Mansplaining: It’s Time to Interrupt

,

Business meeting with women and menMansplaining. If you’ve lived and breathed in this world as a woman, you’ve experienced it. If you work in a male-dominated office, it might be served up as a daily side with your coffee.

Recently, Chicago Tribune workplace columnist Rex Huppke declared: “Mansplaining — whether you like the term or not — is real. That’s not up for debate.”

Huppke called it “a slow drip of sexism”. How much is your office environment dripping with it?

What is Mansplaining, exactly?

In The Salon, Benjamin Hart argued that the term “mansplaining” lost its potency, as well as its real utility within gender dynamics discussions, when it became popularly used and broadly defined as a man explaining something to a women in a condescending or patronizing manner.

Hart asserts it’s morphed into an “increasingly vague catchall expression” of “men saying things to, or about, women.”

“Mansplain” is thrown about liberally. Jimmy Kimmel mansplained speech coaching to Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. The Financial Times recently referred to the EU referendum in the UK as at risk of becoming a “giant exercise in ‘mansplaining’”, due to media domination by male voices. Women called for Trump to mansplain his Clinton “women card” accusation. Even a collection of mansplaining moments shows a diversity of takes on what it is.

Merriam Webster takes a hard line on its specific definition: “when a man talks condescendingly to someone (especially a woman) about something he has incomplete knowledge of, with the mistaken assumption that he knows more about it than the person he’s talking to does.”

Other than a sinking feeling in your stomach and increasing desire to find a conversational back door, what are the tell-tale signs of mansplaining?

1) It feels like a “manologue”

One sure-fire sign you’re being mansplained to: you’re not speaking or discussing. Instead, you are being spoken at or spoken over, often for a frustrating duration of time.

Mansplaining carries a trademark air of wisdom-wielding, knowledge-imparting, and time-taking. You may also have the feeling of being verbally cut-across.

Mansplaining, in a two-step conversational dominance maneuver, often follows immediately after manterruption – “unnecessary interruption of a woman by a man”.

A 2014 informal experiment by empirical linguist Kieran Snyder in a tech workplace found that in conversations of four or more, men interrupted at twice the rate women did, and were three times more likely to interrupt women than men. (Women interrupt women, too.)

Dr. Arin N. Reeves also conducted an observational study across 41 hours of meetings, calls, and panel discussions. Not only did Reeves observe that men interrupt far more, but also that 89.3% of men’s interruptions of women (and only 42.6% of men’s interruptions of men) were intrusive interruptions – “intentionally or unintentionally usurping the speaker’s turn at talk with the intent of ceasing the speaker’s ability to finish organically.”

Women were most commonly intrusively manterrupted on panel discussions, although men weren’t “aware” of doing it. Less than 1/5th of all women’s interruptions of anyone were intrusive.

2) It wasn’t solicited

Mansplaining is not a direct question followed by a direct explanatory answer. That’s just explaining.

Mansplaining is more of an unsolicited espousing of lengthy information and proffered opinions, which seeks to ensnare you in its immanent glow of intelligence, and which may or may not follow a question.

In the Chicago Tribune article, Elly Shariat, founder and CEO of shariatPR, tells of a former boss who pulled her aside to advise on the health implications of her shoe choices, for example.

3) Major assumptions are at play

The biggest thing about mansplaining is that it’s based on a culturally embedded assumption. At the core, men often assume they know more or better than women, and culture mirrors this.

Although she didn’t coin the word itself, mansplaining’s popular origin is attributed to Rebecca Solnit’s 2008 essay entitled “Men Explain Things to Me”, in which she tells about a cocktail party experience where a man asked her a question about her writing and then interrupted her to tell her at length about a very important book that she should read – which turned out to be her book, and he hadn’t even read it, just the review.

