“You are perfect to me!” Pink sings to women in his song “F**kin’ perfect.” And not only her. Mass culture has never supported women so strongly. Meanwhile, according to a report of the European Commission, the average wage gap between women and men in 2020 in the EU was 13%. This shows that changes are necessary. Question: what next for women and what will this mean for HR leaders?

Initiatives for diversity and integration lie ahead of us, plus work on closing the gender pay gap, recruiting women as board members and succession plans that ensure women’s representation at the managerial level

And this is not a complete list… Changes will require multi-faceted solutions. Their implementation through current male-dominated leadership requires working on attitudes – among both women and men. As always in the case of major changes and large investments, the question arises – apart from the ethical aspects, will it pay off?

An interesting perspective is shown by a study published in the Harvard Business Review, conducted at the US military college West Point in the early 1980s. It showed that a woman is more likely to succeed when other women are around. Each time a woman joined the studied company, the likelihood that other women would succeed in the next year increased. First-year women who had only one other woman in their company had only a 55% chance of being promoted. But women in the groups with the highest number of women (6-9) had an 83% chance of completing the year.

The study also found that the increased likelihood of women being promoted did not reduce the likelihood of their male peers being successful. This means that increasing the number of women in the group is only a plus. West Point first authorized the admission of women in 1976, and there has been a significant change since then. In 2020, a group with 22% of women started their education.

How does this relate to a corporation? It shows that fostering female leadership can be a powerful tool to expand the talent pool, especially in male-dominated fields. It also shows that this is not a zero-sum game. Women’s success does not diminish men’s success, adding to the sum of the success of the entire organization. In other words, investing in women’s leadership pays off and should be treated as an element of the strategy, not only an ethical and image element.

This is why we are increasingly running coaching programs to support women’s leadership. And not only women participate in them.