By Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)
As women advance through their careers, they often face challenges to their legitimacy, or the notion that they didn’t really earn their position. Apparently, some people are incapable of fathoming a world where a woman is competent and capable of earning a job by way of her qualifications. They would rather attribute her success to a quota, or to mere optics, or to one of the other methods women are presumed to employ to make their ways to the top.
It’s not fair, and it’s an issue that doesn’t seem to be going away, either.
It’s also not just an anecdotal issue or one that can be explained away by so-called oversensitivity (yet another term hurled at women to demoralize and delegitimize us). In fact, hard data backs this up. Both Catalyst and McKinsey have uncovered research showing that, while men are hired and promoted based on their perceived potential, women don’t get that benefit. Women have to earn new positions by already having done the work – by proving their performance.
And once a woman has earned her position, the questions don’t stop there. Women have to keep earning that job over and over again. It’s exhausting. It’s one more way way women are inhibited by tiny invisible biases throughout their day.
It can also lead women to question whether they should engage in women’s networks and initiatives – after all, they may reason, if they need that extra help, maybe they really don’t deserve their job. Or, perhaps, they worry, others will feel that way, that if women are perceived to need extra help, then they don’t really deserve those jobs they have fought so hard for.
It’s a double bind many women experience – they want support, but don’t want to be seen as needing support, for fear they may seem they need it. Exhausting.
But that doesn’t mean we should throw up our hands and go home. It also shouldn’t prevent us from engaging in women’s events and supporting initiatives to help one another. Here are a few ways we can approach challenges on job legitimacy.
“What’s She Doing Here?” How to Deal with the Legitimacy Double Bind
Office PoliticsAs women advance through their careers, they often face challenges to their legitimacy, or the notion that they didn’t really earn their position. Apparently, some people are incapable of fathoming a world where a woman is competent and capable of earning a job by way of her qualifications. They would rather attribute her success to a quota, or to mere optics, or to one of the other methods women are presumed to employ to make their ways to the top.
It’s not fair, and it’s an issue that doesn’t seem to be going away, either.
It’s also not just an anecdotal issue or one that can be explained away by so-called oversensitivity (yet another term hurled at women to demoralize and delegitimize us). In fact, hard data backs this up. Both Catalyst and McKinsey have uncovered research showing that, while men are hired and promoted based on their perceived potential, women don’t get that benefit. Women have to earn new positions by already having done the work – by proving their performance.
And once a woman has earned her position, the questions don’t stop there. Women have to keep earning that job over and over again. It’s exhausting. It’s one more way way women are inhibited by tiny invisible biases throughout their day.
It can also lead women to question whether they should engage in women’s networks and initiatives – after all, they may reason, if they need that extra help, maybe they really don’t deserve their job. Or, perhaps, they worry, others will feel that way, that if women are perceived to need extra help, then they don’t really deserve those jobs they have fought so hard for.
It’s a double bind many women experience – they want support, but don’t want to be seen as needing support, for fear they may seem they need it. Exhausting.
But that doesn’t mean we should throw up our hands and go home. It also shouldn’t prevent us from engaging in women’s events and supporting initiatives to help one another. Here are a few ways we can approach challenges on job legitimacy.
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Ursula Burns Discusses Impatience and Leadership at Catalyst Awards Luncheon
Industry Leaders, LeadershipAt last week’s Catalyst Awards Conference, lunch keynote Ursula Burns, CEO of Xerox, shared her experience and advice on leadership and more. “I lucked out,” she began. “Xerox is a company that fit me well. It allowed to relax into my own self.”
Having begun her career as an engineer, Burns climbed the corporate ranks all the way to the top, becoming the first Black woman CEO of a Fortune 500 company in 2009. “There was an unbelievable roar and uproar about that,” she recalled. “But the board expected that, and I expected it, and our PR people expected it and prepared me for it.”