Solnit wrote, “Men explain things to me, and to other women, whether or not they know what they’re talking about. Some men. Every woman knows what I’m talking about. It’s the presumption that makes it hard, at times, for any woman in any field, that keeps women from speaking up and from being heard when they dare; that crushes young women into silence by indicating, the way harassment on the street does, that this is not their world. It trains us in self-doubt and self-limitation just as it exercises men’s unsupported overconfidence.”

What can we do about it?

No matter how narrowly or broadly you define it, mansplaining reinforces a power imbalance. It reinforces the male domination of meeting conversations and rewarding of men for talking more.

Here’s a thought: interrupting mansplaining might be a necessary, career-building skill.

In her experiment, Snyder found that women interrupt less and very rarely interrupt men (only 13% of the time). But which women were entirely responsible for that 13% of interrupting men? The only three senior women in the study – who all interrupted men (as well as women). In fact, these women were three of the four biggest interruptors in the study.

Snyder wrote, “The results suggest that women don’t advance in their careers beyond a certain point without learning to interrupt, at least in this male-dominated tech setting.”

The most empowering thing women can do when faced with mansplaining?

Put acquiescence away. Interrupt this nonsense, and be heard.

By Aimee Hansen

/by

How to Make Your Team the Best It Can Be

,

woman chairing a boardroom meetingImagine a world where your boss genuinely cares about you, where he or she nurtures you, recognizes and rewards you fairly, always taking time to acknowledge your hard work and dedication. Not only that, but they respect you and support your professional growth.

Read more

/by

Why Real Executive Presence is Not Only About Making Impressions

,

Smartly dressed young women shaking hands in a business meeting at office desk

When it comes to possessing successful leadership behaviors, C-Suite females rate themselves virtually the same as male executives. But having what it takes to be a leader and being perceived equally as one are different things.

In a recent INSEAD article, Dr. Caroline Rook shared that an investigation of 1,167 female and male C-suite executives revealed “no meaningful differences between the way men and women rate themselves on twelve leadership behaviors attributed to successful global leaders.” In fact, Rook found that in some industries women were more likely to self-rate rate higher than men did on emotional intelligence and team-building.

An Elusive Bridge Between Ability and Success

Experts may advise on how to cultivate it or even be aware of what detracts from it, but executive presence remains elusive. Fast Company has called it “the intangible career trait that you need to succeed.” It’s easier to recognize than describe. It’s been approximated with the words “gravitas”, “charisma”, and the ability to “command a room.” It’s also been called the “workplace X factor”. Executive presence seems to be a Gestalt mosaic of qualities exuded by select leaders which, subjectively perceived, makes their whole greater than the sum of their parts.

Silvia Ann Hewlett, Ph.D., author of Executive Presence: The Missing Link Between Merit and Success, told Fast Company that executive presence is “a measure of image – a dynamic mix of gravitas, communication, and appearance.” According to Hewlett and many other experts in this space, executive presence is the bridge you build between your abilities and advancing – because merit alone is unlikely to get you there.

“Executive Presence” Brings Men to Mind

In their study, “Understanding Executive Presence: Perspectives of Business Professionals”, researchers Gavin Dagley and Caderyn Gaskin explored executive presence through in-depth interviews with 34 Australian business professionals with expertise in the effectiveness of organizational executives.

The researchers concluded that “a person with executive presence is someone who, by virtue of how he or she is perceived by audience members at any given point in time, exerts influence beyond that conferred through formal authority.”

Because executive presence is easier to perceive than describe, the researchers began with asking the participants to nominate four people who they thought of as having executive presence, and from that point they explored what executive presence was.

71% of participants brought up and described male examples, women doing so (75%) even more than men (65%). None only brought up female examples. Some participants realized during the interview they were speaking only about men, and self-corrected to include women, but their initial inclination was already clear.

Are the Characteristics of Executive Presence impossibly male?

The researchers found that executive presence is to some extent in the eye of the beholder. One person may perceive an executive to have substantial presence, while others may be less impressed.

