International Women’s Day: The Power of Improving Women’s Standing

networking groupsBy Tina Vasquez

Each year on March 8, the world celebrates International Women’s Day (IWD), a time to reflect on progress that’s been made and also, shine a bigger spotlight on the battles women continue to face, including poverty and access to education. In honor of IWD, Catalyst released a powerful new report that gathers information from around the world, exploring women’s status through the lens of three global concepts: shifting demographics, improving education, and stalled progress toward equality for women.

The Ripple Effect
Emily Troiano, author of Catalyst’s Women in the World report and Senior Director of the organization’s Information Center, says that that the idea behind the report was to synthesize a great deal of research in hopes of providing answers to big, complex questions about the current state of affairs for women.

“What all of this research really says is that when women’s standing is advanced, there is this outstanding ripple effect that benefits many,” Troiano said.

In essence, empowering women improves not only the lives of women, but the lives of children, families, and societies, resulting in increased economic prosperity everywhere. Big change doesn’t happen quickly, Troiano says, but things are shifting.

If nothing else, the real takeaway from the report is the understanding of what could be if more of an effort was made to champion the success of women. For example, the report found that fuller employment of women across the globe could result in significant improvement and growth in the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of many countries. Specifically, increasing the levels of female employment could help raise the GDP by 5 percent in the United States, 9 percent in Brazil, 9 percent in Japan, 11 percent in Italy, 12 percent in the United Arab Emirates, and a whopping 27 percent in India.

These numbers are particularly telling in light of findings that the pool of employable talent is shrinking as the global population ages, which will prove to be a serious drain on many economies. According to Women in the World, women are a solution. By implementing policies and creating environments “to take advantage of an underutilized and competent labor pool”, meaning women, companies and governments have the power to change the economic equation for the better.

Enormous Advances in Education
Women in the World also sheds light on education, reporting that women have made enormous advances in education worldwide. Catalyst reports that overall, secondary education for girls leads to wage boosts of 15 – 25 percent. It also reveals that increasing the share of girls in secondary education by just one percentage point will boost a country’s annual per capita income growth by 0.3 percentage points.

Globally, women represented 51 percent of those enrolled in tertiary education in 2007, a 5 percent increase from 1990. Defined as academic, advanced vocational, and professional education, the average global participation of women in tertiary education is 27 percent, surpassing men’s 25 percent.

“What’s clear is that investing in the education of girls and women leads to tremendous economic gain,” Troiano said. “If we give a little, we get a lot – and the value is almost immediately apparent.”

STEM’s Visibility Problem
Sadly, women still have limited opportunities in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields. Troiano says this speaks more to visibility than it does the long-held assumption that women aren’t geared toward these fields.

“When girls excel in science, they’re not expected to enter STEM fields so they’re not encouraged. There is definitely a lack of role modeling,” the study’s author said. “If they can’t see themselves in STEM or see themselves reflected in the field, then it stops being an option. What’s frustrating is that women are in some STEM fields, but there’s this assumption that they’re not. In the U.S., more than 50% of biologists are women.”

Give a Little, Get a Lot
The “give a little, get a lot” approach mentioned by Troiano earlier rings true in countries that passed laws and policies around employment, minimum schooling, and access to credit for women. Not only did these countries have smaller pay gaps, but they also had more women doing paid work and more women in senior roles.

On this International Women’s Day, we need to continue pushing for the economic empowerment of women and helping others to understand the power of its many ripple effects.

“This report is full of a lot of information and a lot of statistics, but what I hope doesn’t get lost is what we’re really talking about, which is people,” Troiano said. “We can use this information to impact real change for people across the globe – and we should want that not just because it’s the right thing to do, but because it will change the prosperity of the economy.”

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OP-ED: Why what your company does the other 364 days of the year beyond International Women’s Day is what matters

Nicki GilmourIn celebration of 2014’s International Women’s Day (IWD), and in keeping with the mission of The Glass Hammer to inform, inspire and empower you in your career, the many interesting, useful events that IWD creates will be covered extensively here throughout the month. Instead, today let’s talk about the elephant in the room; what is your company doing every other day to ensure that systemic biases are removed so that you thrive, not just survive?

Organizational culture, the often tacit and engrained ways that work gets done in your firm, is where the rubber meets the road for diversity, despite it often still being treated like the entrance checklist to Noah’s Ark. Observing the behaviors of leaders and managers will tell you a lot about your potential to get that corner office. Practically speaking, you can start to examine what actions get rewarded, what gets tolerated, what gets rewarded and who gets authorized to lead.

A good example of someone who fell foul to how things were being managed at their firm is Ina Drew and the London Whale scandal, which demonstrated that doing your job sometimes isn’t enough since silent endorsements of other people’s bad behavior, or even failure to act, can sink you. Ignore your people’s behavior at your peril is advice for a leader of either gender, but there is an added dynamic of having to prove yourself as a female leader.

Will we see change by 2020?

