Father’s Day: New Dads, Paternity Leave and Gender Equality

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Father and son featuredAs Father’s Day approaches, we reflect on a hot topic that is helping to drive gender equality in Europe and beyond: paternity leave and shared parental leave.

The USA is miles away from the starting line on this matter. 182 countries provide paid maternity leave (the USA sits beside Oman and Papua New Guinea as sole exceptions) and 70 countries provide paid paternity leave. The USA is the only industrialized country that does not mandate some kind of paid parental leave to be provided by employers, only three states (California, Rhode Island, and New Jersey) offer paid leave for both parents, and companies offering paid maternity and paternity leave dropped from 17% in 2010 to 12% in 2014.

At the same time, research shows that paid maternity leave and breastfeeding breaks would help women to advance further in their careers by keeping them integrated in the workforce. But what could really change the game for women, men, families, and gender equality – and have positive growth implications for the GDP – is not just paid maternity leave that still regards mothers as the primary caretakers, but paid parental leave that reflects and encourages true co-parenting.

Newborn Shared Parental Leave in the UK

Only half a dozen countries offer men more than two weeks paternity leave, and the UK has just become one of them by introducing shared parental leave. The Telegraph has called it, “the most progressive new parent support policy that Britain has ever had.”

Before mothers had 52 weeks and fathers had two paid weeks. The new UK policy allows that after the initial two weeks of compulsory maternal leave, 50 weeks of shared parental leave and 37 weeks of pay can be divided up between couples (including adopting & same sex) anyway they chose: taking at the same time, in rotation, and/or in three separate blocks of time each.

The policy is not without bumps. One key issue is it doesn’t add actual weeks off work for families on top of what mothers already received. Jeremy Davies, head of communications at The Fatherhood Institute told The Guardian, “Although it’s called shared parental leave it’s really transferable maternity leave. It doesn’t give fathers any independent right or responsibility for taking time off, and it doesn’t fundamentally challenge employers’ attitudes.”

Other issuesinclude low financial viability for many couples due to reduced pay, whether high-earning women will feel more pressure to get back to work sooner, and whether the policy will result in reduced breastfeeding rates. Good questions, important choices. But now at least the choice is increasingly for individual couples to make based on their needs.

It may be an imperfect step in the right direction, but then children don’t walk in one day either.

Established Shared Parental Leave in Sweden

While news to the UK, in Sweden gender-neutral parental leave is 40 years in the making.

In 2014, Sweden ranked fourth in the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Index, following Iceland, Finland and Norway. The higher the rank, the greater gender equality as measured by “the relative gaps between women and men across four key areas: health, education, economy, and politics”, regardless of the absolute level of resources. The UK and the USA rank in the twenties.

According to The Economist, almost 90% of new Swedish fathers take paternity leave, and last year340,000 dads took an average of seven weeks each. It began 40 years ago as six months of paternity leave per child at 90% pay to be shared as couples wished. Dads didn’t even take one percent of it. Today, they take 25% of what has expanded to 16 months of shared paid paternal leave. Although paternal leave is flexible between parents, Sweden is upping the paid use-it-or-lose-it-father-only portion from two to three months in an effort towards increasing gender equality.

Parental Leave – It’s Good for Everyone

Research has shown that it’s taboo to many men to even admit they’d like to modify their work schedule to take time at home. Yet over 99% of men in a survey of over 1,000 fathers felt employers should offer paid paternity leave. Even taking just two weeks parental leave in countries such as the USA, Britain, Australia, and Denmark has shown to make positive differences for the whole family.

More Balanced Family Gender Dynamics

As Liza Mundy writes in the The Atlantic, “The genius of paternity leave is that it shapes domestic and parenting habits as they are forming.” When both partners take paternal leave, it sets up the couple up to establish a more gender-neutral pattern where work, household, and family responsibilities are more evenly shared in a two-income household.

According to Mundy, paternity leave has been shown to “boost male participation in the household, enhance female participation in the labor force, and promote gender equity in both domains.”

Dads who take paternity leave are likely to remain more involved in child-care (feeding, bathing, playing, reading) many months after the leave period, compared to fathers who did not. There’s also evidence that being able to take paternity leave helps increase men’s confidence as parents, and they end up being “more competent and committed fathers whose greater involvement persists as their children grow up.”

