In Harvard Business Review, Avivah Wittenberg-Cox claims Empowering Women Doesn’t Help Them. She goes on to state, professional development for women is not needed to create gender balanced organizations, and that changes to the system are what’s needed instead.
I disagree. There is no room for instead, also known as either/or thinking, at this point on the road to achieving gender balance and finding more women at the highest leadership levels. We need both/and solutions – professional development for women and changes to the system. Furthermore women are and will continue to be the catalysts for change. The system will not change itself, nor will the change be initiated by those who created the system.
You can read the rest of this post and the controversy about professional development for women at 3Plus International where it appears as an editorial.