They also found that executive presence is not entirely impression-based, something a leader exudes from the first impression. Rather they found that sustained perceptions of executive presence were a sum of initial contacts and evaluations over an extended time of more exposure.

Of the ten characteristics of executive presence they identified, five were based on impressions during brief contacts which we would argue are heavily gendered making it tricky for women to be measured with the same yardstick since historical notions of status are just so, well, male?

  • Status and Reputation – an “initial aura of presence” based upon strong reputation, impressive networks, senior roles held, and significant achievements – “reputation” is the key word
  • Physical Appearance – appearance (“looking the part”), stature, and non-verbal body language such as posture, eye contact, and walk
  • Projected Confidence – displaying outward calmness, composure, and a sense of self, emotional intelligence, dignity, elegance, style, a “sense of authority” or charisma
  • Communication Ability – ability to communicate messages simply, clearly, convincingly and appealingly; effective use of voice; ability to make themselves heard
  • Engagement Skills – ease and manner in which executives engaged with others, with skills such as “eagerness”, “charm”, “apparent sincerity”, “quiet wit”, and “friendliness”
  • The other five characteristics were more evaluation-based and built over time and exposure and are more gender neutral, based more in substance and integrity than status and style. They included, for example:
  • Interpersonal integrity – acknowledging others contributions, “being inclusive”, remembering the last conversation with someone, showing the “human touch”, relationship-based interpersonal sincerity
  • Values-In-Action – acting in accordance with personal values, showing integrity –being “genuine”, “authentic to her values,” “courageous – speaks from the heart,” “tough-minded,” “authentic with follow through,” and “trustworthy”
  • Intelligence and Expertise – quality task-focused thinking, observed as “impressive intellect,” “knowledge in areas of focus,”“considered when expressing views,”“long-term insightful thinker,” “excellent judgment,” and “quiet wisdom”
  • Outcome Delivery Ability – ability to deliver key outcomes, including solid decision-making, commitment, being flexible, being energetic and hard-working, and achieving delivery through others
  • In many ways, these characteristics are more important to leadership than the impression-based, gender-biased measurements that have become attached to executive presence short-hand.
Gender and “Executive Presence”

Dagley and Gaskin found that “executive presence is located in the perceptions of audience members rather than being something inherent in the executive.” Executive presence might be the bridge to the executive office, but it’s also subjectively defined by who is present in it.

The research shows how women can more broadly build the bridge of their executive presence, how you can recognize existing strengths and fill in your own personal gaps. But how executive presence interacts with gender is embodied in the word. The most likely reason “executive presence” brings men to mind first is that men are over-represented in the corporate executive suite.

When will “executive presence” bring women right to mind?

When women have equal presence in executive roles.

That’s a bridge that requires collective organizational and cultural building.

By Aimee Hansen

/by

To Telecommute or Work in an Office: That is the Question

,

business-woman-working-with-her-laptop-in-her-officeIn the age of modern technology, working in an office has its obvious drawbacks. And as the telecommuting business continues to expand, professionals are buzzing about whether offices are even necessary anymore, both fiscally and professionally.

So are they?

Technology now enables workers to access work servers, email, employee instant messenger services, shared folders, and more, practically allowing them to simulate an office environment. ‘Face-time’ can also be achieved by free services such as Skype.

Yahoo! imposed a ban on working remotely with the entry of Marissa Mayer as CEO, this move was not without criticism. As commented upon in an article in American Banker.

“Giving employees the flexibility to choose where they work is an endeavor far too nuanced for a simplistic approach.” Yahoo! may be one of the only companies, however, who are making such drastic decisions. American Express, Citigroup and Capital One are just a few of the large companies who are growing their work-from-home programs in the roles of field sales representatives and technology.

In fact, Citi has been exemplary in creating a hot desk system in their offices in Long Island, NYC and employees seem to be reaping the benefits of such flexibility.