Children benefit too. Research by the University of Oslo has shown that children’s learning development benefits when dads can take paternity leave – finding that children’s performance at secondary school improved when fathers had taken more time off early on, especially daughters.

More Balanced Workplace Gender Dynamics

More countries are considering that paternity leave is key for improving women’s career prospects, helping them to be seen more equally within, and stay connected to, the workforce.

Mundy, director of the Breadwinning & Caregiving Program at New America, writes that paternal leave keeps women from being singled out as prospective parents in the office, which can hold back their advancement in insidious ways. “If everybody—male or female—is asking for leave or taking leave that they already qualify for, I think it just levels the playing field for how men or women are looked at in the office.”

Because women’s childbearing years coincide with their peak earning years, encouraging paid paternity leave can help narrow the wage gap too. A Swedish study found that a women’s future earnings increased by 7% for every month her partner took parental leave. According to The Economist, greater uptake of parental leave by fathers in Sweden has been associated with higher levels of self-reported happiness in women and higher incomes.

In a survey of over 250 California firms, 90% of firms said that paid paternal leave had a positive or neutral impact on productivity, performance, and profitability, with minimal impact on operations and finances. Tech companies in the USA who pro-actively employ paid maternity and paternity policies are starting to recognize that the long-term benefits in retention and attracting talent are good for both families and business.

As we celebrate Father’s Day, let’s remember that gender equality is not only about promoting women’s equality in the workplace. It’s also about promoting men’s equality in the home and family.

Parental leave holds the potential to offer a big step forward for both.

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Happy Memorial Day!

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memorial-day-2015

We will be taking a short publishing break, but we will return tomorrow with the latest career advice, news, and inspiring women to help you advance your career.

Please join our LinkedIn community here in the meantime!

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Do Asian-American Women Face a Glass Ceiling or a Bamboo Ceiling? Both, and More.

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Broken_Glass_Texture_thumbnail

We celebrate Asian-Pacific American Heritage Month 2015 by acknowledging both achievements and unique challenges for Asian-American women in climbing to top leadership roles in business.

On a global front, increasing women at the corporate helm in Asia inspired Fortune to introduce a Most Powerful Women in Asia-Pacific ranking for the first time ever in 2014. Over 1/3 of recognized leaders were new to Most Powerful Women, including Arundhati Bhattacharya (No. 4) of State Bank of India and Nishi Vasudeva (No. 5) of Hindustan Petroleum, each the first woman to lead their Fortune Global 500 companies.

Meanwhile corporate all-star Indra Nooyi, Chairperson and CEO of Pepsi Co (for the 9th year running & outlasting the CEO median tenure of 5 years), has been called one of the six most powerful business women in America and ranks #13 among Forbes’ “The World’s 100 Most Powerful Women”. Yet she is the only Asian-American business women in the top 50.

48.7% of the 3,922,000 Asian women in the USA labor force in 2014 were in management/ professional occupations, comprising 3.4% of positions. 16.5% were in management, business, and financial operations occupations, holding 2.8% of those positions.

Catalyst 2015 data indicates Asian women make up 2.9% of S&P 500 Companies employees. They hold 2.5% of first/mid-level positions, 1.7% of executive/senior level positions, and .2% of CEO positions. Asian women are more likely than other minorities to be represented in executive and senior management jobs relative to their population size, but less likely than white women.

Catalyst data shows that Asian women occupied only 3.7% of S&P 500 women-held board seats in 2014, or less than 1% of total board seats. For Asian-American women, the glass ceiling and the bamboo ceiling more than overlap, especially at the top.

More than Two Ceilings

A recent paper into the barriers of success for Asian-American women by Peggy Li at University of California, Berkeley focuses on external societal obstacles to success. Asian-American women are commonly and mistakenly regarded as though a “monolithic group”, when the opposite is true – cultural backgrounds and origins are highly distinctive.

Li argues that current approaches to understanding barriers for Asian-American women are not enough. “By using a single-axis analysis where race and gender are mutually exclusive, the ‘glass ceiling’ and ‘bamboo ceiling’ exclude and delegitimize the experiences of Asian-American women.” Simply put, the glass ceiling ignores their (diverse) Asian identities and the bamboo ceiling ignores their womanhood, and neither capture the unique biases they face.

