Voice of Experience: Busisiwe Mathe, Partner/Director, Risk Assurance Cyber Security and Privacy; PwC

Looking back over her career, PwC’s Busisiwe Mathe says she wishes she had been as comfortable in her own skin when she first started as she is now; however, she understands that acquiring that confidence is all part of growing.

“I believe that there was a lesson I needed to learn in everything I have experienced in my career,” she says.

A Varied Career Brings Success

Mathe began her career with PwC in 2004 and throughout her tenure has garnered experience in external and internal audits, technology transformation projects, business continuity management, cybersecurity and privacy, including stints abroad in the New York and Atlanta offices.

As the chairman of the South Africa PricewaterhouseCoopers Governing Board, Mathe serves as a member on the PwC Africa Governance Board and currently oversees the firm’s Africa Cyber and Privacy business.

It’s a crucial line of business, considering the prevalence of cyberattacks, including ransomware, that have increasingly plagued companies both globally and locally in the last 18 months.

While the attacks used to be concentrated to one specific sector or industry, they have become more widespread across all industries, and are moving from information technology into the operational technology environment. That concern was noted in PwC’s 22nd Annual Global CEO Survey, which showed cyber threats staying among the top 5 risks identified by CEOs.

Helping Women Achieve Success

Mathe believes that one of the top barriers for women in the industry is actually based on a false notion—the fact that most women view it as a technical industry where you have to have earned a technical or IT-related degree. However she finds that to be restrictive, as cybersecurity has both technical and non-technical aspects and thus offers a wide range of career lines one can follow. But that assumption leads to a second challenge, which is that the lack of women in the industry means that it is harder for young woman looking to enter the profession to find mentors or others to look up to.

She encourages women considering the industry to realize that the sky is the limit, and the variety of positions offered make cybersecurity a fantastic place to thrive. And she encourages her peers to focus on mentoring the younger generation—making it a priority to support STEM initiatives or even start their own to encourage women pursuing these important fields.

PwC is a supportive place in that sense, as Mathe underscores that the PwC Africa leadership team is firmly committed to diversity and inclusion, having adopted the Global Inclusion Index locally as a tool to continuously assess progress. In addition, all partners and staff take mandatory unconscious bias training, focusing on four dimensions of diversity: gender, race, sexual orientation and generational diversity. That has paid off in more women achieving leadership roles; in fact 45 percent of the partners named in the most recent cycle of promotions were women.

A Full Life Outside Of Work

“My family is my foundation; I would not be where I am had it not been for my strict, yet loving, father who told me at a very young age that I could achieve anything I put my mind to, and my mom who played a significant part in the woman, wife and mother I am today,” Mathe says. She carries out those lessons with her own family, which includes a supportive husband, whom she calls “one of her biggest cheerleaders,” and eight-year-old twin boys.

She also coaches and mentors students and young professionals through partnerships with organizations like Youth Leadership and Entrepreneurship Development (YLED) and the DreamGirls Academy. “I enjoy mentoring and coaching both at work and outside work by partnering with NGOs that empower young girls in believing and shaping their dreams,” she says.

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Happy International Women’s Day 2019. Does Change Start Here?

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Nicki Gilmour

Celebrations and recognition of women and women specific issues are being highlighted today around the world and inside corporate offices. Celebrating and making people aware of amazing women and their accomplishments is excellent. Shedding light on social, economic or cultural issues that do not get enough attention is also great. Better to have it, than not have it for sure.

However, does change happen because of it? No, change requires more than a day of talking and a hashtag (which by the way is officially #balanceforbetter which hints at two things, balance of power, not just more balance for women)

But, when all is said and done, it is just a hashtag that means pretty much zero when it comes to actual behaviorial change or any action for anyone whatsoever. Now that we have named the elephant in the room on the sheer vacancy of going through the motions of pretense, perhaps we can talk real talk about change?

Awareness is the first step. But, only the first step in change.

How do we achieve parity. equality, equity or meritocracy?

