When it comes to changing the corporate landscape - and people's work environment - from a gender and cultural perspective men have such a critical role to play. It's up to women to encourage and aid their involvement and its incumbent on men to step up to the plate.

In the gender space there has been growing investment in women's personal and leadership development for a number of decades but it has only been in the past few years that the important role of men has been given due gravitas.

Some people mistakenly think that because I am pro gender diversity I am anti-men. That couldn't be further from the truth. I have had some wonderful male influences in my life - my father first and foremost - and I also have had the privilege of working with some very senior men who have been great mentors to me.

But because of their dominance in the corporate arena, men are in the drivers seat when it comes to leading change and leading a diverse workforce, and that diversity today cuts across race, gender, age, ability, religion and family structures.

So just how dominant are men in Australia? Well 55% of middle managers are men, 96% of line managers are men (line managers being a key channel to more senior appointments), approximately 90 % of Senior Executive Managers are men, 97% of CEOS, 92% of boardmembers and 97% of all Chairmen are all men.

You can see how there is an increasing onus on men to understand, motivate, develop and empower their diverse workforce, and to demonstrate that they have not only their employees best interests at heart but also that of their shareholders.

Last year a Bain & Company study of Australian attitudes about workplace gender parity surveyed 1200 business people and found that 90% of women at all levels were convinced achieving gender parity (equality) should be a critical strategic business imperative for their firm. Encouragingly, the study also found that the higher men go in an organisation, the more on board they were- 75% compared with 56 percent of junior-level male employees, 58 % of managers and 73 % of male executives.

This suggests that companies and their male leaders must do a better job of educating all employees on the bottom-line importance of gender equality as part of building leaders. Because when you think of a pyramid there are a lot of men at the bottom half who are not supportive of gender diversity initiatives or not aware of their benefits.

As a skillful leader, men (and women too) need to develop their women and their men and importantly bring their men with them on the journey towards building more inclusive workplaces. It involves being candid and brave in explaining why the organisation is embracing gender diversity, what it will entail (tailored training to both genders) how everyone will be affected and what the benefits will be for business. It also involves listening, counseling and setting expectations, as well as positioning gender diversity as a win win for everyone because that's what it is. It involves reminding men about why affirmative action is needed - usually as a means to counter the effects of a history of discrimination which on balance have been more damaging than beneficial.

My organisation, emberin, has over five years experience in working with men and women helping them attain their gender diversity goals and implement best practices. We have done our own research studies and scoured hundreds of the global findings. One of the questions we've asked is: what holds men back from embracing gender diversity initiatives and developing their female staff?

In my experience there are two critical factors.

1) It is not treated as strategic business imperative by senior management. Therefore it is not something they are measured by. Kate McKenzie, Chief Marketing Officer for Telstra, noted: When you put it into people's objectives it's amazing what managers can achieve.

2) Men had fears around supporting gender diversity in organisations: fears of women overtaking their jobs, insecurity about their abilities and capabilities, innuendo around working more closely with women and male repercussions. Other men attributed lack of support around gender diversity to the influence of stereotypes or upbringing, ineffective leaders and a sense of women having an unfair advantage due to a greater emphasis on women.

These issues should not be overlooked, but addressed but for Gender diversity initiatives to be successful they need to be supported at every level in the organisation by the majority of men. This is why male leadership is a must.

I'm Maureen Frank. Join me here and on womensvillage.com to find out more about how you can help advance gender diversity and benefit from it, because Australia actually lags many advanced nations in this area.