Deutsche Telekom’s Gender Biased PR

Claire Thompson, Freelance PR Consultant, Waves PR

Working at Esprit Telcom some years ago, I walked into a room full of senior execs to discuss communications around an acquisition the company was making. I was surprised to find that I was the only woman in the room and let this slip.

The team were emphatic – they would love women on board, but there were no female senior execs in the telecoms industry to choose from.  Well over a decade later, they would evidently still have the same issue.

Deutsche Telekom has issued a release today stating that it is aiming to have30 percent of management positions worldwide  filled by women by end of 2015. This is a relatively big ambition in a traditionally male dominated  industry, but the release leaves much to be desired.

“Taking on more women in management positions is not about the enforcement of misconstrued egalitarianism. It is a matter of social fairness and a categorical necessity for our success. Having a greater number of women at the top will quite simply enable us to operate better,” said Deutsche Telekom’s CEO, René Obermann, in justification of the Board of Management’s decision to introduce a women’s quota.

Women make up 50% of the population, so a quota of 30% should barely rateas something that needs justifying.

Women don’t necessarily bring a special skillset to the workplace – womankind is as diverse as mankind – but if they are being held back on the basis of gender, the workplace is almost certainly poorer for it.

So what prevents them getting there?

Part of it has been equality in education. When I started my A levels there was a distinct gender bias in the subjects we chose, and I don’t see a lot changing in primary schools even now with regard to gender bias. “Boys, after all, will be boys!”

But progress has been made, and girls do well in education (raising another issue: if girls do well in education, but men do better in the workplace, a correlation between education success and workplace success is harder to justify?)

But girls still aren’t being attracted into science and technology in enough numbers. Doubtless part of this is because we ask our hormonal teenagers, just trying to work out their relationship to the opposite sex, to make decisions about curriculum choices at a critical time. If  I am in the delicate process of defining myself as male or female, why would I choose subjects tagged ’boy ‘or ‘girl’ if that’s not the identity I seek?

Peer pressure is a hugely powerful thing – and possibly one of the reasons why single sex education seems to deliver good academic results. There’s no question of gender bias on subjects if they’re only attended by one gender!

So initiatives like Girl Geek Dinners and Ada Lovelace Day should help make a positive difference.

Secondly, unfortunately, I suspect that the special measures to attract women are also part of the problem.

I quote: “Its decision to systematically raise the share of female talent in management positions also marks the expansion of Deutsche Telekom’s work-life balance program. Parental leave systems, part-time models for managers, flexible working hours schemes and child care options are all being developed and practical support services for everyday life made available.”

Work life balance and childcare shouldn’t be a female issue. They should be a family issue. Until men stand up and fight for their right to great fathers, for their equality with women, I can’t see that much will change.

Like it or not, a woman employee will remain a less flexible, less reliable worker than her male counterpart for as long as it’s expected that mum will be the one to drop everything to tend to sick children or manage school holidays designed for a long defunct agricultural work schedule.

Men make great parents too, and it’s only by affording them equality in parenting that women can gain equality in the workplace.

So good on Deutsche Telekom for making a stand. It would be churlish to knock them for trying to change. They, in common with all employers, need a bit of political support – a lot more action and change in both legislation and education to meet the equality demands of a twenty first century workforce rather than a lot of hot air, flannel and quotas.

PS Deutsche Telekom – get someone English to proof your your translations. Please!

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• Deutsche Telekom Introduces Women’s Quota (abcnews.go.com)
• Deutsche Telekom sets sex quotas (news.bbc.co.uk)
• Deutsche Telekom introduces women’s quota (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• Deutsche Telekom Sets Female Quota (online.wsj.com)
• Is Deutsche Telekom’s female quota a smart move? (blogs.ft.com)

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