Candace Hudson 0:05
With 1000s of years of research behind it, gender discrimination is still prevalent in the workplace today. But in reality, an inclusive and gender diverse workplace has numerous benefits. Much like every other form of workplace diversity does. Well dive into this further, but let's take a second to clarify what we mean by sex and gender. Sex refers to biological attributes like chromosomes, gene expression, hormones, and reproductive anatomy. One sex is usually categorized as female or male. Though the way these various biological attributes are expressed externally can vary. Gender refers to the roles behaviors and identities of girls, women, boys, men and gender diverse people. Gender is socially constructed, and based on the traits that we collectively assigned to a gender, gender identity is not binary, and it doesn't comprise solely men and women. And it can change over time. The gender we identify as is perhaps one of the most important ways we define ourselves. And because our gender is expressed externally, it's visible to others, and thereby shapes our experiences, how others interact with us, and the opportunities we have access to.

Our gender also colors other ways we identify ourselves as a mother or father, as a gay man, as a black woman. And because it's rare for someone to know what it's like to live as more than one gender, it can seem as if there's some insurmountable fundamental difference between men and women. That makes it almost more common to accept casual discrimination or biases, discrimination and deeply entrenched biases like these can have sweeping effects in and out of the workplace. It affects how safe or valued your co workers feel, or the opportunities they're afforded. A gender diverse workplace benefits us all. in leadership positions, women are more likely to champion racial diversity, employee friendly policies and programs and mentorship. More than half of senior level women say they consistently take a public stand for gender and racial equity at work compared with about two and five senior level men. They're also more likely to mentor and sponsor other women. With two out of five senior level women mentoring one or more women of color. gender diversity can also improve the overall performance and profits of a company. Research shows that company profits and share performance can be close to 50% higher with gender diverse leadership, where women are well represented at the top. Despite the benefits of a gender diverse workplace, there are still huge gaps in women's representation. For every 100 men promoted to a manager position. Only 85 women were promoted, and this gap was even larger for black women and Latinas.

As a result, women are significantly outnumbered in entry level management, and spoiler, the COVID-19 pandemic only exacerbated this issue, driving women out of the workforce to shoulder more of the burden of childcare, as children were kept home. Between February and August of 2020. Alone, mothers of children 12 years old and younger lost 2.2 million jobs compared to 870,000 jobs lost among fathers. Gender is a complex topic, and we'll cover much more in this module. We'll discuss gender identity, asexuality and non binary identities. We'll explore intersectionality and how our gender affects other ways we identify ourselves. And we'll learn more about historical discrimination and the steps we can take to become a more gender inclusive workplace.