Li clarifies, “The barriers Asian-American women face are not only distinct, but also more than the sum of the discrimination faced by women and Asian-Americans.” For example, only Asian-American women face both culturally embedded stereotypes around Asian femininity as well as the subversive discrimination of the “model minority” myth. Together these two compound to project traits of passivity, submissiveness, humility, service, and compliance – and create unique barriers to career advancement.

Also when discrimination is only judged through discrete categories, the challenges for Asian-American women are overlooked by employers.

Li urges researchers and companies to take the approach of intersectionality to address societal barriers to progress. “To comprehend the experiences of Asian-American women and create appropriate strategies for counteracting their oppression, we must look at how race, gender, and national origin interact to create unique obstacles, stereotypes, and stigmas for Asian-American women.”

Social Perception Affects Self-Perception

Of course, externally created barriers can become internalized ones. Research into race and leadership perception has demonstrated that Asian-Americans are more likely to be pre-consciously perceived by others as competent leaders but not as agentic leaders on the basis of race (compared to Caucasians), and as a result they also internalize lower leadership self-perceptions and leadership aspirations in a USA context.

The research methodology focused on perception of males. As women in general are less likely to be perceived as having agentic leadership qualities such as assertiveness, dominance, and self-promotion, Asian-American women would seem to face a race bias, a gender bias, and a double-stacked racial gender bias against being perceived as “prototypical” leaders. Research implicates the real risk that internalizing these biases can impact on self-perceived leadership identity and aspirations.

Speaking to overcoming the “imposter syndrome” of being an Asian-American woman leader, CEO and Founder of Care.com Sheila Lirio Marcelo writes about breaking away from what she calls the 3 P’s internalized in her own upbringing: pleasing, passivity, and perfection – which comes down to being self-aware, finding your voice, and embracing and owning your leadership journey.

The unique challenges facing Asian-American women underline the need for high visibility among existing leaders in order to inspire and empower other Asian-American women to follow suit as well as to continue to challenge unconscious biases around race, gender, and leadership.

A Seat at the Head of the Table

When CAUSE, the Center for Asian-Americans United for Self Empowerment, brought together a panel of prominent female Asian-American executives for a Women In Power Quarterly Luncheon centered on “Leadership in the Boardroom” in 2014, the message was clear.

Cyndie M. Chang, Managing Director of Los Angeles Office Duane Morris L.L.P., stated “What I want to do (in monitoring this panel) is to have an insightful discussion in the challenges, not just of getting a seat at the table, but getting a seat at the head of the table.”

Indeed, in the Fortune 500, “women of color” (Asian, black, or Latina) represent only 3.1% of board seats but only 2.8% of board directors, because a small number of minority women sit on multiple boards, and are twice as likely as white women to do so.

The discussion spanned inspiring advice on getting ahead of the curve within your industry, managing feedback, being willing to fail, the importance of sponsorship, and leveraging strength and humor as an outlier. Linda Greigo, Board Member of both CBS and AECOM Technology, said, “The big challenge for me is once you get in the door, how do you keep the door open for others to follow?”

Standing up despite racial gender stereotypes. Stepping out from behind socially projected traits.

Speaking out despite culturally internalized norms. That’s just some of the stuff Asian-American women executives are made of and frankly put, it’s the stuff leadership is made of.

By Aimee Hansen

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Accountability, Leadership Responsibility, and Common Sense: Leaders Share What Makes Diversity Initiatives Work

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Professional WomenGender diversity and inclusion doesn’t just happen, as Catalyst shows every year at its awards conference. A sustained improvement in the percentage of women in corporate workforces and leadership comes from hard work by companies to achieve and maintain set goals. It also requires a visibly demonstrated commitment to diversity by those in charge.

Honorees at this year’s Catalyst Awards Conference shared their companies’ secrets to success in increasing the percentage of women in leadership levels and throughout their companies’ workforces. The winning programs at Chevron Corporation and Proctor & Gamble combined three tried and true ingredients for advancing women at work: accountability, common sense, and leaders who took personal responsibility for improving diversity and inclusion at their companies.