Karyn Likerman, Head of Inclusion Programs and Work-Life Strategy at Citi Bank says she could virtually do her job offsite. “Most of my meetings are with others that work across the US and around the world,” she says. “I have a proper work space at home and can function fully from there, seamless to those that I work with.”

Averting the traditional office setup also undeniably cuts costs, and allows companies to maintain low overhead. When budget makers find themselves under earnings constraints, they often turn to telecommuting as a solution to cutting down on business real estate.

Those in favor of working remotely also argue that workers with strong creative minds can more likely come up with strategic and innovative ideas when they are in a more relaxed and comfortable environment. Depending on a company’s office culture, a stiff and conservative ambiance can stifle such productivity.

Forbes contributor Jacob Morgan argues against corporate office spaces, citing the 2013 Regus Global Economic Indicator, which states that “out of 26,000 business managers across 90 countries, 48% of them are now working remotely for at least half of their work-week.”

There is also the question of the worker’s daily commute, which can be quite lengthy for many around the world. The United States Census Bureau reports that 600,000 employees in the U.S. alone travel 90 minutes and 50 miles to work (each way) whereas 10.8 million of us travel 60 minutes each way. This is significant travel time that can be used to improve productivity and company growth.

Is it generational? Forbes contributor Morgan believes it is. On the topic of Millennials, he reminds us that by the year 2020, the majority of those in the workplace will be from their generation. “This is a generation that is used to being connected,” he writes. “Millennials grew up with social platforms…this is a generation that doesn’t know what it’s like to get 200 emails a day while sitting in a cubicle. Organizations need to adapt to this employee.”

Offices, however, still serve a number of useful functions and perhaps a balance of the two options is the answer. Citi’s Likerman can complete most of her tasks remotely; she admittedly enjoys “the in-person collaboration when working in the office.”

Likerman notes that, “Technology in meeting rooms (video conferencing, access to the internet and my desktop), dual monitors, higher quality video conferencing” are all reasons why an office environment still proves beneficial. She also notes that because she works for a bank, “we have certain systems that are not accessible outside of our firewalls so those employees must work in an office.”

She notes, most importantly perhaps, that customer facing employees can’t get around working from their place of employment. The need for people to connect directly with other people will never go away. Working physically among fellow employees can form important foundational relationships that telecommuting cannot achieve.

The spontaneity factor is also huge when arguing for the traditional office environment. A chance encounter with a colleague from another department while getting coffee, for example, leading to a new collaboration, could never happen outside the office.

A research study called the “Allen Curve,” which is named after MIT management/engineering professor Thomas J. Allen, began in the 1970s, which found that “the probability for frequent communications among engineers is greatest when they’re located within about 100 feet of one another.” Proximity tends to lead to speedier decision-making, some argue.

In truth, proper research has yet to hit the public on whether or not productivity increases or decreases due to telecommuting. And it is still tricky to ensure workers are being as productive as required when working from home, or outside the office. So this debate will likely continue. However, telecommuting will likely continue to grow because not only is it desirable to the employee, but to the company’s numbers.

By Gina Scanlon

/by

Stereotypes at work: Do women buy into them just as much as the next guy?

woman thinking - pipelineIf you are a successful professional woman in financial or big business, you could find yourself labeled an alpha male or a diva or worse. If you show empathy regularly, you could be labeled a weak leader.

These are the labels we are given but are they justified? Catalyst’s study – Women “take care”, men “take charge” – found that stereotypic biases are often inaccurate and leave women in a weak position; undermined by their followers and seen by their leaders as less effective leaders compared to their male peers by both men and women in their firm. Do we therefore have the right to peel off these labels, shake off the stereotypes and define who we really are ourselves?

Read more

/by

Why You Should Avoid Overwork To Be Effective In Your Job

,

women stressedRecently in Fortune, Besty Myers, founding director of the Center for Women and Business at Bentley University, called the 24/7 workday “the biggest setback for women in corporate America.”

