Nowadays, gender inequality is one of the corporate governance most pressing issues. While the fight for women’s equality has been profoundly impacted by technological progress, women are still disproportionately shut out of the current financial system. 68.1% of the worldwide gender will be bridged by 2022. At the current pace of advancement, achieving complete equality will take 132 years.
Corporate governance can leverage the advent of blockchain technology to make the world a more just and transparent place. More specifically, women who have been historically marginalized or disadvantaged may benefit from blockchain’s ability to facilitate a more inclusive and egalitarian system.
Exploring the Status Quo of the Corporate Gender Gap
According to the Women, Business, and the Law 2022 report by the World Bank, over 2.4 billion women of working age are denied equitable economic opportunities, and 178 countries have legislative hurdles that impede their full economic participation. In 86 nations, women suffer some employment limitations, while in 95 nations, equal pay for equal labor is not guaranteed.
Between 2019 and 2021, the average proportion of women on the boards of America’s 1,000 biggest public firms, the Russell 1000, rose from 23.8% to 28.2%, according to a study by JUST Capital. Increasing the number of women in top-level leadership positions might significantly affect the business, which is why this issue continues to be high on the corporate agenda. McKinsey and the Harvard Business Review have demonstrated that businesses with more diverse boards and leadership teams reap the benefits of a more robust collection of knowledge, expertise, and viewpoints. In addition, they outperform their less diverse counterparts regarding financial success.
Overall, it is critical to leverage the tools at our disposal to close the gender gap at the C-suite level and enhance women’s chances to be important and proactive participants in all financial and corporate pursuits.
Corporate Governance Deploying Blockchain Technologies to Close the Gender Gap
Documents, regulations, and corporate governance procedures require strong internal and external data management. The records must preserve their integrity, be readily accessible, and be kept secret. Providing secrecy and security for the documents while architecturally enforcing business processes in an immutable blockchain-based ledger.
Furthermore, the ledger guarantees that complete, thorough auditing records are kept and that procedures cannot be altered after that. The documents are secret, safeguarded, completely traceable, and, most critically, tamper-proof. When a new block is added to the blockchain, it is signed by the block’s owner to indicate ownership of the data contained inside.
Blockchain introduces a novel data-driven technology that allows businesses to apply social compliance. There is a need for clear guidelines on quantifying gender bias in the workplace, and smart contracts make this possible. That is why a blockchain is an excellent tool for verifying social compliance: it is entirely decentralized. To identify gender disparities, the blockchain’s ability to facilitate social compliance is crucial. Blockchain technology’s primary focus is errors in the design of larger systems since they may be corrected without much effort.
Bottom Line
In all instances, the prevailing gender inequality is a blight on our global social fabric that blockchain has unprecedented potential to address. Blockchain technology’s arrival may be deployed by corporate entities, as it ensures not only the integrity of data transfers but also the transparency and auditability of all operations and decisions. This pursuit is entirely novel for the state-of-the-art systems and technologies and ensures the origin of any error or prejudice. For historically underrepresented or disadvantaged women, blockchain’s potential to foster a more inclusive and equal society may be especially fruitful.