we think about it from – instead of a linear way, we think about it in a circular way. Everything that we take out, we have to bring back in. That is one way to take it.
Prioritizing well-being is a huge thing right now. COVID has showed us how much our mental well-being, our physical well-being is important here, so putting this as a high priority. Again, if you take the value of care, how do we care for our employees and our clients and our environment – so basically, if you take these feminine values – and I'm giving care, but you can think about emotional intelligence as one thing that we want to start prioritizing – and moving away from seeing these things as soft skills to having them be at the core of how we do business, how we measure our success in terms of people, planet, and profit, all these things coming together. Putting a gender element on it actually enables more people to come to the table.
Maybe another thing to understand is that by putting a gender aspect to this new business modeling, it means that we move away from the approach of we're just going to bring more women to our business and then we're going to have gender equality, because what often happens is that companies a lot of time would hire a lot of women but then they wouldn't stay because the way that the company – the company culture, the benefits, they don't work for them. You're losing a lot of people. You're losing organizational memory, etc. You also have to do the whole recruitment process again and again and again. That is a waste of time, money, energy, etc. Instead of putting the responsibility to create gender equality on the individuals from the underrepresented group, we're actually doing something different this time. We're going to change the business model so that everyone can come and join us, and they can just do their job. It will not be their responsibility to carry the burden of fixing our gender gaps.
Taylor Martin
[16:37] I see this as, big picture-wise, a huge equity lens. You're zeroing everything out. I don't want to say equality or equity. It's more like justice. You're bringing justice to the lens of all the different things a business interacts with their people. I know you've worked with a lot of different companies. You don't have to tell us who they are if you don't want to. Can you lay out some examples of other things you did, like the one you just mentioned earlier?
Yael Nevo
[17:06] Yeah, sure. I can give some big examples with companies that I did not work with yet [laughs] and maybe one example of one of my clients, which I've been working on going with. One really good example is a company called Patagonia that you might know. They do outdoor clothing. They have an activist focus. I think they contribute about 1% of their sales to environmental groups, stuff like that. Patagonia has been focusing on care for many, many years, since '83 actually. It's a really interesting case of seeing what happens over time in terms of sustainability with companies that prioritize feminine values. They have stuff like 12 weeks of fully paid family medical leave. They have 16 weeks of fully paid maternity leave and 12 weeks of fully paid paternity leave. Now, mind you, this is an American company. That is the most interesting one. They have a free on-site childcare center for all staff members. They declare that since they started this childcare program in '83, they've been able to recoup 91% of their investment both in cost, in tax benefit, and employee retention. Also, it's really interesting to realize that they very proudly declared that they have a hundred percent return to work of new mothers. In terms of employee retention, that is quite impressive and actually unheard of.
Taylor Martin
[19:00] That's pretty impressive. That's impressive.
Yael Nevo
[19:03] Just think about over time, what does prioritizing this give you? Also, another good case study is a company called Sodexo, which is a life services company. They've been on the Bloomberg Gender Equality Index for four years in a row. They did a really interesting research in 2018. They basically measured KPIs between gender-balanced teams versus gender-imbalanced ones. It's a really big company, so they have quite a lot of data that they can analyze. They found that the gender-balanced team showed things like 14% higher employee engagement, 8% higher employee retention, 9% higher client retention, 12% higher safety, like less accidents, etc, and 8% higher operating margins. You get everything from safety engagement and actually more profit. They keep measuring this. I think they're going to publish another report soon – would be interesting to see how they fare.
I'm trying to pick really different things as well to just show you how wide this method is or how wide the need for it is. Another example is one of my clients, LSE Generate, they are the entrepreneurial hub of the London School of Economics here in the UK. I've been working with them for about four years now. When I started working with them, we created one of my main services, which is – it's called an actionable gender-responsive code of conduct, which is basically a living, breathing mechanism. It's a document that includes, as I was saying, the company's values and vision – and then incorporating it down into actionable commitments, which are measurable and tangible. We created and published the code.