Professor Robin Ely of Harvard Business School has said the 24/7 work culture “locks gender inequality in place.”

But this is not an article about gender. The chronic overwork culture doesn’t need to change only because it works against women: it needs to change because it’s not working.

Sarah Green Carmichael, senior associate editor of Harvard Business Review (HBR), posed in a recent article that the bigger question is not what has driven us to a 24/7 work culture, or who is to blame, but rather, “Does it work?”

The answer, according to many studies related to employee effectiveness, is no. Within her article, Carmichael highlights that a culture of chronic overwork backfires on employees and companies. Yet the number of hours worked has increased by 9% in the last 30 years. It seems Corporate America is clinging detrimentally tight to the false truth that overwork is a requirement for effective employees and driving company-level success: overwork is overvalued.

Here are four solid reasons why you shouldn’t chronically overwork if you wish to remain engaged and effective in your job and why your firm shouldn’t want you to, either. May this provide insight both for you and the men and women you manage.

1) Overwork may lower your engagement with work.

According to Gallup, nearly 61% of college graduates feel disengaged at work – meaning not “intellectually and emotionally connected,” even when they are physically present in the office, resulting in a major ROI loss for companies.

Data shows that 2/3 of employees feel overwhelmed and 80% would like to work fewer hours. The 24/7 work culture and feeling overwhelmed are major contributors to disengagement. While an “always on” expectation makes it difficult to mentally switch-off, research has suggested that being able to psychologically switch-off from work protects both well-being and work engagement.

If you feel you can never turn off, it would seem you begin to tune out. To stay engaged at work, it’s important not to give into the expectation to live it.

2) Overwork may hurt your productivity.

Research showed that a company couldn’t tell the difference in performance if an effective employee was working 80 hours or just pretending to, so working longer hours may not mean accomplishing more, career-wise too. As graphed in The Economist, longer hours are correlated with decreased productivity. In fact, research has even shown that when working hours are excessive, cutting hours back can actually increase your productivity.

Also, in research with a consultancy firm, required and predictable time-off from work including being digitally switched-off, increased productivity – even if time completely off had to be strictly enforced because employees were in the habit of being constantly switched on. Not only did it improve communication, learning and the client product, but it also resulted in greater job satisfaction, sense of work/life balance, and commitment to managing a career at the firm.

3) Overwork may hinder your ability to lead effectively.

As Ron Friedman writes in an HBR article, while putting in the excessive hours may have marked you as motivated and helped your “early career advancement,” maintaining overwork as part of your work identity once you’ve already arrived to a position of leadership can significantly damage your career prospects.

Leaders need to disconnect to optimize the interpersonal skills, critical thinking, and visionary skills important to their roles. Overwork contributes to mis-reading others (often negatively) and emotional reactivity such as lashing out. Management performance also depends upon judgement, and being tired from overwork impairs your decision-making abilities and clarity of perspective when it comes to identifying problems and creative solutions.

An overworked leader, concentrating to the point of fatigue, is often a cloudy leader, who is also more vulnerable to technology distractions, such as the 3pm workplace Facebook rush.

As Reid writes, overworking also models the behavior as an expectation for those you manage, and there’s enough evidence in this article alone to illustrate why that’s a questionable management practice.

4) Overwork may harm your health.

On top of compromising your job effectiveness, overwork compromises your well-being, a major component of feeling satisfyingly engaged in your work. Studies have shown that overwork is associated with emotional exhaustion and impaired sleep, which is a massive performance killer in addition to compromising health.

It’s also associated with depressive symptoms, heavy drinking, and long-term with heart disease and impairment of brain function when it comes to reasoning. Nothing about this says top management potential. If you’re to be a thriving executive, it’s probably best to start as a thriving human.

What Can You Do To Be More Effective?

But you’re still surrounded with a culture of overwork, so what can you do?