We all want to say yes. We all want to say we live in a post-bias world where meritocracy rules. In a recent survey by Accenture for International Women’s Day, 70 percent of the 4100 respondents globally said that the number of women CEOs will increase by 2020; with 15 percent believing the increase will be significant. Whilst admiring this optimism and hoping these results to be true, due to the absolute lack of growth over the past six years, this scenario is hard to envision. Data and history show the contrary, and I think there is a huge behavioral gap between what people think they want and consciously voice, and then what they unconsciously do.

Recently, I was involved in a career session where I presented research by a colleague of mine who extrapolated the “Think Manager, Think Male” research to include further dimensions around “Think Manager, Think Straight Male.” The respondents to the survey were aged 18-28 and were mostly females based in NYC. The results were surprising, with the survey revealing that respondents believed that straight men still had more leadership traits than straight and gay women. Interestingly, gay men were assigned attributes that least lined up with what they thought a successful manager looked like. Stereotyping is real. I am pretty sure if you had of asked these women if they wanted to be CEO, they would have said yes. Yet they are authorizing the other gender to do the job based on just that –their gender (and the intersection with their sexual orientation as straight).

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OP-ED: Next Generation Diversity: Developing Tomorrow’s Female Leaders

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diverse women in the boardroomContributed by Aoife Flood, based in Dublin, Ireland, Aoife is Senior Manager of the Global Diversity and Inclusion Programme Office at PricewaterhouseCoopers International Limited.

Saturday, 8 March, marks International Women’s Day. As we celebrate the achievements of women in the workforce and beyond, my advice for leaders is don’t limit your focus to the gender leadership gap.

We know that organisations the world over are currently challenged with a lack of women in leadership positions, and concerned with the competitive and financial toll this could mean for their organisation. However, to achieve sustainable change CEOs must be committed to driving parallel efforts which tackle enhanced leadership diversity in conjunction with systemic change efforts targeting their workforce from day one. Organisations need to be focused on developing talented junior women now for future leadership roles – because when talent rises to the top, everyone wins.

At PwC Diversity and Inclusion is a strategic priority. We recognise that diversity is fundamental to the success of our business strategy and with the sponsorship of our Global Chairman, Dennis Nally, we are working hard to get this right. But we also recognise that to do this PwC, like other organisations, must first understand how to attract, develop and retain female millennial talent.

We are passionate about this, so to mark International Women’s Day this year we are launching the research based report Next Generation Diversity: Developing tomorrow’s female leaders which focuses on the attraction, development and retention of the female millennial.

A New Era of Female Talent

Born between 1980 and 1995, female millennials make up a significant proportion of the current and future talent pool. Female millennials matter because they are more highly educated and are entering the workforce in larger numbers than any of their previous generations. The female millennial has likely outperformed her male counterparts at school and at university and is the most confident of any female generation before her. She considers opportunities for career progression the most attractive employer trait. When it comes to the female millennial we really are dealing with a new era of talent; both in terms of the make-up of the workforce she enters and the career mind-set with which she enters.

The female millennial sounds pretty amazing, right? But how will organisations lean in to this new era of talent so they are successful in capitalising on these stellar traits? The Next Generation Diversity report shares six key themes that matter to the female millennial and positions the difficult questions that employers need to be cognisant of when it comes to this significant cohort of talent.

Female Millennial Demand for Global Careers

Let me delve a little deeper into one of the themes: ‘Global Careers’. I choose this theme because I am a millennial woman who was lucky enough to undertake an international assignment to PwC’s Boston office in 2006. This experience was life changing – throughout my 14 year career it is un-paralled as an experience in driving such an intense level of both personal and professional development. In essence, I know the impact an international assignment can have on a woman’s career.

Millennials have a strong appetite for working abroad, with PwC research telling us 71% are keen to do so at some stage in their career. What’s compelling – and critical for employers – is to realise that this is not a male phenomenon.

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NCRW Spotlights Intersectionality with Name Change

iStock_000017490863XSmallBy Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

Earlier this week the National Council for Research on Women held its annual Fire Starter Awards Dinner. Along with honoring a diverse group of of women and men for their work in gender equality, the organization used the evening to announce a name change and rebranding.

NCRW’s new name, Re:Gender, is a nod to the organization’s historical cross-disciplinary mission of bringing together university researchers, activists, and practicians to work toward gender equality. Aine Duggan, president of Re:Gender, explained that many of the group’s constituents have had a difficulty understanding what the organization does.

“Our specialty is connections,” Duggan said. “Connecting people across sectors and approaches.”

The group hopes to highlight the cross-sectional nature of its work, Duggan said. The fight for gender equity encompasses not just issues of male or female, but also those of class, immigration, ethnicity, ability, parenthood, and more, and sometimes these divisions push gender champions apart, rather than bringing them together. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

“We’re not going to debate the different approaches to gender equality,” Duggan said. “The more ideas there are, the merrier.”

Diverse Honorees
Re:Gender set about to demonstrate its devotion to intersectionality with a diverse set of honorees, speakers, and performers. The evening kicked off with a new rendition of Lesley Gore’s 1963 hit “You Don’t Own Me,” performed by actress and singer Maxine Linehan and hip hop artist and producer Phlaymz.