“How we are behaving in any interaction speaks louder than any company effort,” said Melody Boone Meyer, president of Chevron Asia Pacific Exploration and Production Company. “Your behavior is how people read what’s real or not. The communication is there, but much more important is whether you’re living that.”

“Your behavior is how people read what’s real or not. The communication is there, but much more important is whether you’re living that.”

At the conference in March, Meyer, along with Mike Wirth, executive vice president of downstream and chemicals at Chevron; William P. Gipson, chief diversity officer and senior vice president of research and development at Proctor & Gamble; and Colleen Jay, president of global hair care and color at Proctor & Gamble, took to the stage to describe not only how their companies changed their approach to improving gender diversity, but also their personal journeys with taking responsibility for diversity as well.

As Meyer said, “Leaders need to live it.”

Accountability

Leaders from both companies detailed how they were held accountable for meeting corporate gender diversity goals.

Wirth explained that, at Chevron, leaders have to answer for their diversity action plans as part of their performance reviews. He also described an exercise the company’s CEO had leaders undertake: “The CEO said I want you to go out and spend time with three people who are very different from you and I expect you to respond,” he recalled.

“Accountability is nothing unless you have goals,” Gipson agreed. “Targets change everything.”

Proctor & Gamble ties diversity goals to executives’ stock options, he said. But the goals aren’t easy to meet and they aren’t merely window dressing to placate investors who care about diversity – they’re stretch goals.

“To really move the needle, you need to have some stretching,” Gipson said.

Indeed, Wirth commented, Chevron even employed reverse inventives at one point. “If you didn’t make progress, the bonus would be affected for everyone in that group,” he said, explaining that Chevron’s leaders wanted to make sure executives understood that diversity was a shared responsibility.

Common Sense

Diversity initiatives wouldn’t work without a heavy dose of common sense, as well. For example, Gipson explained that a few years ago, leaders at Proctor & Gamble realized women were leaving the company at a disproportionate rate. The company undertook a workforce survey to figure out why.

One of the reasons, P&G discovered, was that the company’s flex work program just wasn’t working. Offering employees the ability to work flexibly is one way companies can help their entire workforce meet their personal responsibilities. Since women as a group bear the brunt of child- and elder-care disproportionately compared to men, flex programs have been identified as a way for companies to retain female employees.

It turned out, Gipson said, that P&G’s flexible work program wasn’t flexible enough.

“We were trying to mandate when and where to work flexibly, but life is not really that way,” he explained. The company amended its program based on the survey results.

Leadership Responsibility

Finally, the panelists described what is possibly the most important part of an effective gender diversity initiative. Leaders have to internalize the value of diversity and demonstrate that value in their personal actions.

For example, Johnson said she and other P&G executives help each other keep track of blind spots.

“We help keep everyone sharp so we can role model that going forward,” she explained.

Similarly, Wirth described how he had to face his own personal blind spots a few years ago when Chevron undertook a dramatic restructuring. He picked all white men to lead his new team.

“I got a lot of feedback from the CEO, my kids, and women in my organization,” he said. “I had to do a lot of reflection on myself. I genuinely believed I had the right beliefs and behavior, but that’s not good enough. People need to see action.”

“I got a lot of feedback from the CEO, my kids, and women in my organization,”

He continued, “As a white male, I’ve got an extra responsibility to catalyze the discussion [on diversity], and create an environment where everyone is supported and everyone understands the expectations.”

Gipson described how, as an R&D executive, he had to learn to “embrace the soft stuff.”

“It’s the hardest stuff,” he said. “But no matter how much progress we’ve made, we can always get better.”

That attitude – that we can always get better – is an important one in diversity and inclusion. Simply meeting the numbers isn’t good enough. True inclusion will require everyone in the workforce – especially leaders – to keep pushing themselves harder to identify and change their own personal weaknesses when it comes to diversity and working to change their companies for the better.

By Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

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Update 2015: Is the FTSE 100’s Boardroom Progress real?

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BoardRoomThe news is out…at 23.5% the representation of women in the UK FTSE 100 boardroom has doubled over the past four years (12.5% in 2011), with the voluntary 2015 target of 25% within close reach. But is that number standing on stilts?