Friedman recommends starting with these small behavior changes:

Find a way not to have your smartphone at your side constantly when away from work, interrupting your present – instead check it with intention. Program evening emails to arrive in the morning, so they don’t catalyze a back and forth conversation after hours. Discern when a response is necessary immediately from when it’s not. Find an activity that you’re excited to leave work for, something else that will give you a sense of gain. While at work, schedule a few breaks in your day so that you can step away, clear your head, and refresh both your energy and perspective.

It’s clear that when you chronically over-extend yourself at work, you may still be there or still be on, but you stop being the same employee. Being an effective leader means managing the asset of your leadership effectiveness, not working until it’s lost to diminishing returns or worse.

By Aimee Hansen

/by

It’s All (or at least mostly) About ME – How to Navigate Self-Promotion

Business meetingSomeone has just paid you a compliment about your achievements. How do you react?

According to a recent post on the HBR Blog network by Dorie Clark and Andy Molinsky, your answer to the above will vary depending on the cultural environment in which you were brought up. Self-promotion is not welcome in all cultures, especially those where humility and modesty are seen as admirable attributes. In countries like America however, self-promotion is culturally very acceptable. Some of you might think that such issues aren’t of great importance either because you don’t see the benefits of self-promotion, or because you work in cultures where self-promotion isn’t valued. Right? Think again.

Given the increasingly global nature of our work and workforces, you might come across self-promotion gurus much sooner than you expected. And what’s more, studies show they will be at an advantage over you as they will experience faster career progression and associated compensation. According to the 2011 Catalyst report (The myth of the ideal worker: Does really doing all the right things get women ahead?), self-promotion is one of the nine tactics which support career advancement. The report found that by “making achievements visible” – through seeking credit for your work, requesting additional performance feedback and asking to be considered for promotion when it is deserved –both men and women (although less so for women) saw positive gains in terms of career progression.

Staying invisible, staying forgotten

If this is indeed the case, then you can’t afford to ignore the art of self-promotion – especially if you’re foreign to America (or any self-promotion rich culture) and a woman. Molinsky suggests that global dexterity, the ability to adapt behavior depending on the cultural setting, is a way to address the challenge. He highlights that self-promotion is one of the six dimensions of cultural difference, and being aware of how self-promotion is viewed can be highly beneficial.

In cultures where self-promotion is not encouraged, the majority of employees believe that hard work alone will suffice in differentiating them from their peers. The issue arises when those employees transition to cultures where standing out from the crowd relies more on proactively seeking recognition. The same is true for women across all cultures who, compared to male peers, are less willing to talk about their achievements but would rather just get on with their work. Sylvia Ann Hewlett’s work on sponsorship found that many women “feel that getting ahead based on “connections” is a dirty tactic and that hard work alone is their ticket to the top”. They end up missing out on the potential to build their networks and thereby losing out on additional career advancement opportunities.

These foreign employees and some women fall into the bucket which author, David Zweig, has labeled as “Invisibles”; they are hard workers, full of potential, but lacking the motivation to stand in the spotlight and are sometimes forgotten when it is time for them to be recognized.

Heating up in the spotlight

This lack of affinity for the spotlight may be due to a number of reasons, including a desire to focus on the work at hand, not appreciating the benefit of self-promotion, or having seen self-promotion being done badly and therefore not willing to invest in such tactics. Most of us can point to a situation when we have seen self-promotion going wrong; like all things in life – you can have too much of it.

While putting yourself in the spotlight can have its advantages, leaving the spotlight on you can start to get uncomfortable – not just for you but for those around you. Focusing on “me, me, me” can be positive if there is a purpose, but if it is constant and seen to be bragging or narcissistic (which, according to a study by Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, is more prevalent now (25%) compared to 1982 (15%)), it will not have the planned impact.

So how can you self-promote effectively with the desired outcome?

