When intent isn’t enough: Governing inclusion at the board level

(This article builds on a MAP Insights piece published on Jan. 13, “Male allyship in inclusive workplaces,” extending the discussion from leadership intent to governance and outcomes in the Philippine context.)

Much has been said about the importance of allyship in building inclusive workplaces, and rightly so. Encouraging leaders to act with intention, courage, and accountability has helped move the inclusion conversation forward in Philippine organizations. These efforts have expanded awareness, reduced defensiveness, and made it easier to speak openly about gender and power at work.

Yet as this language becomes more widely adopted, a quieter but more consequential question is emerging: When intent is already present, what actually determines outcomes?

For many organizations today, the answer lies less in individual behavior and more in governance. Inclusion stalls not because leaders do not care, but because systems are not designed to consistently translate commitment into results.

Much of the inclusion work to date has focused on personal action — mentoring, sponsoring, speaking up, and modeling inclusive behavior. These actions matter. But they are also fragile. They depend on sustained personal conviction, which can fade under economic pressure, restructuring, or leadership transition.

Governance, by contrast, endures. It ties responsibility to roles rather than personalities. Executives shape strategy and control resources. Managers decide who gets exposure, stretch assignments, and second chances. Boards determine what gets reviewed, rewarded, or overlooked. When inclusion is treated primarily as a leadership virtue rather than a responsibility embedded in these roles, outcomes vary widely.

This distinction is especially relevant in the Philippine context. Local organizations tend to be hierarchical, with authority concentrated at the top and strong norms around respect and deference. Junior employees rarely challenge senior leaders directly, even when inequities are visible. In such environments, progress does not spread through persuasion alone. It spreads through expectations embedded in policy, process, and review.

Another reason intent does not always translate into outcomes is the tendency to focus on visibility rather than power. Many initiatives emphasize representation, mentoring, and participation. While these are important, they do not fully address where the most consequential decisions are made.

Power in organizations shows up in allocation. Who controls large budgets and profit centers? Who is placed in roles with significant operational exposure or enterprise risk? Who is trusted with turnaround assignments — and when things go wrong, who is given room to recover?

A more nuanced pattern emerges beneath strong headline numbers on women’s leadership in the Philippines. While women are well represented in senior roles across many organizations, they are not always equally concentrated in positions that involve large-scale capital deployment, operational complexity, or make-or-break enterprise risk. Mentorship programs are widespread and often effective, yet movement into these high-risk, high-forgiveness portfolios remains uneven. This points less to a lack of advocacy and more to how opportunity, trust, and accountability are structurally distributed.

Organizations that make sustained progress tend to address this through design rather than exhortation. They introduce constructive friction into their systems. Promotion slates that remain homogeneous invite scrutiny. Persistent imbalances in critical roles require explanation. High attrition among women is treated as a leadership issue, not merely an HR statistic. These mechanisms work because they rely on process, not confrontation — an important distinction in high-context cultures like ours.

Any serious effort to govern inclusion must also address care. Gender inequality is shaped not only by workplace decisions but by how work itself is structured. Filipino women continue to carry a disproportionate share of childcare, elder care, and household responsibilities, often with limited institutional support.

Flexible work arrangements have helped, but flexibility without predictability can quietly shift risk back to employees. Late meetings, sudden travel expectations, and career paths that reward constant availability disadvantage those with caregiving responsibilities, regardless of intent. When organizations fail to account for this reality, they inadvertently design inequity into their operating models.

Governing inclusion means treating care as an organizational reality rather than a personal constraint. Predictable schedules, realistic performance expectations, and career paths that allow for pauses and returns are not accommodations; they are design choices that shape who stays, who advances, and who leaves.

Ultimately, inclusion becomes credible when it is governed through outcomes. Boards and senior leaders should be asking sharper questions: Where are women absent from profit-critical roles? How long does advancement take across different portfolios? Who exits the organization after key life transitions — and why? Which leaders consistently build diverse teams, and which do not?

What organizations choose to review — and what they choose to overlook — sends a clearer message than any statement of values.

Allyship has played an important role in moving the conversation forward. The task now is to ensure that commitment is translated into systems that do not depend on goodwill alone. Inclusion is no longer just a cultural aspiration. It is a matter of execution. And execution, as always, depends less on intent — and more on governance.

Carolina “Chiqui” Escareal-Go is a member of the Management Association of the Philippines Ease of Doing Business Committee. She is the CEO of Mansmith and Fielders (www.mansmith.net). She is also a marketing anthropologist and consumer behavior strategist. She is a fellow of the Institute of Corporate Directors, and former chair of the Women’s Business Council Philippines. She will open the Mansmith Market Masters Conference on March 17 at SMX Aura Taguig City with the topic: “The Filipino Trust Economy.”

map@map.org.ph

chiqui.mansmith@gmail.com