Senior Management Holds the Key to Gender Parity: It’s the Culture, Stupid!

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Nicki GilmourBy Nicki Gilmour, Founder and CEO of The Glass Hammer

As founder and publisher of theglasshammer.com, I am proud to pen our 2000th article today and to share with you some of our latest thinking and around gender parity. We are proud to have spent the last four years creating a “must read” online publication designed to help professional women actively manage their careers. We have had the pleasure of covering the most progressive research on gender from well-known think tanks and attending events with fantastically inspirational speakers, as well as hosting our own panel discussions and networking events.

It seems appropriate to celebrate our 2000th article with a look at what components could play a major role in helping a critical mass of women to break the glass ceiling over the next few years. After all, if the last twenty years is closely examined, we would find only an incremental change in the number of women in leadership roles in major companies. (For example, as The Economist recently reported, while the proportion of working women has risen from risen from 48% to 64% since the ’70s, women still only make up three percent of Fortune 500 CEOs.) Similarly, the advice given to women since the 1980s hasn’t changed much either and has been predominantly to act more like men.

Is this strategy working for women? Whilst it definitely makes sense to provide women with a guidebook to how the game is played currently, I cannot help but feel this method ignores the elephant in the room. What might that be? Culture.

It means addressing the culture question and exploring tough topics around why macho works styles are still revered. Asking how culture is formed and maintained and who gets to most heavily influence it should be on every leader’s list of things to look at in 2012. This examination and honest diagnostic approach would enable senior management to look at the systemic issues that are preventing women and other minorities from advancing from middle management to senior management roles and onwards to the boardroom.

Behind the scenes here at theglasshammer.com, beyond creating empowering content for our readers and community members, we have begun to conduct research and write white papers on under-represented groups in the workplace. Our work explores topics  such as women in technology teams, LGBT women at work, and multicultural women in financial services. This work is conducted via our sister site Evolved Employer and is focused on helping companies understand how to architect their company culture to be inclusive and supportive of talented people who don’t necessary fit or want to be categorized into one box or other based on their outward appearance. (Hello Generation Y.)

Many companies and the people in them are still not clear on the business case for spending time developing talent as a business driver. “Smart people come in different packages” is the best way I can explain the need for dispelling myths around what a leader looks like. Diversity work is deeply personal and quite hard because it challenges every deeply held belief we’ve ever had. No one wants to admit to ourselves that we have biases. Often, unconscious bias, even those held by women, protects those who have historically held power, in order to uphold the status quo and maintain workplace traditions. Micro-inequities are often upheld by the very people who are most hindered by them.

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Women, Age, and Ambition – A Fresh Perspective

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Smiling mature business woman in meetingBy Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

Recently More Magazine released the results of a survey on ambition, work/life issues, and other topics. According to the survey of 500 college educated women over 35, 43% of respondents said they were less ambitious now than they were ten years ago.

The headline that many news outlets and websites ran with was along the lines of “Women are Losing Ambition.”

Well, not exactly.

In fact, the survey revealed quite the opposite. Because, while 43% of the survey respondents said they were less ambitious now than they were ten years ago, the majority (57%) said they were just as or more ambitious today.

I repeat: the majority of women in the survey said they were just as or more ambitious now than they were 10 years ago. Amazing what insight you can gain by shifting your perspective.

It is curious that so many ambitious women’s voices (the majority!) have been ignored. Why is it easier to pretend that ambitious women don’t exist?

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Is Self Regulation Effective for Achieving Gender Balance?

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Smiling female professional with teamBy Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

Public interest in the topic of women in leadership has increased significantly in the past year in Europe – thanks, in part, to the UK’s Lord Davies report published in February, as well as EU Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding’s Women on Boards challenge issued in March.

Reding urged publicly listed companies to make a commitment to increase the representation of women on corporate boards to 30% by 2015 and 40% by 2020. She said, “For the next 12 months, I want to give self-regulation a last chance. I would like companies to be creative so that regulators do not have to become creative.”

The deadline for companies in the EU to set self-regulatory gender initiatives is International Women’s Day next year (March 8, 2012). As the deadline rapidly approaches with few companies making real progress, some countries (such as the UK and Germany) have stepped up their efforts to encourage boardroom gender diversity progress.

Public interest may be driving momentum when it comes to government intervention on the issue of boardroom gender diversity. But without real consequences for a failure to make progress, are these new rules anything more than a masquerade?

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Position Yourself for Success: Female Leaders Share Advice at the 2011 Women on Wall Street Conference

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iStock_000012630343XSmallBy Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

Last night, Deutsche Bank hosted its 17th annual Women on Wall Street conference at the Marriott Marquis in New York City. The event drew over 2,000 people, mainly women in the financial services industry.

Jeffrey Mayer, Managing Director and Head of the Corporate and Investment Bank in North America at Deutsche Bank, opened the evening by pointing out that although the industry is seeing a generational shift when it comes to gender diversity – roughly 20% of attendees were at the Managing Director level or above, while 80% of were either “fresh out of college” or at the director level – “the percentage of women in senior front office roles falls short.”

He continued, “We need to attract, develop, and retain more women who can punch through to the senior ranks.”

The theme of the evening was “Breaking Through to the C-Suite.” Keynote speaker Sharon Allen, Former Chairman of the Board of Deloitte LLP said she believes that the ability to get to the top really comes from within.

“I know what a difference the organization can make because Deloitte was really a trailblazer with our [women’s] initiative.” But, she continued, “No matter what your organization may do to help promote your career, at the end of the day, it won’t matter unless you perform and watch out for your own career.”

She explained that to make it to the top, women must plan their own career, seize the opportunities that come along, and be willing to promote their own accomplishments.

