Four Types of Bias that Keep Women from Getting Promoted

Young Female Executive In Deep Thought - IsolatedBy Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

Everyone is subject to bias – we all have them, and we are all affected by them. Our task in the 21st century is to acknowledge our implicit assumptions about others (and ourselves) and examine how they may be holding others back (or propelling others forward).

In the corporate setting, people in the majority group can gloss over how their biases may be keeping people in non-dominant groups from advancing. A new white paper [PDF] by consulting group Cook Ross takes a look at the biases that keep women from getting promotions during the review process. The report author, Leslie Traub, Chief Consulting Officer at Cook Ross, writes that, at the entry level, the workforce at many companies approach gender parity. But over time, that diversity thins out.

One reason why is that bias during the review process affects whether women are recognized, valued, and, ultimately, promoted or retained. The report says, “Performance reviews that do not objectively reflect employee contributions are one of the main obstacles to retaining under-represented groups. When the performance review process is out of balance, opportunities for advancement narrow and in turn, narrow an organization’s diversity pipeline.”

Cook writes that reducing bias is everyone’s responsibility. “A shared recognition that bias exists in every decision and a collective and personal commitment to its reduction are the only antidotes to unchecked bias hijacking all of our critical decisions,” she says.

The benefits of mitigating bias will result a more diverse, competitive workforce. Here are four types of bias that keep women and other minority groups in the workforce from advancing. Once we recognize the barriers that keep women from getting ahead, we can begin dismantling them.

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Is There Corporate Life After Childbirth? Exploring the Opting Out Trend Among Working Moms

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iStock_000010170880XSmallBy Michelle Hendelman, Editor-in-Chief

In a recent study published by Vanderbilt University researcher, Joni Hersch, she takes a closer look at why women with elite educations are opting out of the workplace at a higher rate than women who hold degrees from less selective institutions after a break in their career. Opting out, onramping, re-entering the labor force, the mommy penalty – these are all buzzwords and phrases being used right now to discuss the trend of a growing percentage of women who choose to leave the workforce, usually to start a family, and the challenges they face if they decide to return to their career.

There is already a gross underrepresentation of women in leadership roles, but now that the talent pipeline of highly educated, experienced women with great career potential is taking a hit as a result of women opting out, the lack of women at the top could reach epic proportions. The bottom line is that when it comes to the gender diversity agenda, women cannot afford to continue to lose key players, role models, and influencers.

In order to uncover real answers about the opting out phenomenon, we must ask a very important question – are women not seeking opportunities for onramping because they do not desire to re-enter the workforce, or is it because companies are not facilitating their return in a positive and constructive manner? Like many of the issues surrounding corporate gender diversity, there is no cut and dry answer to why a high percentage of women choose to leave the workforce permanently after having children. Instead, we must look at the opting out trend from many different angles and perspectives to arrive at a compounded truth.

Using Hersch’s research as a springboard, we will explore some of the contributing factors to the opting out trend and how to get talented women back on their established career path after childbirth.

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Global Percentage of Women on Boards Rises Slowly

iStock_000016909333XSmallBy Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

Recently released research by Thomson Reuters shows that the percentage of women on boards is rising incrementally around the world. Based on the firm’s database of 4,100 firms, the majority of companies globally have at least one woman on their board.

In 2012 (the last year for which there was data), 59 percent of companies employed a woman board director. But it’s not all good news – that percentage has only risen by three percentage points since 2008, and it didn’t increase at all between 2011 and 2012.

The report [PDF], entitled “Mining the Metrics of Board Diversity,” shows that companies with women on their boards tend to outperform those with no women in terms. They also track better in relation to their index benchmark. Companies with no women have more tracking errors, the report shows, which means those firms may be more volatile.

By now, it’s old news that companies with women directors tend to do better than those without. Andre Chanavat, Product Manager, Environmental, Social & Governance (ESG) at Thomson Reuters, and co-author of the report with Katharine Ramsden, Global Head, Thought Leadership at Thomson Reuters, stated, “This study suggests that the performance of companies with mixed boards matched or even slightly outperformed companies with boards comprised solely of men, further reinforcing the idea that gender equality in the workplace makes good investment and business sense.”

But, as the report shows, while the majority of companies in the study did have women board directors, very few companies had more than one token women. Approaching a critical mass of three or more women on these boards is the result that many companies will still have to keep working toward.

Chanavat said, “Over the past five years significant measures have been put into place to help increase equal opportunity and diversity and while there has been a gradual increase in the percentage of companies that have women on boards, there is still a long way to go.”

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Will Gen Y Women in the Workplace be the Drivers of Corporate Change?

iStock_000002351861XSmallBy Michelle Hendelman, Editor-in-Chief

Generation Y – the group of young people born anywhere between the early 1980s and the early 2000s, have been the source of plenty of criticism recently from the generations before them who believe that the Millennial generation is single-handedly ruining the modern world as we know it. There are always two sides to every story, and the battle between the generations in the workplace, is no exception to that rule.

Boomers and Traditionals seem to agree on one thing. That is the millennial generation is not equipped to handle the challenges in front of them, namely a crippled economy that only recently has shown any hopeful sign of a lasting recovery. However, Millennials—as a whole—exude a confidence and an optimism that might be enough to make a significant impact in some key areas. One of these areas is women’s career advancement.

Will Gen Y women be effective change agents in the gender diversity space or will they continue to run up against the same challenges as women before them? A recent research study suggests that Gen Y women have what it takes.

