Talent management in organizations is a serious affair – where every employee trait counts. While organizations do know – and acknowledge how important it is to have the most qualified workforce around, where they are missing out is on the issue of gender inequality. Invariably, men are favored over women when it comes to career advancements and for top positions that are influential enough to drive the economy forward.

Compensation structures for men and women: Women are having to, on an average, deal with compensation structures that are not on par with that of their male counterparts. Women miss out on equal opportunities with men when they have to avail of their maternal leave provisions and hence, have to deal with a break in their careers. While this is an effect of the tradition where women happen to be the group of people who volunteer to take a break when it has to be one of the couple who is needed to being the child up, the workplace is not a friendly lot in dealing with a woman who stages a comeback, discriminating against women who return to work after the break.

This discrimination against women reflects on career options and on compensation, again. With time, the break that working women took years ago lets them lower down the career ladder and it is only a minuscule percentage of women employees who are able to scale it up to reach the top management, a reflection of the oft-discussed glass-ceiling effect.

While it is a fact that women score better academically, right from the percentage of pass outs to the percentile that women score, when compared with men, it is ironical that only a small percentage of talented women really make it to the top, where decisions of influence and importance are taken. It is this lack of parity at the top that leads to a lack of a balanced and optimum talent pool, which is what may be required to get the economy going beyond where it is today.

Organizations which are genuinely interested in attracting the best of talents would have to come out of the stereotype and should decide on the right candidate for positions purely based on merit, without any aspect of the gender bias affecting the decision.