It’s no surprise women’s rewards in the workplace vary drastically as compared to their male counterparts. The average company’s board meeting or management team has a significantly small representation of women. As a first instinct you may feel that this is by design and that the decades women have fought for equality has had no impact at the top tier of an organization. Sure you do have a handful of strong women leaders in some of the prominent and recognizable brands acting as role models for their fellow gender, but if you peak within and look at the layers below, you’ll still find fewer numbers of women in leadership roles.

[Tweet “Lack of job scope and slow growth are just two ways women are rewarded differently than men.”]

Here’s what you can do about it.

Lack of Increase in Job Scope

Ask yourself, are women’s roles and job scopes really enriched at your workplace? You may be promoting them periodically, but are you really challenging them with responsibilities that impact the business? Statistics have shown that while women do take on senior management level positions, they’re mainly in support functions and rarely lead the company’s core operations or the profitability. Subsequently, studies have also found that female professionals possess unique skills in which they excel at: flexibility, adaptability, inclusive team management, emotional intelligence. All of which can enrich the leadership of a company.

So now ask yourself if you’ll be that leader who will reevaluate the job scope of the women in your organization and leverage their strengths to your corporate advantage. If you can achieve this, you may not be the most liked person in the organization but you will be providing it the greatest benefit.

Quick Grow to Mid Manager, Slow Growth Afterwards

Sure we hear of news that some women are being appointed C-level positions in prominent companies. Women are being promoted from their entry level positions to middle level roles where they are provided opportunities to lead a team. However, you can’t help but ask yourself have you done enough to develop a talent pool within this group?

While growth by switching companies is common, growth from within still eludes women due to several factors which continues to omit them from development programs. So what is it that you can do to develop a strategy that fosters a female talent pool? You can engage your female middle managers and provide them greater responsibilities while also creating a female friendly workplace.

Salary Disparities

Lately, the hottest debate in Hollywood, aside from its racial challenges, is why female actors are compensated significantly lower than their male counterparts, even if they’re playing the lead role. And sure enough this concern also hit’s home for organizations during those hushed water-cooler chats. Why are women simply not paid equally if they’re doing the same thing as their male counterparts? Is it because the dogma still prevails in frontier market that they’re not the primary breadwinners? Or is it because organizations have slowed women’s growth trajectory and hence justify their lower salary?

I’ve often found it interesting that when designing a job description, the best practice is to consider the role and not the person (or their gender). However, when it comes to filling that position, ironically enough, gender comes into play. The key here then is to not assume that gender will cause limitations, especially in leadership positions.

Not reading too much into the stereotype but women have without a doubt, successfully managed their careers and home. Hence, wouldn’t it be apt to alter the gender lens, relook at this group of the corporate family and give them equal rewards in the workplace? Those that they deserve? After all, they’ll ultimately positively impact your workforce with their ability to multitask, amongst their many other strong, gender specific traits.

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