Starter Kit. Idea 450 of 500. Cluster 23
A published ranking of employers by female participation and pay, compiled by anyone with a spreadsheet
The mechanism, from the book
The single largest unused asset in the country is sitting at home, and the reasons are practical, not attitude.
The first step
Open a spreadsheet and list 30 of the largest employers in one sector, then gather what each publishes about women on its board, in management and in its workforce, from annual reports and websites. Score them, and send the draft to each HR department for correction. The proof is the first employers who reply, and one that asks how to improve its score.
- Who pays first
- An employer that ranks well and wants to recruit women, which pays for a detailed report on where it stands and how to rise.
- What leaves today
- Women are 65% of the university intake and 32% of the workforce, and nobody publishes which employers close that gap; a ranking is that proof.
Ask first
- Data Protection Authority. Ask what you must do before publishing data about employers' staff and pay.
- Department of the Registrar of Companies. Ask how to find the published annual returns of the larger employers.
Check before you spend
Confirm that every figure you publish comes from the employer's own published material, that each one is given a chance to correct it, and that no person is named.
Find out these three numbers
- What does each large employer publish now about women in its workforce?
- Which employers would pay to be helped up the ranking?
- Which newspaper or website would carry the ranking?
A comparison from the book
Sri Lanka House. Chapter Seventeen
"Almost none of them puts the number in a public place"
A number in public, updated every year, moves employers more than any speech.
The test
Does it keep value that now leaves the island, or build the proof that lets somebody else do so?
From the appendix of Why Not Sri Lanka? by Dr Maheshika Halbeisen. The idea and the mechanism are the book's; this kit was written for the site.