Why are We Still Confusing Quotas with Tokenism?

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Board room meetingBy Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

As our writer Cleo Thompson pointed out in this morning’s piece on UK views on quotas, “According to a recent survey by executive recruiters Harvey Nash, 81% of women feel that bias in the appointment process has a major impact on female representation – but two-thirds (64%) do not support legal quotas.”

In a recent Computerweekly piece, Women in Technology founder Maggie Berry railed against quotas saying:

“It’s a fantastic achievement to be promoted thanks to your hard work, ability and success. But to be promoted to board level just because a certain number of female places need to be filled would make most women women feel insulted, rather than elated. In short, we want to be promoted on our own merits.”

Berry believes that instituting a quota system would mean placing women at the top who don’t deserve to be there. This view, that a quota system is akin to tokenism, is just plain wrong. It implies that the dearth of women at the top has nothing to do with institutional, cultural bias, and that women aren’t in leadership roles in large numbers because they majority simply aren’t qualified for them.

In fact, there are plenty of highly qualified women just waiting to break through to the top. The point of a quota system isn’t to play a numbers game, promoting female faces to positions of leadership just for show. It’s to encourage a correction of long-standing and culturally entrenched beliefs around what a leader looks like – male – and to place those women at the top who do deserve to be there, but because of culturally entrenched bias, haven’t made it.

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Majority of UK Women and Businesses Opposed to Gender Quotas

Middle aged business man discussing with his team in meetingBy Cleo Thompson (London), founder of The Gender Blog

This is the next in our series of articles which looks at how UK business is approaching the issue of women on boards.

According to a recent survey by executive recruiters Harvey Nash, 81% of women feel that bias in the appointment process has a major impact on female representation – but two-thirds (64%) do not support legal quotas.

Instead, respondents cited education and awareness as the single biggest opportunity for improving boardroom balance (44%), followed by published targets and regular reporting (40%). Eighty-four percent of women believe they personally need to do more to achieve a higher representation on the board.

It appears from the survey, conducted of 365 male and female board level and senior executives, that the majority of women in business want to be taken seriously for their expertise and not simply be viewed as having “won” a place on the board through a mandated quota, an observation with which Charlotte Sweeney, Head of Diversity & Inclusion, EMEA at Nomura PLC agreed. She said, “Women want to be appointed into roles because they are the best person for the role, not because they are a woman.”

However, a minority of women (36%) believed quotas should be put in place and this is a growing and vocal segment of women in business and politics, led by the Fawcett Society. They recently called for gender quotas, with Acting Chief Executive Anna Bird arguing that “In politics, business and public life more generally, decisions which affect us all are being made with too few women in the room. If the government is serious about increasing the number of women on boards, and so sharing these positions of great power and influence more fairly between women and men, quotas are the way to do it.”

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Risky Behavior and Your Career Growth

Executive walks on tightrope with umbrellaBy Melanie Axman (Boston)

A recent study commissioned by Barclays Wealth and Ledbury Research shows that women perform better than men in financial markets, because they are not as overconfident and don’t take as many risks.

The study seems to corroborate a 2010 New York Times article, which cites primitive biological instincts possibly at play with risk taking and aversion. Alexandra Bernasek, a professor of economics at Colorado State University, says, “Before the dawn of history, aggressive risk-taking might have given men an advantage in finding mates, while women might have become more risk-averse to protect their offspring.”

In general, men tend to participate in high levels of risk taking in the office as well. According to a recent article in Time Magazine entitled “Why Women Are Better at Everything,” a study by John Coates, research fellow at Cambridge University, tested male traders’ hormone responses to workplace decisions. He found that testosterone surges during winning streaks may drive both risk-taking and an attitude of infallibility.

Yet, while women may be better suited to keeping an even keel when it comes to trading, we’re often cited as too timid when it comes to taking chances, jumping on new opportunities, and tooting our own horns – to our own career detriment. If women participated in more risk-taking in the office, would we experience greater success?

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Voice of Experience: Liv Sandbaek, Managing Director, Technology, Accenture

LivSandbaekBy Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

In her 20 year career in technology, Liv Sandbaek has climbed the ranks at Accenture to become Managing Director of Technology in the company’s UK office. In fact, she’s become so well regarded that she was recently awarded by Science and Technology award at the CBI and Real Business’ 2011 First Women Awards.

According to Sandbaek, women have the skills to get ahead – but often lack the confidence to take charge. She said, “Women need to feel 100% confident to do a job before they accept, but men will volunteer for anything. We need to take a few chances here – it’s all to do with the confidence you feel inside.”

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Why STEM Needs Women

iStock_000013326657XSmallBy Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

This week the US Commerce Department’s Economics and Statistics Administration published a new report [PDF] on women in science, technology, math, and engineering (STEM) fields. And the report included some good news – the STEM wage gap is smaller than in other fields.

But, let’s not forget that the gap is still there.