Later, the event’s MC Rosa Flores, CNN correspondent and anchor, moderated a panel featuring Norma Kamali, designer and women’s empowerment advocate, Geri Thomas, chief diversity officer and Georgia market president at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Peter Warwick, chief people officer at Thomson Reuters, and Patricia J. Williams, professor of law at Columbia University.

The panelists shared advice and experience from their lives and careers on how women can empower themselves and others, and how institutions can level the playing field for women.

For example, after sharing the tale of her first job interview with a powerful man who belittled and harassed her, Kamali discussed the importance of sharing painful or embarrassing stories of workplace harassment.

“Every woman in this room has a million secrets,” she said. “If I told my own father what had happened to me, he would be heartbroken. He would be the staunchest advocate for women’s equality. Tell every man you know those stories and make them advocates,” she said.

Meanwhile, Warwick discussed how Thomson Reuters was working to implement more women- and family-friendly policies, developed around flexibility and parental leave. But, he said, these policies were only the first step.

“It doesn’t matter the amount of policies you’ve got. You’ve got to make sure to train everybody on how to manage those policies every day,” Warwick said.

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How Being ‘Happy to Help’ Can Have an Impact on Your Career

iStock_000014539701XSmallBy Tina Vasquez, Managing Editor

Recently, Sharon Meers, Head of Magento Enterprise Strategy at eBay Inc., asserted that people “feel entitled to female help” at work.

The gendered assumption that women enjoy being accommodating and supportive seem to extend into the office with early findings from Frank Flynn, a professor at Columbia Business School, revealing that women are more likely to be asked to do favors or help out their coworkers. When they do, however, they are less appreciated for it than their male counterparts.

Flynn examined employees at two companies, finding that women were more likely than men to be asked for help and were also more likely to grant those requests. When those who received favors were asked how “indebted” they felt to the person granting them, women were appreciated less than men. It was also found that women who seem more “agreeable” are even less appreciated than women who were seen as less agreeable but provided help.

As a result, women are spending important time overloaded on menial tasks, such as arranging office parties.

In her writing on the research, Meers said that we’re doing our daughters “no favors when we support the belief that ‘women are happy to help.’’’

Carol Frohlinger, co-author of Nice Girls Just Don’t Get It: 99 Ways to Win the Respect You Deserve, the Success You’ve Earned, and the Life You Want”, says that from childhood, girls are conditioned to be “nice” and “helpful”, but these over-caring characteristics prove to be a disservice when women enter the ultra-competitive workplace.

“There are so many assumptions made about women in the workplace. If they’re asked to do a favor; if they’re asked to take on additional work; if they’re asked to stay late; it’s assumed they’ll be grateful to do these taxing, inconvenient things,” says Frohlinger, a strategic partner of theglasshammer.com. “These stereotypes about women being nurturing and collaborative and happy to help are pervasive. Men in the workplace feel entitled to our time and they are unappreciative of it when they receive it.”

Just Say No
Given that so much of the problem is rooted in deeply-ingrained assumptions surrounding gender roles, being unappreciated in the workplace isn’t an easy issue to overcome. However, there are strategies that can help begin to unravel this deeply troubling phenomenon. The most important of which: learning to say no.

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Voice of Experience: Marie O’Connor, Partner, PwC Ireland

Women workingMarie O’Connor, a Partner at PwC Ireland, was always interested in mathematics. However, when she decided to pursue Accounting at the College of Commerce, Rathmines, she encountered a slight hurdle. At the time, this business school had not yet opened its doors to female students, but this would change when O’ Connor submitted her application.
“All it took was for someone to knock on the door, and then the barrier came down,” noted O’Connor.

While O’Connor was completing her Accounting degree in business school, she applied for a traineeship position at a PriceWaterhouseCoopers firm where she was one of six females accepted in a class of fifty total graduates. This program established the foundation for O’Connor’s career at PwC Ireland, where she would eventually become the first woman to be made a partner. “I have stayed at PwC for my entire career,” she said, “and I am quite fortunate to have had a variety of roles and experiences here in Ireland and internationally as well.”

A Rewarding Career at PwC Ireland

Becoming a partner at PwC is one of O’Connor’s proudest professional achievements. “Since becoming a partner, I take pride in representing PwC Ireland around the world and enabling Ireland to be a place where companies want to do business,” said O’Connor. She also looks back at the twelve years she spent successfully leading and growing the Investment Management team practice as a very rewarding period in her career.

O’Connor noted, “Today, locally we have 350 people in the Investment Management practice and 17 partners, of which half are women. Growing this practice and developing the networks was very important for me.”

According to O’Connor, the regulatory environment of the asset management industry is presenting many challenges for companies trying to remain competitive while continuing to forge strong client relationships. “There is so much regulation in Europe right now, and more in the pipeline. It is critical for asset managers to be involved in discussions around all these issues to ensure that we can make sense of the regulatory agenda and enable companies to do good business while building trust with investors,” said O’Connor.

She added, “At the end of the day we all want to grow sustainable business”, In addition to the diverse career path O’Connor has enjoyed at PwC, she has also benefited greatly from various non-executive director roles she has had the opportunity to participate in. “Being able to see business from a different angle has contributed to my own professional development and has given me a new range of ideas and experiences to share with others,” noted O’Connor.

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