The race by businesses and government to hit the UK number has been a voluntary effort to avoid the threat of EU-imposed gender quotas. But the resounding press response to the latest annual report is a round of hands flying up to question how a weak executive pipeline is going to deliver sustainable change in the British boardroom. Not to mention the implications of a serious gender imbalance when it comes to executive directors.

Overall FTSE Numbers Reveals Progress & Room to Grow

Released in the Women on Boards report and crunched by Cranfield School of Management, the FTSE 100 numbers show progress at the top. There are now 263 female directors, with only 17 more to appoint this year to meet the target. There are no longer any all-male FTSE 100 boards, and 41 companies have over 25% female boards (vs 12 in 2011).

FTSE 250 numbers reveal significant rates of change, but ultimately still low numbers with only 18% women representation on boards (vs 8% in 2011) and 23 all-male boards remaining (vs 131 in 2011). The UK now ranks fifth among Europe in terms of the number of women on boards.

“We must celebrate this outstanding achievement and the change in culture that is taking hold at the heart of British business. The evidence is irrefutable: boards with a healthy female representation outperform their male-dominated rivals,” said Vince Cable, Britain’s business secretary. Cable expects to see 1/3 representation by 2020.

He commented, “We know that’s where the tipping point lies in influencing decision-making. We must also focus on ensuring women are rising fast enough through the pipeline and taking up executive positions.”

“The tide is turning as we see senior women in every sector and across all industries, breaking through the barriers to succeed at the highest levels,” said Education Secretary Nicky Morgan.

However, both Cable and Morgan are quick to point out the significant work yet to do, namely and glaringly on the female executive pipeline.

Behind the Numbers, A Glaring Gap In Female Executives

Looking closer at the FTSE numbers reveals a deeper story – a serious dearth of female executives, setting for a gender “executive” imbalance in the boardroom.

Woman make up less than 1 of 10 executive directors in the FTSE 100 – comprising 8.6% of executive directors, but 28.5% of non-executive directors. Since 2011, there’s been a 204% increase in female non-executive appointments (122 seats), but only a 33% increase in female executive appointments (6 seats).

Less than 10% of FTSE 100 female directors are executives whereas 30% of male directors are.

Even more worrying, women make up less than 1 of 20 executive directors in the FTSE 250 -comprising 4.6% of executive directors, but 23.6% of non-executive directors. All new additions since 2011 have come at the non-executive level.

Only 7% of FTSE 250 female directors are executives (vs. 17% in 2011) whereas over 30% of male directors are executives.

You can count FTSE 100 Women CEO’s on just one hand – because there’s five, and that number hasn’t changed since 2015. You’ll need two for the FTSE 250 Women CEO’s – there’s nine.

So British boardrooms are predominantly non-executive, but that’s nearly entirely true for women. This raises at least two big questions.

One is around stability of change. The other is around real influence.

Where are All the Executive Women?

The numbers certainly reflect a UK turnaround on research findings that women are less likely to be promoted to the boardroom if they haven’t held an executive position. But that doesn’t make for a stable model for continued growth.

According to Cranfield’s Dr. Elena Doldor, without more meaningful pipeline targets, progress will stagnate or slip.

“Our predictions suggest that as we approach 2020, women’s representation on FTSE 100 boards is likely to stagnate around 28%,” she shared. “There are still not enough women on executive committees or in the executive pipeline. Introducing aspirational and measurable targets for women at all levels is the only way to achieve real progress.”

Lord Davies also called for urgency in addressing “the loss of talented senior women from the executive pipeline.” Research shows female managers over 40 in the UK earn 35% less than their male counterparts. In more than one way, the pipeline isn’t supporting retaining women.

A recent survey showed a fifth of UK women believe it is “simply impossible” for them to reach a senior management role, and half reported that men make most of the decisions in their company. Yet a third dream of reaching CEO or board level.

Ann Pickering, HR Director of O2, who partnered with the CIPD on the research, writes, “A much wider cultural shift is required – and a hell of a lot more effort.” She continues, “It’s becoming a bit of a buzzword, but it really is all about the pipeline – ensuring that women at every level of the organisation are getting the support and encouragement they need to progress, so that a senior role is the logical culmination of that progression.”

