Why Women are the Best to Dominate the HRtech World?

As gender equality in the workplace becomes the standard instead of the exception, a number of careers that were once open only to men are now seeing more diverse demographics among their workers. Improved access to education and professional opportunities means that more and more women are now doctors, lawyers, politicians, and a whole slew of other professionals.

Despite these improvements, certain fields remain dominated by only one gender. For example, the United States Department of Labor found that of the 74,000 crane and tower operators working in America in 2014, only 0.2% were women. Another field that's experiencing a major discrepancy is human resources. In 2016, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) found that 72% of HR managers were women; in 2017, Payscale.com reported that a whopping 86% of HR generalists were women.

So great is women's presence in the field that John Sumser, a principal analyst for the blog HRExaminer, famously proclaimed that 'HR is a 47-year-old white woman.

But what exactly is the cause of this dramatic gulf between men and women working in human resources? While the exact cause is difficult to determine, a few theories have been floated out, ranging from a simple case of reputation to the complexities of human biology.

Lower emotional intelligence does not imply that men are unsuitable for HR positions, nor does it mean they are emotionally suppressed. There is a perception of men having low emotional intelligence that enables the stereotype but on the contrary, there is no evidence present for such a scenario to exist. Hence, men should not be considered unsuitable for HR positions.

It's a culture that the corporate industry can't seem to let go of (and the history of how it happened is quite impressive too, we'll get to that). Global firms reflect a lower lack of diversity than domestic Indian ones, but that doesn't mean the companies there are free from this bias. HR leadership roles in Indian companies are largely held by men.

Women have been characterized as good communicators and are said to show a much higher level of emotional intelligence (EI) than their male counterparts. This makes women much more aware of their own feelings as well as those of others, and they relate much better inter-personally than men do. Although such theories have limited evidence, it loosely means, on average, a woman would be better at handling personal as well as professional conflicts than a man in the same position.

The vital thing to bear in mind is that this tradition is perpetual and historical. Such instances and conditions may exist in some organizational settings but do not paint a clear picture of the current scenario, which is a little more complicated. A man should not be considered for a physically demanding job simply based on gender, nor vice versa (where a woman is favored for her "inherently compassionate" abilities). Empirical data suggests the stereotypes are breaking at an increasing rate as more women are coming out of oppressions faced by past generations, the credit for which goes to all of society.