Chinedu Duru is Managing Partner at Hamilton Lloyd & Associates, an outsourcing firm based in Lagos. With more than 25 years’ experience in human resources and management consulting in several companies both in Nigeria and overseas, his experience and knowledge of workplace challenges bring to bear on his views about gender imbalance in the workplace in Nigeria.

By Chris Onuoha

DO you agree that gender biases in the workplace do exist especially when it comes to appointing to top executive positions?

I do agree that there is some kind of gender barrier in the workplace that prevents women from rising to top positions compared to male counterparts. But the good news especially in Nigeria today is that some women have actually shattered the glass house and have been able to aspire to high positions in both public and private workplaces, although the number is insignificant compared to male. But my opinion is that there’s been a progression in the number of women rising to higher positions. It’s an increasing population.

Chinedu Duru

With the insignificant number of women at the top, it’s observed that the lower cadre parades large numbers of women than men, why?

At the lower corporate level in Nigeria, the number of women in the workforce is funnily greater than men. One of the reasons is that, because of societal and cultural pressure, some men tend not to settle well at work for a long period than their female counterparts. Some of them will voluntarily jump out of job to engage in trading and small scale entrepreneurship for quick money to balance responsibilities at home, whereas women fill the whole vacuum created by men as a result of perhaps, lesser responsibilities at home. Other reasons may be attributed to men being prone to office crime, such as in the case of banking industry where more of financial frauds are committed by men than women.

How do you foresee the future of the Nigerian work environment with regard to gender (in)equality?

In the near future, it is going to be more competitive between men and women holding top executive positions. Men may still be holding forth at top, but in the long run, from the look of things in Nigeria, women are poised to overtake the trend. In the past, such challenges as existed may be by company policies. Currently with the turnaround of events in the workplace, the demography has changed. Companies are getting wiser. Policies are being adjusted and applied in some areas to favour all genders.

How do you think such imbalances can be addressed?

To balance the anomaly requires less effort to achieve. That is by implementing policies that streamline excesses with focus on efficiency at work. Although, there will always be such barrier in place, but with the progression witnessed within female genders rising in some organizations, the balance is not far-fetched.