Mind you, this is also an accountability mechanism, because you put it up on your website and you talk about it and you're being held accountable to it. Since we publish the code, within one year we managed to get 50/50 gender balance on board of directors, on the participants of their accelerator programs, on the panels of judges in their funding competitions, event speakers, stuff like that. We also doubled the targeted funding from both the university and donors. We facilitated an entrepreneurship program for high school girls to address the gender gap in entrepreneurship. We also have a specific gender focus in their 10 international hubs, with a cultural element to it, because obviously what works here in the UK doesn't necessarily work in India or in Columbia. They've also won two national awards for inclusivity and education. This work really, really works. It can go in many directions.
Taylor Martin
[22:26] You've collaborated with a lot of industry leaders in Amnesty International, GIZ, United Nations Development Program, and Virgin Group. Those are some big brands. I know you've been featured on a lot of different organizations. Can you speak to what are some of the big things that you see that organizations think they're doing right but really aren't doing it right? Can you shed some light into that area?
Yael Nevo
[22:55] I think there's a lot of good intentions without really understanding how to resolve it. Again, there's an assumption that if we will bring more women to the table, then we will have gender equality. That is simply not the case, unfortunately. There's a much deeper transformation of process that needs to work. I think in terms of – it's basically are we playing a numbers game or are we going on a more deeper qualitative exploration here – which I get it. It's harder to go, oh, we really need to change our whole way of seeing how we do business. It's big. I understand it. It's not an easy shift to make.
If we're only going to play a numbers game, it's going to work to some extent, but then it's just not going to work. That's when you're going to see a lot of especially women, but not just – a lot of people just leaving the workplace. I think retention is a huge challenge for companies, especially these days where it's not like the older generation where you start your way in a place and you just move up or stay stuck somewhere, and that's where you are. People really understand that they can move and change their workplaces and sometimes even their careers. Their turnaround rate is really, really high. Companies really need to understand that by creating a really valuable work culture that really cares for them is the thing that is going to create loyalty and retention of employees over time, which is going to make their companies much, much more valuable.
The challenges that I see move from lip service, which sometimes happens – someone gets a budget from their investors or from whoever is holding them accountable, and they go, "Oh, you have a gender problem. You need to fix it," and so they fix it in their way. That's one extreme end. Then there's a lot of good intentions and wanting to work on it and not quite being sure how to go about it, which can create a lot of frustration, because I know a lot of clients who came to me and said, "I really want to resolve this. I've been doing all of these things. It's not working. We've been putting out so much time and money and effort, and it's not working. What can we do more?"
Taylor Martin
[25:41] Going back to that un-gendered lens that we talked about earlier, I feel like you probably come in and see it through that lens, and then you say, "Here it is. Here, here, and here are areas where we're not really following through with your plan. If we change these elements, then you can have that higher retention rate and all these other benefits." When you get to that point, do people push back or are they just hungry for it, like oh my God, we didn't even look at it that way?
Yael Nevo
[26:11] To be honest, it's a mixed bag, because with the analyses that I do, I see a lot of companies understanding, oh, we actually have quite a lot of work to do or even more work to do, which can be frustrating. You put in all this time and effort, and you nominate a gender champion, and you put in money for bias training and all these things. Now it's like, oh, we actually have a much deeper problem. Oh, we're going to have to put in more time and more money and more effort. It's going to take us longer than we want. Sometimes there's the element of frustration, to which I will respond, I completely identify and empathize and I understand it, but also what is your other option, really, when you think about it, especially in terms of sustainability when we really think of the long game. Then there are other companies who are like, "Yeah, I'm in. Let's do it. I totally see it now – and ready to go." It really depends on where you are, how much time and effort you already put in, how much flexibility you are able to bring in to the way that you work.
Taylor Martin
[27:34] I could see a lot of companies – the better that end result picture is in their mind or however you describe it to them. I could see that being their goal. They'd be like, oh, if we do all this – it may be some hard work, but if we do all this, that end goal is so wonderful that it is worth all this effort to get there. I think some of those clients that probably – they just see it and they get it. They realize, okay, these are – yep. They're probably just on par with that, because they can see that finish line.
Yael Nevo
[28:06] Yeah, absolutely. It's really important to understand that it is a long game. The way that I work with my clients and the way that we build a gender-responsive code of conduct is that some of the actionable commitments are short-term and easy wins. Others are long-term, and we're going to start seeing results in five years' time. That is okay, because we're changing a really big thing. It's also balancing what can we get quickly just to celebrate and feel that we are moving forward and to keep us on the longer-term targets as well.
