The end of the road for women’s networks?
By Elizabeth Harrin (London)
“About 30 years worth of effort has gone into promoting more women into senior leadership,” says Avivah Wittenberg-Cox. “We have to stop bringing groups of women together to talk about what we know is going wrong.”
Traditionally, women’s networks have been the ‘answer’ to the issue of getting more women into senior positions. Networks provide the opportunity to, well, network, and to meet and listen to senior women who then become role models. After all, if your after-dinner speaker made it to the top, why can’t you? But according to the women on the podium at a recent event hosted by Morgan Stanley, women’s networks are an outdated concept that do more harm than good.
Wittenberg-Cox co-authored the book Why Women Mean Business with Alison Maitland, and she’s the founder and honorary president of the European Professional Women’s Network (ironically). Speaking at an event called ‘21st Century Leadership: the evolution of corporate culture’ she put the case for an end to women-only networking groups. “We have to convince our companies to stop fixing the women,” she explained. “The underlying assumption with all of those programmes [mentoring, executive coaching, etc] is that there must be something wrong with women.”
It’s a controversial view. The current president of EPWN, Michelle Brailsford, agrees – to a point. “The problem is not ‘fixing’ women,” she says. “So the role of women’s networks today is less about personal development and more about support, sharing knowledge and strategizing. Fundamentally, women’s networks should be more about grassroots efforts to shift corporate cultures – so strategies to ‘fix’ organisations, not women.”
The Value of Women’s Networks
BJ Gallagher, author of The World’s Best Advice From The World’s Wisest Women, says, “There are still certain issues that women deal with at work and it helps to know that you’re not alone.” Twenty years ago, while at the LA Times, Gallagher noticed that the IT department was running workshops for women, under the radar of her HR department. There wasn’t the corporate appetite to run ‘special’ women’s events, but Gallagher realised that it would happen with or without their support. “It’s useful to have a group of women to turn to for tips, strategies, and moral support in the corporate environment,” she says. Shortly afterwards, the LA Times started officially supporting training events for women. Today, the role of women’s groups is still up for discussion. Gallagher doesn’t believe it’s an either/or proposition. “Women benefit from networking among themselves and they benefit by participating in other groups at work as well.”
Billie Williamson, Americas Director of Flexibility and Gender Equity Strategy at Ernst & Young, agrees. “Our research and experience shows us that women need a rich network of mentors, both male and female, to help them break through the barriers to success that they face,” she says. “Professional women’s networks provide a forum where women can connect with each other and find mentors that can encourage them to dream big. Discussions in broader business circles provides a good forum to advance the agenda for women to get into top leadership positions to help grow their companies. Both are important.”
The Drawbacks of Women’s Networks
Women-only groups may have their place, but if women’s ‘issues’ are now business issues, the role of these groups is up for debate. Putting women in a side-lined, under-funded ‘network’ may sound like a good idea, but these groups can result in the important business issues relating to getting more women into senior roles being marginalised. And women-only networks also have their own problems. What do you get with a bunch of women in a room together?
“It is unfortunate that women do not support one another more, or more wholeheartedly, in the workplace,” says gender expert Susan Shapiro Barash, author of Tripping the Prom Queen. “While the workplace is ideal in theory to foster mentoring and friendships among women of all ages often instead there is competition, female rivalry and pseudo friendships. However, all this could be changed if women would coalesce, and women could work together trading experience and ideas.”
Networking Today
“Women take out the strongest link, men take out the weakest,” said Wittenberg-Cox. She added that she believed mixed networking groups were the right way to go internally, but externally women could attend women-focussed groups. “You’ll learn what you need out there,” she explained, while keeping the groups mixed internally means you don’t create silos or a backlash against women.
“I think women still need support from other women unless and until the corporate cultures are transformed and business models have been reshaped,” says Brailsford. “Generation Y women will enter the workforce, having never experienced discrimination, and when they see it, feel it, experience it, women’s networks can provide support and strategies. Women’s networks can provide validation that the feminine way is as valid and effective as the masculine way.”
The role that women’s networks have to play in shaping careers and changing the existing business models is evolving. Perhaps we are shifting away from women in a room bemoaning the difficulties of ‘being a woman’ – if we were ever there. Today’s networks need to take a different perspective as their starting point. “Women’s networks do need to focus more on strategies for shifting attitudes and beliefs, strategies for revamping selection and talent management processes and strategies for shifting corporate cultures,” says Brailsford. “And these strategies need to be worked on collaboratively with other networks – not just internally – and together with men!”
The role of women’s groups is evolving. What do you want to get out of yours?