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UK and Norway Show Why Quotas are Necessary for Achieving Gender Parity on Boards

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iStock_000007749988XSmallBy Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

Depending on whom you ask, the UK’s recent foray into the issue of gender equality on boards has produced big results – or results that are not big enough.

According to the Guardian, in the past six months since the Lord Davies Report was released, FTSE 100 boards have appointed 18 women (or 31% of the total appointments since February 24). Eighteen women might not seem like a lot, but this is more than double the number of women appointed in years past. But is it enough?

Meanwhile, it seems that Norway isn’t satisfied with the results of its current gender quota law, which mandates that 40 percent of board seats at every publicly traded company be held by women. Boards have upheld the law since 2008, when it went into full effect.

Now the progressive Nordic country is eying private companies’ boards as well. It seems that without compulsory quotas, firms by and large don’t elect to promote large numbers of women on their own.

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Add Women, Get Smarter: What’s the Deal with Social Sensitivity?

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iStock_000004512689XSmallBy Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

You may have been surprised recently to see a few articles explaining that adding a few women to a group can raise the group’s intelligence as a whole: add women, get smarter.

Well, maybe you were not so surprised, really.

The MIT study, cited in the Harvard Business Review, set out to explore how the the individual intelligence levels of group members combined to produce an overall group intelligence level. The researchers, Anita Woolley, Thomas Malone, and Scott Berinato, were surprised at what they found.

It seemed group satisfaction, group cohesion, and group motivation had no effect on group intelligence, and they expected to see group intelligence levels increase as gender diversity increased up to the point of gender balance. But what the study really revealed was: the more women the better – to heck with balance!

Well – not quite, the researchers explained. It turns out group intelligence is not exactly a matter of gender. According to Woolley, it’s not simply all those extra X chromosome that makes majority-female groups smarter – it’s the higher degree of “social sensitivity” that often comes along with women.

She said, “What do you hear about great groups? Not that the members are all really smart but that they listen to each other.”

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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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Five People You Need On Your Personal Board of Directors

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Personal Board of Directors

Direction and guidance are two things that are always helpful in the business world, whether you’re a seasoned professional with years of experience under your belt – or you’re working your first major job out of college. Many women are under the impression that obtaining leadership assistance requires intervention from their company in the form of a mentor or sponsorship, but there are options that fall outside of a company’s official capacity, and some would argue they are better than anything your company could offer.

Welcome to your own personal board of directors.

By definition, a board of directors is a body of elected or appointed members who jointly oversee the activities of a company. In this case, not only are you the company, but you’re also the chairman of the board and it’s up to you to handpick each board member according to your needs. How’s that for power?

According to Caroline Dowd-Higgins, a career coach and author of the book This is Not the Career I Ordered, the idea behind creating your own board is a spin on the “it takes a village” philosophy and it encourages women to gather a group of trusted confidantes that can empower her, motivate her, and give her a nudge in the right direction to help her meet her goals. Dowd-Higgins explored the board concept in her column, which outlined seven functions prospective board members can be accountable for, including motivation, connecting, and training.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. First, you have to pick your board members… here’s how.

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Closet-Cultures Mean Costly Flight Risk for Employers

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iStock_000016928054XSmallBy Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

Last week the Center for Work Life Policy released a long-awaited report entitled “The Power of Out,” a report that details the cost of the closet. Based on the results of a CWLP survey, out of the estimated seven million LGBT employees in the US workforce, 48% are closeted. And according to the report by Sylvia Ann Hewlett and Karen Sumberg, that closet costs companies big time.

Sumberg said, “What surprised me most about the research is that so many people are still in the closet at work, and really the effect of someone’s engagement at work is profound.”

The report says, “Among those LGBTs who feel isolated at work, closeted employees are nearly three-quarters (73%) more likely to say they plan to leave their companies within three years.” Not just that, write Hewlett and Sumberg, but when employees are out, they are more productive and build stronger relationships with co-workers and clients.

Based on the CWLP’s numbers, that means almost two and a half million LGBT employees in the US are looking for a new job, simply because their company’s culture prevents them from being themselves at work.

Attrition is expensive. If simply doing what is right (providing a workplace that’s open to people of all stripes) isn’t good enough to encourage employers to build inclusive workplaces, doesn’t the cost of potential attrition show it’s time for companies to address the issue of the closet culture?

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Why Stereotype Threat Keeps Girls Out of Math and Science, and What to Do About It

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iStock_000015871985XSmallBy Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

Girls are still lagging in the classroom when it comes to math – which has a big impact on tomorrow’s workforce, especially considering the important role the technology industry will play in the economy of the future. According to a recent study by the University of Washington, one potential culprit for girls’ underperformance is gender-stereotyping. Lead author Dario Cvencek explained, “Not only do girls identify the stereotype that math is for boys, but they apply that to themselves. That’s the concerning part. Girls are translating that to mean, ‘Math is not for me.'”

But why do girls believe that? It’s (hopefully) not as if their teacher is standing at the blackboard telling them that girls aren’t supposed to be good at math. Is it the media? Is it parents or peers? In fact, it’s likely a combination of these factors – and one more: themselves.

According to Joshua Aronson, NYU Associate Professor of Applied Psychology, stereotypes influence not only the expectations of the stereotype-holder, but they also impact individual performance as well. At the National Center for Women & Information Technology‘s 2011 Summit last week, he said, “intelligence is both fragile and malleable.” When it comes to performance and intelligence, context matters.

Arosnon explained that stereotype threat – merely the notion that one might “live up to” a negative stereotype – will undermine someone’s ability to perform at their highest capability. The fear of proving a negative stereotype true actually causes someone to underperform – and this can account for girls’ underperformance in math and science.

Fortunately, Aronson said, there is something we can do about it.

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