The group, now in its second year of running, addressed ABS Vegas 2016 delegates at a general session on Monday.
“We should know [those numbers],” said Michelle Olds, senior vice president at NationStar Mortgage, who added that if more women speak up, organisations that don’t have the data would be pressured to assemble it and make it available.
Doneene Damon, a partner at Richards, Layton and Finger, echoed that point and Sarah Samson, director of securitization at National Australia Bank, agreed that women should take the initiative in driving change in the workplace.
“We’re powerful and we have choices for where we want to work,” said Samson. “We help the industry to use that information and drive company accountability. People need to use that information to make good decisions to drive change.”
“Diversity inclusion is not equal to equal opportunity. Once an organisation has acknowledged there’s a gap and they’ve identified an implement of policy, that information should be made public,” Damon added.
At the same time, the panelists also acknowledged the efforts of some law firms in combating the lack of gender diversity in two stages – the first being through the National Association for Law Placement (NALP), which requires law firms to provide detailed information on their employee demographics.
The second stage stems from meeting a growing client demand for diverse teams of lawyers on projects. “Every time a report goes out, the client requires you to indicate who worked on that matter and how significant of a role they played,” said Damon.
“[If] you’re trying to get the best talent, you’re going to have to be truthful in your numbers and law firms are actually [being] cognisant in making diversity a priority, and it shows through in the numbers being reported through NALP,” Damon added.
Nancy Mueller Handal, a senior managing director at MetLife, also brought up the pervasive problem of conscious and unconscious bias in corporate culture.
“Unconscious bias used to be seen as [being] protective in the past,” said Handal, noting that examples of such bias could boil down to something as subtle as not offering a new role to someone who just had a baby, or writing up job descriptions which insinuate the preference of one gender over the other.
“These are things which are subtle [that] we need to work on not doing,” Handal added.
Panelists were divided on whether a Hillary Clinton presidency would help or hinder the female workforce. While a poll from the mostly female audience revealed that the majority were optimistic that a win by Clinton would help improve gender diversity, some of the panelists were quick to express their doubts.
“We have an African-American president and it certainly didn’t change a whole lot from a race and ethnicity perspective. So it would be nice [for gender diversity to improve], and maybe time will tell, but I’m more pessimistic than optimistic,” said Damon.