I believe women need a balance of both women networking groups and combined. I belong to a variety of networking groups and get different benefits from each goup. Women can not isolate themselves in women only groups, however they should not have to give up the nuturing enviroments from some of the women only groups. I do have to agree some of the groups can be like being in High School all over again.
The encouragement and affirmation I get from being in a room with like-minded professional female peers is enormous. Sometimes we discuss substantive issues, sometimes we talk fluff, it doesn’t matter. The networking event is a pick-me-up that mentally redresses the imbalance of working, as I usually do, in male-dominated environments.
Enjoying being entirely surrounded by like-minded women once in a while does not mean I don’t like working with men, nor that I am going to whine about them when they’re not there. What it does is to give me a spring in my step and that helps me deal with some of the corporate c**p back at the ranch.
If Wittenberg-cox thinks that women’s networks do nothing but talk about what’s wrong and try to fix women, then it’s no wonder she’s against them. She doesn’t get it or hasn’t seen an effective women’s environment.
The truth is, women ARE different than men and there’s nothing wrong with saying that or developing programs around that. Women often have different issues that they’ve been forced, for too long, to conform to a very male-dominated environment.
I agree with Brailsford in that current groups that are working for women include personal development and support, not a whine-fest or a male-bashing session. And the whole idea of using women’s approaches to work and management to shift a company culture could produce financial benefits for companies, as shown in financial results in companies with more women on their boards.
Finally, I’ve found in teaching all-female groups of entrepreneurs that the behavior Barash describes most often stems from a belief in a “Success Scarcity”. The networks that address these types of root issues while also offering support most certainly have a valuable place in companies who recognize the latent potential of women’s contributions.
I have had 2000 women on 3 Contineents go through my Authentic Leadership prggramme. The benfits of this type of development for women, especially those with children, cannot be inderestimated and should not be marginalised in this way. It is not ‘fixing women’ to acknowledge that they often have a complex set of circumstances sourrounding their work and life that simply doesnt apply to men. I run a business and have brought up 3 children on my own. Without a great deal of support form women only groups I wouldnt have made it and I know that 100’s of women who have been through my programmes feel the same way. Brave companies, such as Lloyds Bank and Deloitte (in the US) prove the point with their commitment to women and significantly increased representation at senior levels
I’ve come to the conclusion that women should maybe be thinking about insurrection rather than networking. Perhaps the reason why women fail to get into boards is boards are not designed for women. So rather than try to play a part, “androginise” ourselves (as suggested in a new book published this month) and play like men, we should just rethink how a board and a business would look like to be suitable for women – and start a revolution to create that?
If we want to bring down the barriers, we perhaps need to first man – or woman – the barricades.
I’m a fan of Tracy’s Authentic Leadership programs that encourage women to get it that we *can* go after our big career dreams without sacrificing family or femininity. Julie Lenzer Kirk has piled up awards and international recognition for her work empowering ambitious women to go for our professional and leadership dreams *without sacrificing* a happy personal life. And Deborah, check out BoardroomBound.org, a 501c3 founded by Linda K. Bolliger to “Foster good governance, independence and diversity in the 21st century corporate boardroom by reinventing corporate America one board at a time.”
Networking, mentoring, and professional development organizations created for and by women provide women the opportunity to have our career aspirations ratified in the face of a world that still regards ambitious men as go-getters, while ambitious women are viewed as the b-word.
Yes, we can and should have both male and female mentors and supportive peers. But women’s networking organizations are uniquely transformative because they offer us a forum in which to explore ways that we, as women, have internalized the idea that somehow, on some day of reckoning, we’re going to pay (or our children will pay, or our marriage will suffer) if we go after our biggest dreams; they offer us a way to stop socially sanctioned self-sabotage in its tracks.
You get a group of women together. The goal is to give a woman support for being ambitious. You encourage her to see that she can have a great, happy life—at home and at work. And you show her that, counterintuitive though our culture makes it seem, the real life course for becoming the happiest woman, the best friend, lover, spouse, mother and community member she can possibly be is to always honor her ambition as a virtue. You support her to see that the real way to make the contribution she was born to make is to place her inspiring career dreams at the top of her priorities list, not at the bottom of the pile. Next you give her powerful professional information and business strategies that are easy to use in her day-to-day work and personal life. You show her simple, effective, powerful tactics that build on each other and that empower her to hit her career targets.
Then a light bulb goes off in her consciousness. And she never looks back.
She takes charge of her professional destiny. She learns to firmly insist on getting paid what she’s worth. She feels powerful in a new way—and owning it feels comfortable to her. She learns to feel great about being recognized for her professional accomplishments. She learns to set boundaries with colleagues and people in her personal life so that her needs get met, not trampled on. She learns that she can act with professional integrity and treat others like human beings, but that she feels just fine about the fact that not everyone is going to like her when she stands up to those who would steal her thunder.
