12 Trillion Dollars. That is the potential of what businesses stand to gain by actualizing gender equity in the workforce according to McKinsey Global Institute .

Further data shows a return on equity as female-focused companies outperformed their competition by 53 percent. As for return on sales- companies with higher numbers of women on boards realized a 42 percent increase in sales, and organizations with more women board directors turned invested capital into profit 66 percent more successfully than those with lower numbers as noted by Brazen . And these are just a few stats!

So, it begs the question: At a time when organizations are embracing business intelligence en masse to drive financial performance and create competitive differentiators, combined with the compelling data and ROI of women in leadership, why haven’t we moved the needle far further? A look around executive suites and corporate boardrooms indicates we are ignoring what the facts tell us. According to Bloomberg , women in S&P 500 companies make up 45 percent of the labor force but hold just 19.2 percent of board seats and represent only 4.4 percent of CEOs. Additionally, companies are literally spending millions of dollars on diversity training with limited results.

Let’s be clear. We are standing on the shoulders of women and men who have and do work tirelessly to get us this far. Herculean efforts, groundbreaking initiatives, and corporate social responsibility have paved the road, raised awareness, influenced behavior, mitigated discrimination, and driven achievements to date.

There remains, however, an undeniable gap between the ROI, value of women in leadership, and the corresponding current state. As with all journeys, we must cross the next bridge to achieve the results and gender equity we seek.

A Way to Change

It’s smart business. It’s time to make the business case for the ROI of women in leadership. Apply business rigor – define strategy, set direction, allocate resources - to inform and influence stakeholders and decision makers. Executives are more likely to embrace a policy, product or service if it positively impacts the bottom line or stock price. It just so happens, women do. Organizations embracing this approach are yielding sustainable internal changes, as well as attaining the rewards of financial performance, productivity, and purpose driven consumers who align with this philosophy. Always an industry leader, Bloomberg has embraced this approach and taken it further by ‘using data to bring transparency to the diversity & social equality space’ and unveiled a new index in 2015 intended to showcase what the biggest financial players are doing to promote gender equality. The index called the Bloomberg Financial Services Gender Equality Index (GEI), includes 26 public companies that are best-in-class in the financial industry in terms of providing opportunities for women.

Change the dialog. Currently, organizations focus heavily on goals, metrics, and programs when discussing diversity and inclusion separate from discussions of sales, marketing, operations, finance, etc. By incorporating the ROI of women as a business model, leaders will integrate key initiatives into departmental goals and action plans in addition to the diversity and inclusion programs in place. This approach will facilitate meaningful change by transitioning individuals, teams, and organizations to a business mindset and corresponding discussions and meeting topics. Additionally, with a focus on business value, professionals become better positioned to actualize the innovation benefits of a diverse team.

Transformation doesn’t happen in the comfort zone.

For all the progress made, legacy narratives surrounding reverse discrimination, ‘If I hire more women, I’m not hiring more men’, unconscious biases and inaccurate belief systems remain and are continuing to prevent advancement. Unconscious bias alone negatively impacts hiring and decision making. A joint study conducted by Harvard and Princeton revealed when hiring managers were presented with gender neutral resumes, women profiles were selected 5x more than their counterparts. Whereas, given the same resumes with gender identification, women were selected far less. With the belief that perception - while perhaps not true - is one’s reality, organizations would be remiss to not acknowledge and address these behaviors and belief systems openly, and head on as real business barriers to executing diversity and inclusion goals.

We can actualize the prevailing business intelligence of women in leadership, positively impact the financial bottom line, and by doing so achieve gender equity and all its business and social rewards. Let’s choose to change.

Lynn Ferrari is Founder of Talent|Tools|Transformation focused on partnering businesses to achieve organizational change in leadership development and the Business of Women.