Our Wisconsin foundry is primarily women owned — and it’s not what most people probably think.

For centuries, working at a foundry has been a “man’s job.” Only a man can handle the grit, heat and danger — or so the antiquated thinking goes.

Last week, as I was combing through our company’s shareholder roll in preparation for our annual shareholder meeting, I discovered that our 113-year-old, family-owned foundry is owned primarily by women.

Spurred by this fortuitous discovery during the month-long celebration of Women’s History Month in March, I reflected: How has being women-owned impacted our business?

It’s not what most people probably think. Many people might ascribe traditional stereotypes about women to the running of a business — maybe imagining it to be a soft, motherly environment where morning meetings start with warm oatmeal raisin cookies.

Or people might think the opposite, that for a women-owned business to be successful in the male-dominated manufacturing industry, we need to overcompensate on stereotypically masculine attributes. A place where lady bosses rule the roost with a cold iron fist, ruthlessly chasing profit.

In fact, being women-owned has encouraged us to embrace both feminine and masculine traits. We are a caring environment where we often respond to messages on our internal chat board with heart emojis. And we are a serious, successful business where poor performance results have decisive consequences. Tenderness and toughness course through our veins at the same time.

Strong women power our business at every level. Many in the local community know our company is spiritually helmed by a pair of stalwart shareholder matriarchs. Our board is 40% women, which has encouraged greater attention to gender diversity. We have women in leading roles in almost every department, not just the traditional ones like Human Resources.

To be sure, the tight labor market has forced us to progress toward gender balance more quickly than we would have otherwise. Last year, I wrote about how our company invested in training women who joined our Engineering Department with no previous experience.

Until recently, we had no women working in second or third shifts at our foundry in Manitowoc. In fact, we did not even have a bathroom for women to use during off-shifts. Over the past year, as we pushed to grow our ranks by over 25%, we have hired several women onto all shifts. And last month, we promoted our first-ever woman to the role of production leader.

Our company is especially attuned to the familial needs of our employees. For instance, we have been working over the past year to support employees who are increasingly left without child care options.

Our organization also exhibits higher-than-normal emotional intelligence around inter-personal relationships. Three years ago, we embarked on a company-wide effort to reorient our culture toward honest communication and well-intentioned conflict, yielding an organizational harmony that has in turn driven our business success to new heights.

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Perhaps the greatest impact on our business of women-ownership has been the fostering of a daily commitment to respecting diversity of thought. Exclusive homogeneity at a company, especially at the top, can lead to dangerous groupthink.

A McKinsey & Company study found that gender diversity in a business consistently leads to better financial outcomes. It’s easy to see why. As I have witnessed firsthand, diverse opinions from the boardroom to the shop floor lead to greater awareness of competitive vulnerabilities, more openness to questioning weak assumptions, and ultimately to sharper strategic thinking.

Women-owned businesses are a rarity, and our business is a rarity within that rarity in the overwhelmingly male manufacturing industry. It is impossible to catalog the many ways that strong women have shaped our company over the past century, but one thing is clear: it takes women and men together to do a “man’s job.”

Sachin Shivaram is chief executive officer of Wisconsin Aluminum Foundry in Manitowoc.

This article originally appeared on Manitowoc Herald Times Reporter: Wisconsin Aluminum Foundry in Manitowoc is primarily owned by women