I like the #biascorrect idea that Catalyst is motioning this IWD (International Women’s Day). Stereotypes limit us. Anyone who has ever been stereotyped will tell you that. Catalyst provide resources to address that bias and in this instance, convey that words matter.

What is less discussed, are the false positive stereotypes and head starts that many women and many men but not all, give to men as leaders and heads of teams, families, power structures generally. That is the balance of power piece we really need to discuss.

What can you do?

Recognize that you probably implicitly have bias. We all do. I coach people to examine their paradigms regularly, as your mental model is formed via your life experiences and their context. That means, you probably are operating off ideas that your family and society told you was the “way it is” and that way it was, was steeped in notions of one gender’s needs being met before others.

Socialization, not brain differences feed into cognitive process whereby we place evaluative meaning on everything. Men are not from Mars and Women are not from Venus. We are all from Earth. The backlash we are seeing is due to people trying to maintain a historically granted place of power and is not surprising. The protection of the patriarchy by women,  is to do with their socialization under men’s rules and women’s place in the structure of society so far, secure but secondary so fear on an unknown alternative prevents change and fuels racism, nationalism, and is why we see sexism by women against women.

We need to educate everyone on the benefits of equality and equity as the patriarchy is a system not a gender or a person and does not serve very many people other than the bad guys ( their reckoning is here, though) in this modern world.

It is only when we stop our bias cognitively, and make efforts to behaviorally change that we can be freed from false expectations around diversity parties, celebrations and hashtags actually changing anything. Stop asking the women to balance for better and start asking everyone to stop believing everything they think to be true. Test assumptions for best results.

Enjoy this satire piece in The NY Times today. I could not agree more.

Enjoy the day, however you spend it.

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Op-ed: To Achieve #balanceforbetter in the Workplace, Reinvent Family Leave Policies

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Dale MeikleBy Dale Meikle, PwC

Icelandic primary school children born in the 1970s and ‘80s expressed disbelief when told that a man could be President.

Their mental map didn’t include little boys aspiring to the presidency — because all they’d ever known was a female president. It’s a favorite anecdote of mine because it flips common gender stereotypes while cementing their power.

Gender equality leads to better outcomes for everyone, a theme International Women’s Day elevates this year with their #balanceforbetter theme. At PwC, we approach IWD as another opportunity to challenge stereotypes. The most limiting stereotype at work is that women are predestined to be caregivers. Outdated family leave policies lie at the root of gender inequality in the workplace and beyond. Until they’re refreshed to give individuals and families more choices, women will continue to make up a minority of leaders.

PwC’s US CEO, Tim Ryan, recently said, “Together a new employer-employee relationship can expand what the old one did for decades, create shared prosperity and hopefully build better and more meaningful work and lives for millions.” Expanded family leave and a simple but intentional change in nomenclature will anchor this transformed relationship, paving the way for true gender equality in the workplace.

PwC found that the expectation of work-life balance is exactly the same between male and female millennials; research shows that men and women experience similar levels of work-life conflict and that fathers experience more work-life conflict than mothers. I can say anecdotally that the men I know take their caring responsibilities just as seriously as the women; and that my colleagues and friends without kids don’t value their family, friends, or time any less than those with kids. PwC’s cutting-edge research on engagement drives home the point that the most successful leaders of tomorrow must discover how to deliver great performance by helping people individually thrive.

Beyond the essential birth and recovery period that women must continue to take, women and men should have equal access to time off and flexibility in coming back to work after the birth or adoption of a child. Furthermore, all employees should be offered a minimum amount of leave to care for the people they love. Employees are unique in their needs and the most successful companies will offer benefit choices that work for everyone. Companies and governments should be racing towards inclusive family leave policies, not plodding towards them – and some are beginning to show significant progress.

Culture Matters but Policy Helps

Territories leading in family leave policies are — not coincidentally — also top of the World Economic Forum’s Gender Equality Index. Iceland, a perennial leader on the Index, grants three months of non-transferable parental leave to both mothers and fathers and an additional three months of leave to couples to share as they choose. Its success lies in the uptake: about 90% of Icelandic fathers take the leave.