5 Steps to Successful Self-Promotion

Self-promotion is not about bragging or sucking up. Rather it is about ensuring your contributions are acknowledged and credit is given where due. There is a risk of not being recognized appropriately for those who choose not to embrace self-promotion when working in some cultures. Here are 5 practical steps to incorporating self-promotion in your career when working in self-promotion rich cultures or teams.

1. Confirm your objective:

Self-promotion should not be done without an objective in mind. Why do you need to promote yourself at this point? An example of a specific objective might be to highlight specific achievements ahead of your performance management reviews, so you are fairly recognized during appraisals. Without an objective it becomes bragging.

2. Be selective:

Because every act of self-promotion should have a specific objective, it is also important you are clear about who needs to be the recipient of your spiel. Going through the details of your strong performance with your peers will not have the same effect as a similar exercise with your manager. Not everyone needs to know.

3. Take an objective and fact-based approach:

“I’m not good at blowing my own trumpet”. If highlighting your achievements feels like showing off, take a fact-based approach. “The client highlighted that the way I led the delivery was critical to the project’s success” might be easier than “I led a very successful project”. By remaining objective and factual, you may find that it is easier to tell your story.

4. Remember your team:

While you should use “I” where appropriate to take credit for your individual contribution, it is also important to acknowledge contribution from others. Self-promotion should not result in distancing your team.

5. Just say “thank you”:

Being able to confidently accept credit for your work is also important. If others have recognized your contribution, there is no need to be self-deprecating to appear humble. Accept the recognition graciously with a thank you.

For women of all cultures, the above is particularly important. Catalyst reported that “77% of men were somewhat or very satisfied with their progress at increasing their salary compared to only 66% of women” as a result of applying their identified career advancement strategies. Tactics such as self-promotion only go some way to supporting career advancement for women, and while less effective for women than men, they are still worth investing in.

The most important thing to remember about self-promotion is that if you don’t do it, no one else can (or will) do it on your behalf.

By Nneka Orji

/by

Perspective Taking: How to Utilize It & Benefit from It

Sad businesswomanDo you ever find it difficult to make a colleague see a point of view that to you seems obvious? Do you ever struggle through rounds of contentious negotiations in which a “meeting of the minds” seems impossible?

It could be that you are expressing yourself in a way that makes perfect sense to you, but not to those who you are trying to communicate with. Often someone involved with in-house dispute or adversarial negotiation cannot see the same solutions that a person standing outside the situation can. Sometimes it is necessary to consider a problem from a different vantage point.

Read more

/by

Is Temporal Flexibility Key to Closing The Gender Pay Gap?

, , ,

money money moneyYou don’t need to work in a male dominated occupation to find your pay check weighs light relative to your male colleagues – particularly, if you’re in business.

In March 2015, the US Census Bureau released the latest pay statistics from 2013, including median earnings by detailed occupation, showing that full-time working women earn 78.8% of what full-time working men do. The census data revealed that across 342 occupations, women (barely) out-earn men in only nine.

Across the nine, the female pay advantage is “nearly inconsequential,” ranging from .2% (counselers, dishwashers) to 6.2% (producers and directors), with a margin for error that could wipe the gap. Yet a very significant pay gap (advantage: male) persists across most professions, even when women are prevalent in them.

Data on relevant occupations illustrates the point:
Occupation % in occupation who are women Women’s earnings as a % of men’s earnings
Securities, commodities, & financial services sales agents  30%  55%
Financial specialists, all other  55%  60%
Personal financial advisors  31%  61%
Financial clerks, all other  61%  62%
Financial analysts  32%  63%
Financial managers  54%  64%
Market research analysts and marketing specialists 56%  75%
Accountants and Auditors  59%  75%
CEOs  23%  76%
Compensation, benefits, & job analysis specialists  74%  78%

Source: Drawn from US Census Bureau, 2013 American Community Survey

While frustrating gaps in occupations that are historically male-gendered (eg CEOS, financial analysts, securities) may come as less of a surprise, the gap within female skewed jobs (financial clerks, marketing, accounting) underlines that closing the gender pay gap takes more than female representation.

