Hands up if you think we’re currently promoting more women than men, to balance men’s historic dominance in business leadership?

That’s what most of the good, kind, smart men I talk to tend to believe. Lots of women do too.

The narrative goes: “If we’re to achieve gender equality at leadership level, we need to over-steer for now, and promote more women than men into the top jobs.”

One man I interviewed for ‘No More Menemies’ told me: “It’s like mixing colour. If you’ve got red, and you want to get to orange, you’re gonna need to add a serious amount of yellow. If all you add is the orange you’re trying to get to, it’ll never happen.”

Extending the analogy… even if orange is the ideal destination, being red in an era where “all everyone wants is yellow” can feel scary, and unfair at a personal level.

And while they may not express this openly at work for fear of “making the target on my back even bigger”, many men resent the push for more change on International Women’s Day when they’re worried that no-one really wants or values men anymore.

But this narrative is flawed, in two ways:

Flaw 1. It’s simply not true

For instance, in FTSE 350 companies, 50% more men than women were appointed to Exec and top leadership jobs in 2023. And that’s not unusual - the best those figures looked for women in any year since 2016 was when ‘just’ 44% more men than women got appointed to those top teams.

So much for “women are taking all the jobs these days.”

It feels like women are being promoted more. But we think women are dominating a conversation when they talk 30% of the time… So we need to accept that our perceptions play tricks on us in this area, and actively seek out the facts.

Flaw 2. The trouble with “fair”

For the record, I personally believe we should create a world that gives equal opportunities to people of any gender and sexual orientation, from family to work and across every aspect of society. But for many businesses, leading on this moral argument and the notion of fairness sounds a bit too reminiscent of the kids who didn’t get picked for the sports team but want to play too. “Oh go on, it’s not fair. I want a go.”

Just like at school, there’s a belief that this “fairness” means having to include players who aren’t as good, who won’t help us win. And however progressive a company might want to look when it reports its gender pay gap figures, it doesn’t want to bring people into key leadership roles who aren’t up to the job and won’t perform well enough.

But this is a false narrative too: It’s a myth that “Hiring more women may be fair from a big picture perspective but it means taking a hit in performance.”

The expert Tomas Chamorro-Premizic tells us that if we promoted the people with the leadership qualities that best correlate with success, more than 70% of them would be women (most likely because of the different ways we socialise girls vs boys). But despite arrogance and overconfidence being inversely correlated to leadership effectiveness, men still get promoted and rewarded more often precisely because they’re more likely to display those qualities.

If we really want to achieve better performance, we must promote those with the leadership qualities that are most effective. Business will thrive. And evidence suggests that the pesky gender pay gap will start resolving itself too. Now that’s an International Women’s Day win we could all get behind.

3. You can’t solve a problem you don’t see                                             

Importantly, these false narratives of “Women are taking all the jobs” and “Promoting women won’t give us the best performance” are pixels in a much bigger picture that often goes unnoticed: we’re seeing a growing backlash against gender equality in all kinds of areas, because the majority of men (53%) feel they are the ones being discriminated against. And according to research from Ipsos Gen Z men are more likely to believe that than older age groups.

In the so-called woke generation, for every 10 Gen Z men who agree that it’s much harder to be a woman than a man right now. According to research from Ipsos you’ll find almost as many - 8 young men - who think the exact opposite. Frustratingly, the competitive-suffering, the “It’s much harder to be me” arguments and the belief that progress on women’s rights inevitably comes at the expense of men means we’re all missing out. Because the truth is that in countries, companies, homes and personal relationships, gender equality benefits men too.

So how long until we can all start welcoming International Women’s Day, as a day women need… but a day that’s for men too?