My team has 60% women and I am proud of it.

Since few years I make myself busy with the topic "Women in Tech" and "Women in Leadership".

Before the birth of my daughter eight years ago, those topics were part of 10-minutes blog readings that I personally considered empty "feminist fights".

I have two kids a girl and a boy. I slowly realised that, in terms of statistics, my daughter's salary is likely to be 20% less than the one of my son, and she is less likely to cover a leadership role than my son. No matter how hard she will study and work, statics say that she is more likely to lose the competition with her peers men. And, no room for misunderstanding, it's only because she is female.

So I started to look around myself and I quickly noticed that I was surrounded almost by men and, even worse, I met only two women in the executive rounds in the past 10 years. I looked at the physical surroundings: free beer, fußball, table tennis, and plenty of other stuff belonging to us "brothers". Many of my engineering teams were full of "difficult, but super smart" young men, both tech geeks and product rock stars, discussions were often hard, competitive, conflict prone, basically stuff for men. I also noticed that many female colleagues that went into maternity leave, not only disappeared, but were considered like "gone". When they came back they entered a status of "mothers", reducing the working hours and going quickly into secondary roles, even though they were outstanding professionals.

It became clear to me that the tech world around myself was actually build by men around a men culture.

Then I joined Outfittery, a company founded by two great women, where more than 60% of the workforce and half of the management team is female. I worked closely to high profile women, both in the exec team and in my product management team. In this environment I understood the benefits of this equal distribution and I am now dedicated to enable a more balanced working environment.

So what are those benefits, why can I say that gender equality is a good thing?

I have few strongly opinionated people in my team, both male and female. Conflicts are a given in product management and my team is particularly prone to it (and I am proud of it). When I joined Outfittery 30% of my team were women, today the figure is 60%. While we had tough splitting discussions in the early days, today we handle frictions much better and a stronger safety net stands around the team. I personally faced at least two hard escalations during the first year, none during the last 8-10 months. Now, the team certainly matured with time, people come and go. A new equilibrium evolved naturally, but I am convinced that the increased share of women contributed to a more pragmatic and safer dynamic. Even in the management team, I witness how female leaders are more likely to calm brewing escalations (initiated by men or women) with pragmatic actions, which again help the group to streamline a solution.

So assuming that a better balance between genders makes team safer and more solution oriented, how can we foster it?

We have to acknowledge first that male and female have different requirements and it's in the leaders responsibility to build a welcoming environment for both.

1. Men are prone to fight, women are prone to sociality. When "smart individualists" men dominate conversations eating up the others with their wisdom, the introvert and the more compromise-ready tend to be side-lined and contribute less to the common benefit. In this context, women are often less "loud", so the big-ego guys can quickly marginalise them, especially the younger one. This again restricts the team dynamic and put at risk the emergence of team solutions. Fostering a no-asshole, no rock-stars and big-ego policy will make sure that women gets space and the team benefits from a more balanced and safer dynamic.
2. Booze is for men, socialising spaces are for everybody. Booze events, table tennis, fuss-ball tournaments are definitely cool things, but I doubt that they are very welcoming for women. I think large shared spaces for informal conversations and even female-only events increase the chances of creating a social and welcoming (and retaining) environment for female talents.
3. Women have a larger stake with kids, at least at the beginning. Women are naturally more impacted by children, especially during the first year. Women know that part of their energy must be invested into family matters, but they still desire to grow professionally. In order to balance family and job, they are determined to increase efficiency during the office time and work when the kids are finally sleeping. So not enabling them to invest their energy in a flexible way, companies automatically force them to choose (and not balance) between family and professional development. I am a great fan of working flexibility independently from the gender, but I think for women in the family stage it's a hard requirement.
4. And the most difficult: men have to get their own burden. We men have to understand that our female counterpart needs its own space for growth, challenges and achievements, and it is our own benefit in both family and professional matters. Without our commitment, things will not improve for them and for ourselves. So, yes, we have to take our share of responsibility by modulating our tone, becoming more aware, taking care of whatever we think it's actually "for them" and, as usual, learn from it.

The good news is that I discussed those topics in many events and conversations with tech leaders. I also see an increasing number of young product leaders in the market. So things are improving, but we still have a long way to go in front of us. For myself, I decided to give more and more space to smart women in product management, especially focussing on leadership potentials.

Agree, disagree? Let me know.