According to the report, even after controlling for education, age, and other factors, women earn less than men. It says, “For every dollar earned by a man in STEM, a woman earns 14 cents (or 14 percent) less, smaller than the 21 percent gender wage gap in non-STEM occupations, but a clear gender disparity nonetheless.”

The wage gap is only one problem highlighted in the report, which should serve as a clarion call to educators, employers, and the media that it’s time to encourage more women to enter STEM, and stay there. Here’s why.

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Gender and Power: What Christine Lagarde’s Appointment to Head the IMF Means for Women in Leadership

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ChristineLagardeBy Savita Iyer-Ahrestani (New York City)

One could say it’s laughable that, in the year 2011, women are celebrating Christine Lagarde’s appointment as the first female head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). But, says Subha Barry, Senior Vice President and Chief Diversity Officer at Freddie Mac, “every ceiling that we break must be celebrated,” and Lagarde’s appointment is yet another major breakthrough for professional women.

Her progress at the traditionally male-dominated institution that is the IMF “is going to be carefully watched by everyone and will make it so much easier for other women,” Barry says.

Barry, like most women of her ilk, holds Lagarde in high esteem. She has no doubt that Lagarde will be highly successful in her new role, and that she will take the Fund – an institution that scores of people the world over have, for the better part of the past couple of decades, loved to hate – forward on a new course. Her presence at its helm will help a great deal in restoring the Fund’s credibility – even if that effort had, despite his unsavory exit, already been undertaken to a great degree by former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn.

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Rising Star: Kelly Widelska, Knowledge Leader – Global Transaction Advisory Services, Ernst & Young Global

By Cleo Thompson (London), founder of The Gender Blog

For London based Kelly Widelska, an Associate Director at Ernst & Young, knowledge really is power and has led to global opportunities. Following her Masters in Information Management from the University of Sheffield, Widelska joined the accounting giant’s EMEIA management consulting division for two years, prior to moving to Cap Gemini following the sell-off of E&Y’s consulting practice. A year later, she returned to the Ernst & Young fold and headed to China and Hong Kong, where she helped to set up and develop the Centre for Business Knowledge, an internal function for knowledge management, providing programmes, techniques and technologies to help E&Y staff share what they know.

After three years in China, her role expanded into the Far East, after which she returned to the UK in 2005 to a transaction advisory role in a country knowledge management capacity. Her next move saw a shift to a broader cross-firm position, supporting Global functional teams in areas such as Tax, Climate Change and Sustainability and People teams with their knowledge sharing needs. Widelska has been in her current role as Global TAS Knowledge Leader since 2009 and now leads a team of ten as part of a highly matrixed knowledge organisation.

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Charting Your Path to the Boardroom

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Business Woman Stands MeetingBy Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

Last Week, the Women’s Executive Circle of New York held an event entitled The Path to the Boardroom: What you need to do today to get there tomorrow. The event, hosted by Morgan Stanley, featured a talk with Bonnie Gwin, Vice Chairman and Managing Partner, Heidrick & Struggles.

Gwin, who focuses on Director and CEO level searches at the recruiting firm, serves as a national board chair of the Make a Wish Foundation.

She began her discussion with the following advice: “When you get into board practice, whether a for-profit board or a not-for-profit board, it’s got to be something you feel passionate about.”

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The Davies Report: What Does It Mean for UK Women?

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Project discussionBy Cleo Thompson, Founder of The Gender Blog

This is the first in a series of articles which looks at how UK business is approaching the issue of women on boards.

In February 2011, Lord Davies of Abersoch released his long-awaited report, Women on Boards, a review of female representation at senior levels in UK plc. It was handed to the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and sets out recommendations on targets to improve the gender balance in business. It stopped short of recommending the introduction of mandatory quotas (as already seen in Norway and Spain) but suggests that FTSE 100 companies should aim to have at least 25% female board member representation by 2015 – an increase from the 12.5% reported in 2010.

Other recommendations include the requirement for FTSE 350 companies to set their own targets on female representation, that companies should advertise non-executive board positions in order to encourage greater diversity in applications and that headhunting firms should draw up a voluntary code to address gender diversity.

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Mentor Moms: Five Pieces of Advice on Making Work/Life Work for You

Businesswoman holding baby at deskBy Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

In a recent Forbes piece, Georgia Collins, managing director of North American business for strategic consulting agency DEGW, wrote about her decision to go back to work after her son was born. She wrote:

“It wasn’t easy going back to work in March – five months after my son was born – and I’m still conflicted on a daily basis by my choice. Luckily, I know an extraordinary group of women who’ve taken the same path as me. …So when it came to finding a way to balance being a mom and having a career, their starting point was not about compromising one for the sake of the other. Instead, it was about finding a way to make both work, and work well.”

Seeking smart advice from the women who’ve been there before is a terrific way to manage the challenges you face – whether personal or professional (or in this case, both). Here are five pieces of advice from senior professional women on how they made work and family work for them. While every work/life situation is different, hopefully their advice will inspire your own solutions!

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