Caring for an Aging Parent? Five Tips to Find the Job that Works for You

iStock_000002618796XSmallBy Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

According to a Gallup poll conducted this year, over one in six American workers (between 13% and 22%), is providing care to an elderly or disabled family member, relative, or friend – and the majority of caregivers – unsurprisingly – is female.

The poll also revealed that “Nearly one-third of all working caregivers are in a professional occupation, with another 12% each in service and management roles.” On average, caregivers reported missing 6.6 workdays per year.

As any member of the “sandwich generation” can tell you, becoming a caregiver to an aging parent is often difficult – emotionally, financially, and logistically. But according to Gallup, finding an employer who can support your needs can ease the transition for all parties involved. The survey revealed that most employers were aware of the demands on their caregiving employees, but less than 25% of caregivers receive workplace support that can make a difference in easing their situation. The report explains:

“Most caregivers (71%) indicate that their employer is aware of their caregiving status, but another 28% believe that their employer is unaware. Furthermore, an analysis of knowledge of workplace support programs shows that about one-quarter or less of working caregivers have access to support groups, ask-a-nurse-type services, financial/legal advisors, and assisted living counselors through their respective workplaces.”

The report goes on to say that employees are looking for these perks.

“Ultimately, providing an organized support system for these employees may prove to be a fruitful investment for businesses, given the high percentages of working caregivers who would like to work more if they could. Many working caregivers are likely interested in seeking support in work-life balance to help them meet their responsibilities as caregivers and employees alike, and the accessibility to assistance could potentially go a long way toward greater productivity in the U.S. Workplace.”

Are you caring for an aging loved one? Finding a job that provides a flexible scheduling or similar programs that enable work/life effectiveness can make your situation must easier – for you and your parent. Here’s what to look for.

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Number of Female FTSE 100 Directors Doubles – But Is It Enough?

woman sitting in row reading reportby Cleo Thompson (London), founder of The Gender Blog

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

Britain’s biggest companies have more than doubled the number of women they are appointing to boardroom jobs since Lord Davies, the government’s champion of female board representation, told businesses this year that within four years a quarter of senior bosses should be women.

FTSE 100 companies have recruited 23 women to their boards this year – representing about 30% of total board appointments – after Davies said they should sign up to a voluntary target of 25% board representation by 2015.

Lord Davies of Abersoch welcomed the leap in FTSE 100 board representation but said there was “a danger that the issue becomes forgotten”. He said he was working with business secretary Vince Cable and the prime minister’s office on “ways to keep the pressure up”.

In February, Davies told FTSE 350 companies to set their own “challenging targets” and called on chairmen to announce their goals within six months and for chief executives to review the percentage of women they aim to have on their executive committees in 2013 and 2015.

“We are making progress but we have to make sure all companies publish their targets in the autumn. Even though it is voluntary, I have written to every company secretary laying out what we are expecting and I am getting letters from boards saying they are going to comply.”

He added, “Post August, I intend to make sure I keep the pressure up and there is going to be a bit of naming and shaming of companies not supporting it… There will be an event in the autumn that will make the corporate sector realise the government has not forgotten,” Davies said.

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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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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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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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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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To Fix the System, Coach Men on Gender Issues Too

iStock_000016827030XSmallBy Tina Vasquez (Los Angeles)

This past April, the management consulting firm McKinsey & Co. released a report stating that inadequate career development has kept women from reaching the top ranks of the corporate ladder. The findings were based on a 2011 survey of 2,525 college-educated men and women, including 1,525 individuals employed by large companies. According to McKinsey, companies must groom female middle managers for advancement. Joanna Barsh, a McKinsey senior partner who co-wrote the report, said companies need to “spend more time coaching women and offering more leadership training and rotation through various management roles before their ambitions sour.” Other recommendations to remedy the problem included having more women seek out mentors, as well as “putting women in programs that would help them develop and get over the next promotion hurdle.”

According to Marcia Reynolds, a master certified coach, the problem is that these recommendations primarily focus on fixing the women, instead of on fixing the system that created the problem. In her column addressing the McKinsey report, Reynolds even cites a recent Harvard Business Review article that found that companies that are committed to putting women through mentoring and training don’t necessarily promote them; they just make them busier. This is something echoed by career coach Roy Cohen, who says that many women – and men – go through coaching programs and don’t get promoted for a variety of reasons and it’s unfair to expect high-ranking women to personally reach out to women currently climbing the corporate ladder.