Are men just more valued? Nancy F. Clark of Forbes WomensMedia writes that when men move into female dominated occupations such as nursing, the overall pay of that occupation and level of tasks included in the job remit begins to improve. If appears that when men enter an occupation, its value goes up.

But, what’s going on in finance and business?

Gender Penalties Are Bigger in Business Jobs

Claudia Goldin, Henry Lee Professor of Economics at Harvard, found in her research that when it comes to explaining the majority of the residual gender pay gap, “what happens within each occupation is far more important than the occupations in which women wind up.”

Among high-earning occupations, Goldin found those grouped as “business” have the biggest gender pay “penalty” for “being a woman relative to a man of equal education and age, given hours and weeks of work” whereas “science” and “technology” occupations have the smallest ones.

Census Bureau data shows that women make up only 24% of “computer, engineering and science occupations” and earn 83% as much as men. Women make up 54% of “business and financial operations occupations” but earn only 75% as much as men.

Non-Linear Earnings Are Penalizing Women

“Quite simply the (residual) gap exists because hours of work in many occupations are worth more when given at particular moments and when the hours are more continuous,” writes Goldin.

In many occupations, earnings “have a nonlinear relationship with respect to hours” – for example, a 70 hour week is rewarded in well over double the earnings of a 35 hour week and working 9-11 am counts much more than working 9-11 pm.

It’s less a matter of whether women take time off work to have children or seek flexible hours. It’s whether they are disproportionately penalized for the time they are absent from the office or for working their hours outside of the standard work day.

“Some occupations have high penalties for even small amounts of time out of the labor force and have nonlinear earnings with respect to hours worked,” Goldin writes, and then the gender pay gap is bigger. “Other occupations, however, have small penalties for time out and almost linear earnings with respect to hours worked.”

In previous research, Goldin and Katz quantified the occupational difference in pay penalty among Harvard 1990 graduates. They found that a similar 10 percent hiatus in employment 15 years after receiving their BA (18 months break) meant a decrease of earnings of 41% for MBAs, 29% for JDs or PhDs, and 15% for MDs.

Reduction in earnings as a result of time-off “was linear in lost experience” for MDs, but highly nonlinear for MBAs. “Any time off for MBAs is heavily penalized,” reports Goldin.

Remuneration penalties can result in women going to a different occupation, shifting down within the occupation hierarchy, or being out of work. The research found that when part-time work is largely available, women take off less time (eg pharmacists). Because it’s less available in business, women end up taking off more time even with higher penalties.

Goldin writes, “A flexible schedule often comes at a high price, particularly in the corporate, financial, and legal worlds.”

Closing the Gap

Goldin suggests that the last chapter to achieve gender equality involves “changing how jobs are structured and remunerated to enhance temporal flexibility.”

She found that certain contextual factors close the gender pay gap, such as when colleagues can more easily be substituted for each other and when information can easily and cheaply be relayed between colleagues.

Forbes contributor Clark advises to get the ball rolling on arranging temporal flexibility before you need it – anticipating and addressing the issues that need to be overcome.

How committed is your firm to making temporal flexibility work for women and for the company itself? What evidence do you see? Firms that are serious about gender equality will be proactive in making it work – and add up – for both.

/by

The Key to Managing Up: Build relationships

The Key to successThe concept of “managing up” to deal with a bad boss is one of the many ambiguous terms that fill the business lexicon. Rosanne Badowski, co-author of “Managing Up: How to Forge an Effective Relationship With Those Above You.”, defines managing up as going “above and beyond the tasks assigned to you so that you can enhance your manager’s work.” in other words figuring out what you can do to make your boss’s job easier and doing it.

Read more

/by