I’ve seen this transformation occur with thousands of women I’ve worked with. I write about it in my book, “Ambition Is Not A Dirty Word: A Woman’s Guide To Earning Her Worth and Achieving Her Dreams.” I believe that women owe it to ourselves — and the world — to make the contribution we were born to make. Women empowering women is the best way to make that happen.
This article only addresses corporate networks.
What about the invaluable business women’s networks? We need to connect in supportive groups to establish good relationships to do business. Sometimes the more mixed groups the women get left out.
I have a beautiful statuesque blond friend in business. She is in multi media, she is brainy she is a lovely person, yet why does everyone go to her partner to ask him the technical questions? It’s even funnier when he defers to her.
I understand the comment that mens networks take out the weakest and women’s the strongest, but it is not necessarily the case always. This leaves the impression that women are fighting to remain at the top. However, some of the most successful women I know, in corporates and in their own businesses truly support other women in their development and in helping others build business success of their own.
if you want to look good surround yourself with smart people.
Those women who seek to take out the strongest are probably unsure of themselves, threatened by capability and have no clue how to build sustainable relationships.
It isn’t the end of the road for women’s networks. It’s time to get on the right path!
Of course, companies don’t call it “fixing”, but they’ve been “fixing” men for over 30 years with leadership development programs that overfocus on interpersonal skills – the major skill area where men are consistently rated as underperforming women.
Women are underserved in these programs because they do little to address the real and perceived skill deficits for which we’re consistently rated as underperforming men. This is the first of two major problems with some internal women’s networks. The second is that women’s networks are too often disconnected from the business.
At Leading Women we are honored to work with amazing women in companies that are working hard to get and stay on the right path. We help network leaders determine how best to align the activities of the network with the real development needs of women and business needs of the organization. One recent CEO said that he now views the women’s network as a partner in talent management. And over 75% of women who’ve gone through our leadership programs are promoted or receive increased responsibility.
Partner in talent management, advancing women to senior levels, contributing to organizational growth,. These are key goals toward which the best women’s networks are striving.
Lead ON!
Susan
CEO and Founder, Leading Women
author No Ceiling, No Walls: What women haven’t been told about leadership from career-start to the corporate boardroom (https://www.NoCeilingNoWalls.com)
I agree with the comments that there is a difference between a “corporate women’s network” and an outside “women’s business network.” However, there will still be a need for both of them until:
1. Women are more equally represented in senior management.
2. Women learn how to get equal access to networking, training, and information within the existing corporate environment.
3. Women start taking on more bottom-line driven positions.
4. Companies learn how to handle maternity leave and child care.
5. Our culture fully accepts that women may be the breadwinners and that child care duties are the responsibility of both parents.
I do run a women’s business organization (which is open to men), and I’ve noticed that over the years, all of our programs have become gender-neutral and hard skills-oriented. We may have started as a support/networking group for women hitting the glass ceiling, but now we’re all about teaching our members networking, negotiating, sales, marketing, public speaking, and social media skills that are not being provided to them in their existing corporate environment.
We’re not “fixing” our members, we’re giving them an advantage that for whatever reasons – gender or lack of opportunity – they are not getting elsewhere. And, hopefully teaching them how to fix their own organizations!
Here’s how I see this… men have always had networks and groups to help them get ahead or to learn more, except that they refer to these networks/groups as a “golf outing”, or “drink after work” etc. This is just another attempt at “labeling” women and what they do and how they do it to keep them under thumb.
The question posed by and discussed in this article is very interesting. My feeling is that whilst women and men remain distinctly different (but obviously very similar) forms of humanity, many will continue to gain enjoyment from associating in gender-exclusive network groups, and it is probably enormously healthy that they do, just as it is for people of both genders to mix in networks of shared interest.
When considering the issue of women being better represented at senior or any other level (now I come to think of it) in business (for example), it must make sense to encourage mixed networks that have the benefit of providing rich and valuable perspectives for men and women. One group debating amongst themselves will not reach as useful set of conclusions or understanding as a group comprised of both men and women. Men have a great deal to learn from women in business and vice versa – we need to debate and move ahead in sync with each other.
So, I support the view of those above who have suggested that there is value in women’s networks and mixed networks that focus on enhancing success for both, without unwittingly creating the diametrically opposite challenge by trying to fix the other – a case of endeavouring to keep the see-saw a level playing field that enables talent to rise whatever its source or gender.