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Voice of Experience: Clarine Nardi Riddle, Counsel, Kasowitz, Benson, Torres, & Friedman

Riddle.Nardi.Clarine_8423By Michelle Hendelman, Editor-in-Chief

For Clarine Nardi Riddle, Counsel, Kasowitz, Benson, Torres, & Friedman, it is difficult to pick one moment in her professional career of which she is most proud. This is because since graduating from Indiana University School of Law in 1971, Riddle has accumulated numerous achievements while working in local, state, and federal governments and in the private legal sector as well.

Although Riddle has several impressive milestones in her career to talk about, like becoming the first female Attorney General of Connecticut, being the first woman Attorney General to argue a case before the United States Supreme Court and win, and assisting in the drafting of the first Title IX plan during her third year of law school at Indiana University, she feels especially proud of the progress that has been made by women in law over the last few decades.

“At Indiana University, my class in law school probably had the largest number of women ever, and that was only a little more than twelve,” said Riddle. She continued, “It was a critical mass at that point, and we were just at the beginning of having more and more women apply to law school. It was a different world back then, and I am so happy to see where we have come since then. I am so proud of it all.”

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Male Champions of Women’s Advancement are a Critical Ingredient for Equality

iStock_000006954519XSmallBy Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

“There’s no such thing as the glass ceiling; only a thick layer of men.”

This is a quote that has been attributed to many formidable women over the years: Laura Liswood, Secretary General of the Council of Women World Leaders; Majora Carter, an environmental activist and Co-Founder & CEO of StartUpBox.SouthBronx; Kathy Matsui, Managing Director and Chief Japan Strategist at Goldman Sachs Japan; and Jane Harman, President of the Woodrow Wilson Center.

Regardless of who said it first (my money’s on Liswood), it acknowledges a fundamental fact. In order to achieve gender equality in leadership, we’re going to have to deal with the men in some way or another.

Most men are not actively keeping women out of top jobs. They’re simply bystanders to the inertia of millennia-old male-dominated power structures, and many don’t see what’s in it for them to put in the work to change a system that gives them an automatic boost — that is, if they are even aware that they’re getting bonus life points simply for being male in the first place.

But this is changing as people — both men and women — develop more awareness about the value of gender diversity. One senior individual who “gets it” can make a big difference. A Columbia study, for example, showed that at Danish companies whose CEOs have daughters, the wage gap between men and women workers tends to be smaller.

There is a vast array of research detailing the benefits of gender diversity in leadership. For example, Thomson Reuters recently released a new study showing that companies with gender-diverse boards outperform those with no women. Beyond the business case, though, we live in a society that supposedly values diversity, equality, and meritocracy. The work to engage a fair share of women in leadership should be a project we are all engaged in, whatever our gender.

Men make up about half of the entry-level workforce for professional careers, and there is a greater percentage of men at every rung moving up the ladder. At the senior management level, the vast majority of people are men. In order to achieve real equality, men need to be encouraged to get involved in gender diversity. After all, a simple look at the same ladder shows that they make the lion’s share of decisions on who gets hired and who gets promoted.

Our latest research shows that, at many companies, some men are working to support women’s advancement. What’s more, the presence male champions of gender equality at a company often signifies the presence of other kinds of support for women in the same organization. When men get involved in diversity, companies do more.

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Women Aren’t Funny: Why is this Gender-Based Myth Gaining Traction?

Young business woman in a office environment.By Tina Vasquez (Los Angeles)

To further understand how difficult the corporate landscape continues to be for women, one only needs to look at headlines associated with linguistic expert Judith Baxter’s most recent study: “Female bosses ‘less funny in the boardroom’” and “Women’s jokes fall flat at work, report finds.”

The professor of applied linguistics at Aston University spent 18 months conducting her research at seven large companies, examining 14 team meetings, of which half were led by senior-level men and half by senior-level women. Baxter found that women often resort to self-deprecating humor, with 70 percent of female senior professionals joking about themselves in a somewhat negative light. Needless to say, it almost always went over poorly. While it was clear the women were making self-deprecating jokes because it was the safer option (they would rather laugh at themselves than laugh at others), their humor was seen as “contrived, defensive, or just mean.”

“I looked at the wording that provoked the laugh. In almost every case, the speaker had attempted a witticism which might range from a pun, a self-deprecating remark, a jokey remark at the expense of other colleagues or their organization, or banter with colleagues. There were few fully fledged jokes. I then looked at the response to the witticism. I saw that women rarely gained a laugh, unlike men. Indeed, they often ended up laughing at their own jokes, which made the comment appear contrived and the speaker seem defensive,” Baxter said.

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Gender Quotas Attract More High Qualified Women Applicants

Three serious business people talking in boardroomBy Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

EU Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding is often quoted as having said, “I don’t like quotas, but I like what they do.”

Across Europe, the prospect of introducing board quotas has produced heated debate. Following Norway’s 2004 law requiring the boards of publicly traded companies to be 40 percent women, several other countries — France, Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands, and others — have introduced similar measures, although Norway’s laws remain the strictest. When I met Arni Hole, Director General of Norway’s Royal Ministry of Children, Equality, and Social Inclusion and the architect of the quota law, a few years ago, she insisted that Norway’s program is the most comprehensive in that it is binding. A company that doesn’t comply is delisted.

At the same time, some countries have resisted implementing any flavor of quotas — the UK for example. It’s also difficult to imagine any kind of boardroom gender quota legislation taking place in the United States. Quota detractors say that affirmative action forces companies to hire less qualified candidates. Proponents say that quotas ensure qualified applicants who might normally be ignored don’t get overlooked.

In fact, Stanford University research suggests that gender quotas may actually boost the percentage of high performing women willing to apply for a position. The result is that there’s no marked decrease in quality in the person who gets hired. That is — when companies signal that they want to hire more women, more high performing women apply for jobs, and more high performing women get jobs — without companies decreasing their performance expectations.

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