When undecided voter Katherine Fenton took the mike during the second 2012 presidential debate, she had no idea that the answer to her question would spark an Internet sensation.
The question she asked was this: “In what new ways do you intend to rectify the inequalities in the workplace, specifically regarding females making only 72 percent of what their male counterparts earn?”
President Obama answered first, mentioning the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, an amendment to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the first piece of legislation he signed into law upon taking office. Mitt Romney also spoke from his experience, describing his efforts as governor of Massachusetts to create a balanced cabinet, one in which women were equally represented.
When the candidates he evaluated didn’t meet his recruiting goals, Romney got proactive. “We took a concerted effort to go out and find women who had backgrounds that could be qualified to become members of our cabinet. I went to a number of women’s groups and said: ‘Can you help us find folks,’ and they brought us whole binders full of women.”
Whether you agree or disagree with Romney’s recruiting practices or his views on women’s issues, you have to admit that “binders full of women” was a little weird. And while the phrase that launched a thousand memes, a few hilarious websites, and an impressive amount of handcrafted costumes provided a welcome distraction from the flame wars lighting up most of our Facebook news feeds, few people are discussing the underlying issue — which is that women in the workforce are underrepresented and underpaid.
Yes, many recruiting experts and HR programs could be doing more to rectify the situation.
If your goal is to recruit more women for your workforce, where do you start?
First, it’s important to realize that having a desire to recruit and actually recruiting are two entirely different things, and that even if a company’s HR program, recruiting group, and hiring team all agree that their company should hire more women, certain legal issues come into play.
Companies cannot, obviously, reserve spots for women or deny jobs to men. No matter how much they’d like to balance the scales during the employee selection process, companies can’t reject an overqualified man in order to hire an underqualified woman
The good news is that they don’t have to. No company has to resort to these tactics, and no company should hide behind them as an excuse for a staff comprised almost entirely of men.
Women make up 51 percent of the world’s population, and if they don’t make up a similar percentage of a company’s workforce, the problem isn’t the women themselves. The problem lies in the recruiting practices the company employs.
When you improve those practices, the number of working women at your company will naturally increase. Here’s how to do it:
Remember, talented and qualified women are everywhere out there, and if your company’s hiring practices don’t reflect that reality, it could be time to change the way you go about recruiting. Make your company a better place for women to work overall, and adjust your recruiting tools and practices to make your open positions more visible to women.
When you do, it will be easier to find the qualified female candidates you need. You may even need to ditch that binder and upgrade to a Trapper Keeper, just to be safe.
This article originally appeared on The Resumator Blog.