Netflix offers 52 weeks of paid family leave to women and men (and, with 41% female employees is one of tech’s leaders in gender equality across its staff population); Google and Facebook offer equal family leave to women and men. Last year, PwC US introduced six weeks of fully paid parental leave for all employees, with about 72% of new fathers using the full amount. Employees also have the option to implement a phased return to work after parental leave, allowing new parents to work 60% of their contracted hours at full pay for four weeks following a paid parental leave of absence. Other types of caregivers can receive four weeks of paid leave in order to care for certain family members with serious health conditions. PwC UK offers eligible parents of either gender 22 weeks of full pay and is encouraging more dads to feel like they can take it. Breaking through assumptions about men’s role in families and changing attitudes will be key to capitalizing fully on the good policies that already exist.

To be sure, gender equality is a complex issue with children socialized from a young age to play into narrow roles – and this calcifies the stereotypes that play out later in life. Even in countries with longstanding progressive parental leave – like Sweden – deeply embedded gender stereotypes from sources, namely, the media, hinder gender equality progress.

Globally, women continue to bear the bulk of unpaid care work. Leave to care for children and other loved ones matters now as it has never before because the workforce has transformed, while policies and even norms have stagnated. Many leave policies are woefully out of date, constructed to serve a majority of mothers who didn’t work outside the home and a majority of fathers who were happy to leave domestic duties to their wives. Around the world, family leave policies vary dramatically, with some countries lacking any mandated paid parental leave (United States), and others offering up to three years (Germany, Eastern Europe). In the UAE, new fathers get two days of paid leave, while in South Africa and India they get five. Research shows that new mothers are penalized financially at work, while new fathers are rewarded and these outdated or unfit leave systems perpetuate that trend. It’s not the fact of a woman having a child that hurts her career, but the assumptions that she is less competent and less willing to take on high-profile assignments.

When these policies were crafted, zero percent of corporate workers had caring responsibilities. Today, according to a recent HBR study, seventy-five percent of all workers have care responsibilities, regardless of gender, and regardless of whether they are single or coupled. Families have also evolved: same-sex, single parents, and blended families are exponentially increasing. It’s important to note that leave policies shouldn’t be limited to caring for children, but can and often do also encompass caring for partners/spouses, parents, grandparents, nieces/nephews, or other close family members. Many corporations don’t directly address leave for anyone other than children.

The imperative is there

According to a 2016 study, only 36% of companies have a global parental leave policy covering multiple types of leave, 94% include maternity leave, 76% include paternity leave, and 73% included leave when adopting children. Our leave policies are no longer fit for purpose.

We must provide more support and choices for our diverse workforce and use the term family leave to describe anything other than a woman’s short-term medical leave, when recovering from childbirth. Family leave is not only a gender-neutral term, but covers a wider swathe of employees and accounts for the changing family and household dynamics of today’s world.

About the author

Dale Meikle is the Global People Experience Leader at PwC International

Connect on LinkedIn

Follow on Twitter @dmeik

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Effective Networking for Female Professionals: The Old Girls Club?

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By Nicki Gilmour

It is Women’s History Month and International Women’s Day this week (Friday 8th March, 2019) so tune in for hard hitting editorial on women’s advancement at work, like we do the other fifty weeks of the year also.

According to a new study published last month, women should be networking with other women as well as men if they want to land more prestigious and better paid jobs. This study of suggests women need a women-only inner circle and a larger, well-connected network generally. The study analyzed the peer networks and job placements of 728 students at leading university, representing two class years, from an MBA program in 2006 and 2007. All of the graduates landed leadership jobs, so the (well respected) researchers ranked the positions according to prestige and other factors. The subjects studied consisted of 542 were men and 186 women, which is roughly consistent with the researchers’ findings that women make up about a quarter of business school students nationwide. The conclusion being that a person’s network composition regarding gender split can predict the career success of women. Wired magazine broke down the study and talked to the study authors and interpreted the study with the main message being women and men who are connected to other well-connected peers across their social network do better. In addition, it is extrapolated that women thrive from “gender-specific private information and support.” And men do not need insider information to thrive and advance because, wait for it ‘work is built for them’. Words that interested me from the study’s lead author, Northwestern University data scientist, Brian Uzzi, he goes on to state,

