The Gender Equity in Hiring Project challenges gender bias in hiring and employment processes in Jewish organizational life to help women and people of all genders rise to positions of leadership. We equip Jewish organizations with the knowledge and support they need to develop the mindset, skills, and strategies for advocating and experimenting with organizational change and culture shifts.
While the Jewish organizational workforce is 70% women, the inverse is true in leadership: approximately 30% of organizational leaders identify as women. This data has not shifted significantly with time, and it is strategic interventions that will create the change we seek. Jewish organizations and our entire Jewish communal workforce can address this gender gap in Jewish leadership by confronting our biases, and redesigning hiring, advancement and employment processes.
The gender leadership gap is starkly drawn even in our most liberal and egalitarian Jewish communities. To narrow that gap and realize our greatest potential, we must attract, retain and advance the best of our beautifully diverse workforce. This is also the best and most responsible business decision, cultivating healthy workplaces and safe, respectful, and equitable employee experiences to guide our community. GEiHP is a bold, strategic initiative, harnessing collective talent, expertise, wisdom, and investment to create a flourishing ecosystem for both our communal leadership, and for our constituency, so that all can benefit from equitable, just workplaces and communities.
While we began with the gender gaps in women’s leadership visible in the 2018 Forward Salary Survey which called our community to action, GEiHP has leveraged the urgency for closing gender gaps in our communal workplaces and has woven new networks of support for the advancement of women into senior leadership. We remain flexible and responsive to changing cultural and institutional realities.
GEiHP engages in learning, advocacy and weaving networks to achieve both short and long term goals. We do this by bringing together community members who become Gender Equity Advocates, ombudspeople who amplify voices for gender equitable change in Jewish communal organizations. Our advocates and volunteers learn how to speak up and make change, around core issues like pay equity, pay transparency, policy and other workplace culture challenges. And together, we weave a network of collegial support, helping members of our community to mitigate the risks associated with advocacy and support the connections that facilitate courageous action toward change.