Taylor Martin
[28:48] Another indicator, because everybody's worried about the bottom line, dollars and cents, I've seen – I don't know – I can't remember what kind of service this guy was providing. He was providing a service to companies that were wanting to improve their retention rate by – he was a specialist at bringing that into focus for the company. They didn't have a budget for him for that year. He's like, "Okay, you have eight more months in this year. What's your retention rate?" Then he just did some quick napkin math and showed them, "Okay, so you're worried about this many millions of dollars that you don't have a budget for this year, when if we dealt it now and took care of it, then we can take care of this and improve your retention rate and save a lot of those dollars." As soon as he said that, the people in the room just nodded. Then the head guy got on the phone immediately, without saying anything, called up accounting and moved some money around and then hired him. I thought that was pretty genius.
Again, with larger organizations, I feel like they're already in that mindset. They get it. When they see dollars and cents like this and they see these big savings, and plus, like you mentioned, a more sustainable environment in which to work and then to operate – I feel like people just need to – they need to see that story. They need to understand that, as well as the bottom line, because I know businesses have to be profitable.
Yael Nevo
[30:08] That is obviously really, really important. That's what keeps people coming back to work. It's all these three elements of people, planet, profit that makes people, A, want to stay and be proud of where they work and feel connected to their workplace, and also I think that any kind of company that creates damage is absolutely unacceptable. We have really, really big challenges. Some of them are going to take a really long time to resolve or require a lot of creativity. I'm not here to say that these things are fixable. It's a much, much bigger system. We have to be proud of the companies that we create and the companies that we run. We have to make sure that these things are here to last and not destroy the very fabric of our society and our planet. It's very basic, isn't it?
Taylor Martin
[31:12] Absolutely. [Laughs] I totally agree with you on that one. As we're wrapping up here, do you have any insights or words of wisdom you could tell our listeners out there about certain things they could do to help push their company to be more equitable in terms of gender equality?
Yael Nevo
[31:30] Start looking at these gendered values that I was mentioning. If you can just, within your team, within your specific, small environment, see what drives your own work, what are you being measured against, and start raising those questions – so if we think about things like competition, like rationality, like aggression, like dominance, versus things like emotional intelligence, collaboration, care, etc, so just map out to yourself how do you think that our society sees masculine values and feminine values and what are you being measured against and start questioning that, first of all with yourself and then with your, say, direct line manager, that can generate some change.
Taylor Martin
[32:23] Well said. I love that. Yael Nevo, thank you so much for being on today's show. This has really elevated my understanding. I know I'm going to be thinking about this for days to come now. Thank you for sharing all your knowledge with us and help leveling us up in this area. I think it's something that's – as you said, it's time. I hope all our listeners gathered some good information from it. How can they follow you? I think your website is genderrise.com. Is that correct?
Yael Nevo
[32:53] It's gender-rise.com. You can also find me on LinkedIn, both in my personal profile and Gender Rise company profile.
Taylor Martin
[33:04] I love LinkedIn, because when I find somebody like you and I can click on and connect with them – but I can also follow them. Anything you post gets thrown into my LinkedIn feed. I love being able to do that, because I can just go in, follow you, and then everything you come up with, I can just keep up with you and follow you as you are doing what you're doing and the different things that you're bringing into the fold here. Without further ado, thank you so much for today's show. It's been a great podcast show, having you on. For our listeners who want to maybe reach out to you personally, what is an email address that you could give where they could reach you?
Yael Nevo
[33:39] My email address is contact@gender-rise.com. You can also reach out via the website.
Taylor Martin
[33:49] Or probably even LinkedIn, since I love that so much. I think that's how we connected. Over and out, everybody.
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Female Voice Over
[33:56] Thanks for tuning into the Triple Bottom Line. Your host, Taylor Martin, is founder and Chief Creative of Design Positive, a strategic branding and accessibility agency. Interested in being interviewed on our podcast? Then visit designpositive.co and fill out our contact form. If you enjoyed today's podcast, we would appreciate a review on Apple podcasts or whatever provider you are logging in from. This podcast is prepared by Design Positive and is not associated with any other entity. We look forward to having you back for another installment of the Triple Bottom Line.
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