“Quite frankly, most of the jobs are still male-dominated and therefore the kind of private information that’s so important to help women get ahead isn’t as important to men’s advancement,”

Despite Brain Uzzi being possible the leading network expert, a respected expert in social psychology with a very respectable body of work that no one can argue with and some really good advice, it is hard to accept that his conclusion from just final job outcome is the end of the story.

For me, it is very much the opening of the conversation around bias, gender stratification and gender roles, because people decide if the men and women of this study get hired and people negotiate offers for salaries. That is to say, a man and a woman could have made the same connection at the same networking mixer, but the man got hired.

But, if we take this study at face value, then we can conclude that this is not new news as we know women have to work twice as hard at networking just as they do with other areas.

Uzzi shares his opinion on how he feels women should behave via his interpretation only of the results,

“When it comes to networking, women need two things and men only need one, so for every one contact a man makes, a woman has to split her time between the contact that’s going to give her market information and the contact who’s going to give her private information. If you’ve got to split the time between the two, you’ve got to be very smart about the kinds of choices you make.”

It is not a revelation that women have to work harder or are given less credibility for the same thing, or are dinged for same traits. Nor is it a shock to most of you that you do get the scoop from other women, because it could be friendship or a deeper phenomenon involving “out group” dynamics. Call it what you will, because what is real that we pay the same money for those MBAs so we need a way to ensure we get the same Return on Investment as literally the next guy. And for the love of golf, do not ask us to play unless you want to and even then, you are not one of them.

A step backwards?

What this research does not talk about is what men can do to prevent women from having to make choices. You can be a good man yet not be a man who advocates for women to have equal pathways to success.

Then, #metoo comes along with the shouts of “not all men” which of course is entirely valid because we all know some really great caring men who understand consent and respect and where the lines of proper behavior lie. The problem with the “not all men” chant is that it can silence the nuance of useful conservation around “although you do not, but by virtue of a legacy power structure you probably could be you were inclined to, therefore how do we ensure the bad guys are stopped by a new structure so you do not ever have to feel lumped in with them, because you are in fact part of the solution”. Instead, out of fear many men have taken a step back from interacting with women at work. Not helpful. Just actually more indulgent of a privilege to withdraw of a historically dominant group instead of facing the work that has to be done. Some people do not have that privilege to say no without consequence.

Networking past the biases and fear

Most networking information is entirely based on men networking with men with male examples given as an argument for basing your connection on hobbies and passions. Herminia Ibarra’s work clearly delineates the differences between personal, operational and strategic networks and is worth a read.

In this era of strong gender roles still being perpetuated by most people, men and women alike (granted glimpses of hope around understanding the negative effects on boys as well as girls of the patriarchy and toxic masculinity), it no shock that men continue to network with each other in the way they have always known how, excited primal physical arousal states usually with sports and competition. Which is why we have to believe there are physiological differences without believing we are beholden to them. We all have the ability to disrupt our cognitive process with a behavior change. That goes for women too. Start with your own biases. How much do you do love the patriarchy? Odd question you might think, but really look at to what extent do you favor men and boy’s needs over those of women and girls? This question is not about whether you like men or whether you believe in raising strong daughters or whether your husband does the dishes. It is a question about your own value sets, deep, intrinsic ones that are probably buried in your unconscious and then how that affects your conscious and unconscious behaviors.

Why do you go to women for information and perhaps comfort but not for promotion, stretch projects and general greatness? Why do men get immediate credibility and do you give it freely while in parallel asking women to prove themselves?