“There aren’t enough women in the top ranks of corporations and those who are there are already stretched too thin,” Cohen said. “Just because a woman has become successful doesn’t mean we should set a different standard for her. Women should be able to be as political and self-serving as their male counterparts. There’s this double standard where we expect women to take the higher road, but it’s unfair to burden them with these responsibilities. Women should be able to behave as badly as men. We set women on pedestals – and then look at their flaws.”

Relying on women to fix the system isn’t going to work – and it’s not fair. Shouldn’t men be engaged in this effort as well?

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US and China Announce Partnership to Develop Female Leaders

iStock_000016774143XSmallBy Tina Vasquez (Los Angeles)

In early April, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, along with Chinese State Councilor Liu Yandong, announced the launch of the China-U.S. Women’s Leadership Exchange and Dialogue (Women-LEAD) with the hope of increasing dialogue between high-level Chinese and American women leaders and expanding exchanges on gender equality between organizations, think tanks, and universities.

Women-LEAD will be led by the Secretary’s Office of Global Women’s Issues and the All China Women’s Federation (ACWF). The initiative was launched just as the U.S. and China completed their second high-level Consultation on People-to-People Exchange (CPE). These exchanges have been taking place since the late 1950s, with the goal of enhancing international understanding through educational, cultural, and humanitarian activities involving the exchange of ideas and experiences among those of different countries and diverse cultures. During the most recent CPE, teams from the U.S. and China identified more than 40 joint outcomes in the fields of education, science and technology, culture, and women’s issues.

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Delivering Diverse Directors: The Pipeline and the Pool

iStock_000016639682XSmallBy Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

“Our goal is to bring greater visibility and access to those minority individuals who have demonstrated a potential for senior leadership,” said Nancy Sims, President of the Robert Toigo Foundation. The Toigo Foundation has worked to help diverse candidates enter the financial services industry for almost 22 years. According to Sims, Toigo’s mission and work is grounded in the belief that diverse teams deliver better results—at all levels of leadership. In 2000, the organization recognized the need to do more to prepare younger generations of leaders to enter the industry and introduced leadership development and career management services as part of its programming. Today, the Foundation’s focus is on this initiative, Leader 20/20, and ensuring diverse professionals have the skills and support to lead organizations and drive industry change.

One way the Foundation is reaching out to women and minority individuals is through its new All A Board initiative – preparing diverse high performing professionals to enter board service.

While at the core of the All A Board initiative is addressing the “supply side” by building a clearinghouse of qualified minority director candidates, Sims said, “All A Board provides thought leadership and networking with other organizations who share in our goal to promote diversity leadership , and later this year formalized training components to help candidates take their experience and leverage it for the next level.”

Toigo’s All A Board initiative is complimentary to CalPERS and CalSTRS’ diverse director initiative. The two pension funds recently announced their Diverse Director DataSource, or 3D, as a platform to launch diverse Fortune 500 board candidates into the limelight. 3D has been launched as an independent entity, owned and operated by The Corporate Library.

Anne Simpson, Senior Portfolio Manager, Investments, Global Equity at CalPERS, said, “The underlying issue is that we need the companies we invest in to grow, thrive, and survive over the long term. Boards are desperately in need of new talent and companies are coming to us asking if we can recommend candidates.”

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German Companies Encouraged to Recruit Women to Boards

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iStock_000003858560XSmallBy Elizabeth Harrin (London)

Germany, Europe’s largest economy, is managed by men. While Chancellor Angela Merkel has packed her cabinet with a good gender balance, that isn’t reflected in German businesses. And many people think it should be.

Recently German politicians have been debating targets for the number of women on supervisory and executive boards. They are aiming for 30% representation by 2018. That’s 10% below the target that Norway set in 2003, but a lot higher than the current board representation figures.

“Germany is recognized as a laggard in terms of public policy focused on helping women in the workplace,” says Véronique Bourez, in the report Women on Boards: Moving Beyond Tokenism [PDF]. “The number of women in senior levels in business is certainly one of the lowest in Europe.”

According to FIDAR, a German women’s association which aims to promote a sustainable increase in the proportion of women on the supervisory boards of German companies, only about 12% of the directorships of large German companies are women. However, most of those are labour union representatives. If you look at the female shareholder representatives on boards the number drops to a measly 4.5%.

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