One suggestion for comprehensive action put forth by Jude Browne, a Director of the University of Cambridge Centre for Gender Studies, is identifying “thwarted critical mass – situations in which a disproportionate number of women occupy positions at a certain level and yet the natural progression one might expect to see does not materialize.” In other words, addressing advancement for the masses of women that get stuck in the pipeline, in the place they’re actually stuck – not just at the top.

Browne asserts, “The Critical Mass Marker approach would ensure that people who are equipped with the relevant skills and experience are able to move up and across institutional structures irrespective of characteristics such as race or sex.”

Achieving Influence or Presence?

So, less than 1 in 10 women directors are executives. 1 in 3 male directors are. Those female non-executive board members are unlikely to be renumerated the same, even as their male non-executive counterparts. And will they pull equal per capita weight in critical decision making?

The jury is out. But according to an FT article, “Stella Creasy, shadow business minister, conducted her own research on FTSE 100 boards, and concluded that the drive to appoint women as non-executive directors meant they were ‘making up the numbers and not getting a chance to make the decisions’.”

The UK has everyone’s attention and is touting the business impact of women in the boardroom, but the surge has been motivated by a hope to evade gender quotas. That’s not the same as positive motivation towards gender diversity across the board (meaning, not only the board). Maybe the real opportunity, the one that’s held within the pipeline challenge, is to prove a multi-level commitment to real change.

By Aimee Hansen

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Engaging Men: Why Conversation Can Be a Catalyst to Progress

By Aimee Hansen

On September 20th, 2014, British Actor and Goodwill Ambassador for UN women Emma Watson made a speech that implored males to step up to the fight for gender equality, to liberate both females and themselves from the constraints of gender stereotypes. In doing so, she launched the “HeForShe” initiative, proposing “A solidary movement around gender equality.” Vanity Fair called it “game-changing.”

Is everybody convinced the speech and campaign will lead to real change? No. Has it received criticism for falling short of the expectations of what a UN fight for gender equality campaign could sound like, as the voice of women across the world? Yes. The speech and campaign has been criticized for reflecting only a white-privileged grasp of gender inequity, reinforcing a gender binary, reflecting men as saviors who stand up “for” women rather than “beside” women, tempering feminism to motivate men, providing feel good passive activism, and paying lip service to change while providing little clarity on action – among other things.

BUT, did the speech catalyze the public discourse around feminism?

Read more

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US Trails European Countries in Women on Boards, Diversity Efforts

By The Glasshammer Staff

According to Catalyst’s board census for 2014, women how hold 19.2 percent of all seats on S&P 500 boards. The U.S. numbers look similar to those in Canada, where women hold 20.8 percent of board seats at companies on the S&P / TSX 60 index.

But in many parts of Europe, the percentage of women on boards has surpassed the numbers in North America that Catalyst reported. Norway has the highest percentage of women on boards of public countries at 35.5 percent, a result of the country’s 2003 quota law that threatens to delist companies whose boards are less than 40% female.

Read more

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Happy Martin Luther King, Jr. Day!

Dear Readers,

We are taking the day off in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day here in the U.S. We are inspired by Dr. King’s vision of a better future for all people, and it is our hope that The Glass Hammer provides you with the tools and inspiration to work toward workplace equality as well.

As Dr. King said, “The time is always right to do what is right.”

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Happy Holidays from The Glass Hammer!

Happy Holidays from theglasshammer.com team! We will be taking a short publishing break and will be returning in January 2015 with fresh new content to inform, empower, and inspire you.

Here are 14 of our most popular articles from 2014 to catch up on until we return:

And don’t forget to sign up for our newsletter, follow us on Twitter, or become a member on LinkedIn!

Happy Holidays!

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Getting Back to Work After a Break: 10 Things You Need to Know to Return to the Workplace

By Cathie Ericson

The Opt Out Generation Wants Back In” heralded the headline of a 2013 New York Times article about women who had taken a career break and then subsequently desired to re-enter the workforce. The story itself, however, painted a rather bleak picture of these women’s futures. And while no one claims that finding the right fit is easy, there are ways women can prepare themselves for transitioning back to the workforce.

Read more

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