As we enter the hoopla, ceremony and celebration of International Women’s Day, the question to ask yourself is where are you on this spectrum of consciously and unconsciously endorsing for men because they are men, because it’s a spectrum we are all on.

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Voice of Experience: Beth Renner, National Director of Philanthropic Services, Wells Fargo Private Bank

Beth Renner featured
As a mentor, Beth Renner knows that women often need to find their voice—and when they do, it can be a powerful booster charge to their career.

As she recounts, she was recently working with a long-term mentee who had finally applied for a position. When Renner had asked why she had hesitated, the mentee said she believed she didn’t have the entire skill set, but as they walked through the skill set and experience, it became clear that the position was a perfect fit. “Sometimes the biggest challenge is the messages we tell ourselves.”

Finding the Ideal Niche to Blend Personal and Professional Interests

Renner’s clear confident voice has brought her a 28-year career in the financial services industry, during which she has essentially touched every part of a financial services company. She started on the retail bank side as a personal banker; then was a credit officer with a small business lender; went into the fiduciary side as a private banker and trust manager, where she subsequently oversaw the fiduciary investment and brokerage side; and for the past eight years has worked in philanthropic services, where she currently has $26 billion in charitable assets under management for clients.

“The lifeblood of our business is the advice we provide our clients around their donations and assisting nonprofits in making sure they are sustainable,” Renner explains. Having always been personally involved in charitable work with both her time and treasure, the chance to marry that in her professional life is the achievement of which she’s most proud.

“For me it’s not about achieving a certification or designation, but about what I do every day, and I’ve really found a home for myself in this area that allows me to align my personal and professional values,” she says.

A Sea Change in the Philanthropic World

As the country prepares for an impending generational “wealth transfer,” Renner finds several themes consistently emerging. First, as a matriarch or patriarch who is naturally at the maturing point is engaging in legacy planning, they are asking how they can ensure that their values will be represented. The goal is to engage multiple generations from the family in their philanthropic pursuits.

Others are wrestling with the question of how much to leave their kids and wondering how to engage philanthropy as a tool to stave off entitlement.

“Donors are viewing themselves as an investor in these causes more than ever before, and we are adjusting the advice we provide them to create a more disciplined process.” To that end, she has helped develop a series of philanthropic planning modules that they are currently honing through focus groups, and she looks forward to rolling them out. “It’s a pleasure to be able to work more deliberately on these issues and adjust our business to how our clients are telling us they need counsel.”

Renner has become attuned to the absolute value of listening with intention and mindfulness which is helping inform this new initiative. When her father passed away shortly after she turned 50, she hit a point of reflection. “It causes you to look at things differently, and one of the things that has stuck with me is the art of listening and how it helps you understand others and yourself. Being mindful means that if I’m in a situation where I’m listening to clients or my team and find myself having an internal reaction, it spurs me to dig deeper to figure out where it’s coming from.”

Finding a Mentor Helps Your Career Path

One thing Renner learned from her mentor early on in her career was to focus on developing transferrable skills. For example, you don’t just want to be an expert in credit analysis, but you need to know how to solve complex problems. “In any position, consider what skills you can learn that you don’t yet have or want to cultivate,” she says.

And today she encourages women to be intentional about mentoring other women. “Don’t wait to be asked; when you see someone with potential, proactively reach out to them,” she suggests. That’s because we all are a collection of our past experiences and to give someone that gift of your accumulated knowledge will allow them to make progress faster.

She takes that outlook to her work on Wells Fargo’s Women’s Team Member Network, a diversity and inclusion employee resource group she finds valuable for its focus on broadening everyone’s lens around diversity and how to foster and develop it.

Her outside philanthropic pursuits are a perfect match for her professional life: She is absolutely passionate about the American Red Cross, and is the national chair of the women’s giving group called the Tiffany Circle. The group has flourished in five different countries, and in her role she helps develop the strategy around mobilizing this women’s segment. “A lot of the work I do at Wells Fargo helps the Red Cross with their fundraising and stewardship because I can share national trends and the emerging role that women are playing in philanthropy,” Renner says.

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