D&I Deep Dive

In this video, GATE Director Sarah Kaplan delivers her keynote at the Women and the Workplace Symposium (May 9-10, 2019), a two day event funded by the Government of Canada’s Labour Program and hosted at the Rotman School of Management with the Institute for Gender and the Economy (GATE) as a Knowledge Partner. 

In this keynote, Dr. Kaplan busts five myths regarding women in the workplace and outlines actions organizations and governments can take to achieve progress towards gender equality at work.

These myths include:

1. Promoting diversity contravenes meritocracy
2. Gender career gaps are a product of "choice"
3. We have to "fix the women"
4. Controlling bias is about changing individuals
5. Focusing on large corporations will change the game

We examine whether pay transparency closes the gender pay gap and affects firm outcomes. The paper exploits a 2006 legislation change in Denmark that requires firms to provide gender disaggregated wage statistics. Using detailed employee-employer administrative data we find that the law has an effect in reducing the gender pay gap, primarily through slowing the wage growth for male employees. This effect is more pronounced for firms whose managers have more daughters, presumably due to the effect of daughters on managerial preferences, and for industries with higher gender pay differentials pre-treatment. Such changes in firm wage policies following the passage of the law are associated with negative outcomes on overall firm productivity, but also with a reduction in firm wage bill, resulting in no significant effects on firm profitability.

KPMG’s Women in Alternative Investments (WAI) Report spotlights the bold practices of investors and firms that seek to drive meaningful change in gender diversity. This Report is valuable for investors, firm leaders, diversity and human resources personnel and other change agents who want to improve diversity within alternative investments.
The WAI Report incorporates insights from an online survey of 886 alternative investment professionals globally and from interviews with industry leaders, including firm leaders, fund managers, and investors.

This year’s WAI Report focuses on action: