“Gender equality” has become a familiar slogan in corporate mission statements and annual reports across Bangladesh. From banks to development organizations, many institutions proudly highlight the rising number of female employees in their workforce. In many cases, organizations attempt to demonstrate commitment to equality by recruiting more women or distributing female employees across departments to achieve numerical balance.
While representation is important, a pressing question remains: Does increasing the number of women in an office automatically ensure gender equality?
There are contexts in which numbers do matter. Certain roles, by their nature, require female staff. For example, female security officers are essential when conducting body searches of women. Similarly, quota systems introduced on strong socio-political grounds can serve as corrective measures to address historical disadvantages faced by women. In such cases, a focus on numbers may be justified.
Outside of some of these specific circumstances, appointing someone to a position solely because she is a female does not necessarily promote gender equality. Rather, it means giving undue privilege to females, which is not prestigious for women.
Equally important is to recognize that this approach discriminates against males, specifically when they are better qualified for the positions compared to their female counterparts. Therefore, the approach should be that no candidate or employee should be deprived of recruitment or any position in the organization because of their gender. It is about fairness, not favouritism.
The deeper problem lies in how many organizations interpret “gender.” Too often, gender is treated as a matter of male and female bodies. Nonetheless, gender is a far more complex concept. It refers to socially constructed roles, behaviours, norms, and expectations associated with men and women. If institutions concentrate only on balancing the quantitative aspect, ie, the number of men and women, they overlook the qualitative dimensions of gender.
Organizations need to shift their perspective of balancing the male and female bodies to male and female behaviour. They have to be conscious about balancing the qualitative aspects such as considering women’s certain norms and behaviour as well as their characteristics and roles as acceptable in the workplace.
Researchers on organization behaviour have been arguing for years that the rules, norms, or culture of the working places are male-biased. Since traditionally, men were predominantly working outside, the organizational issues were shaped based on their convenience or preferences.
Today, as more women enter the workforce, they often find themselves adapting to standards that were never designed with them in mind. The structures remain largely unchanged, even as the workforce becomes more diverse.
The issue of maternity leave illustrates this imbalance. In Bangladesh, maternity leave policies vary widely across organizations. In many cases, the leave period is viewed as insufficient. It is difficult to convince male dominated organizations why someone would be paid when she is not working due to child birth. As organizations fail to recognise this fundamental issue as a legitimate and essential aspect of life, claims of gender balance ring hollow.
The tension becomes clearer in everyday workplace scenarios. Consider a committee meeting in which a male employee requests to leave early to attend a part-time work obligation, for instance, lecturing at an educational institution. Such a request is perceived as normal and career-enhancing.
By contrast, a female employee may hesitate to leave the same meeting to attend to her sick child, even if her presence is not critical at that stage. She may fear being labelled nonprofessional or accused of bringing “personal issues” into the workplace.
This double standard exposes the underlying bias. The male employee’s reason for leaving is linked to income generation or professional development and is therefore seen as legitimate. The female employee’s reason is caregiving, which is framed as a private matter and, hence, unrelated to the organization’s priorities.
Yet from a humanitarian perspective, caring for a sick child is more urgent than attending a secondary professional engagement. However, the male-biased organizations are nurturing the culture that the workplace is simply a site of purely economic activities, where many humanitarian issues are not simply ignored regularly, but also criticized harshly. This approach needs to change to ensure gender balance; feminine problems that are genuine in nature should be addressed by organizations.
Celebrating International Women’s Day with flowers and speeches is not enough. Real respect for women in the workforce demands a critical examination of institutional culture. It requires questioning long-standing norms that privilege traditionally “masculine” behaviours over feminine values.
Incorporating values often associated with femininity, such as care, collaboration, and empathy, can enhance morale, productivity, and overall effectiveness. A more balanced culture benefits not only women, but men as well, many of whom also struggle with rigid expectations about work and family roles.
Nonetheless, this transformation is not solely the responsibility of management. Women employees also need to engage critically with workplace structures and advocate for change. Understanding how organizational cultures have been shaped by male-dominated histories is the first step toward challenging and reshaping them.
Ultimately, the commitment to gender equality lies not in statistics, but in culture. It is important to recognize that the organizational culture has been developed and nurtured with male biases. It is now urgent to incorporate certain feminine values that can provide a proper place for female employees in organizations and bring constructive change.
The organizations of Bangladesh can take a meaningful step in maintaining gender equality if they can accept women’s norms and roles in the existing male-biased culture and have proper balance in the working place -- creating a more humane environment for all.
Dr Jasmine Jaim is a Professor at Institute of Business Administration, Jahangirnagar University, Bangladesh and Associate Editor of the journal -- Gender, Work, and Organization. Email: jaim.jas@gmail.com.