But what surprised Burns and the rest of Xerox was the conversation about her transition – how she was appointed CEO by another woman, Anne Mulcahy. “The two together really took on an entire conversation. Anne and I refused to do an interview together at first. The only time we did it was at the Fortune Most Powerful Woman conference. We stayed away from that conversation.”
In fact, she continued, all the media hubbub was discomfiting for her initially. “I found out people liked me, respected me, thought I was smart – without ever knowing me. I became the most smart, most famous, most beautiful person… but at that point I hadn’t even done anything!”
Now, almost four years into her job, she’s easing into the public eye as she’s shown her skill as a CEO. “Now it’s more normal to [position] me as a leader,” she explained, “not having the spotlight on me as an oddity.”
Throughout her talk with Catalyst CEO Ilene Lang, Burns discussed her career path, joking about her reputation as a notoriously impatient person and sharing her advice on speaking up and leadership.
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Voice of Experience: Janet George, Managing Director, Accenture Technology Labs
Voices of ExperienceAccording to Janet George, Managing Director at Accenture Technology Labs, it’s time to start viewing the differences women bring to the table as assets. “I think women are different from men. Our brain structure is different. Our leadership style is different. Our management style is different. Our career styles are different.”
“These differences are strengths when partnering and collaborating in a team environment,” continued George, a technical leader in the emerging technologies space. “They lead to richer discussions. I can tell you – there’s nothing compared to working with smart women.”
“Companies need to take advantage of the value-add that women provide. The challenge lies in under-utilization. We need advocates – both men and women – to change things,” George said. “It’s also important to have advocates in your own career. Being a deeply technical woman, in many cases, is daunting or even isolating. We deal with a lot of complexity. For years I was the only woman with a technical background in the room – and it’s very encouraging to see a changing landscape.”
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Lean In: A Primer on Owning Your Power
ReviewsBy now, you’ve probably had time to pick up Sheryl Sandberg’s new book Lean In – or you’ve at least read a few of the reviews. My first take: I liked it, and more than I was expecting to. If you’re in a position to advocate for women at your company, it would be a great buy if only for its lengthy bibliography, which is basically a comprehensive list of every single study on the business-case for women at the top and the ways women are prevented from getting there – from stereotype threat to work/life issues to the tiara syndrome to false meritocracies and more. Her message about taking risks and expanding your ambition is also valuable.
Beyond that though, it’s an interesting read on how one woman’s personal understanding of feminism has taken flight alongside her growing acknowledgment of her own influence. It’s an experience that will probably resonate with many of our readers.
Over the past few years, I’ve done hundreds of interviews with senior women in the financial and professional services industries as part of our profile series. And over that time I’ve heard from more and more women who are coming to terms with their own power. They are realizing that they have the potential to make a difference for other women in their companies.
Sandberg writes that publishing the book and continuing to speak up about women is her own “lean in moment.” She realized that she has the power and the platform to make a difference, and she’s taking the initiative to do so. Many women have more influence than we realize on this matter, yet we shy away from using the f-word (feminism) or speaking up about implicit bias at work (no one wants to be seen as a complainer). But now we are seeing a groundswell of interest and enthusiasm for this issue (for example, Lean In debuted as a number one seller on Amazon‘s Best Sellers list). This could be a “lean in moment” for all of us.
“We can no longer pretend that biases don’t exist, nor can we talk around them,” she writes. How will you own your influence when it comes to gender equality?
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Build a Better Tech Community – With Women
Managing ChangeCodeProject is the world’s largest independent community of coders and developers. But in early 2012, Sean Ewington, Jeff Hadfield, Chris Maunder, and Terrence Dorsey recognized three related areas in which they believed CodeProject was not living up to its full potential: helping women embrace programming in greater numbers, enter the industry, and find support within it.
To that end, Maunder and David Cunningham decided to create an Advisory Board for Women in Technology. Maunder told The Glass Hammer that the initial idea for the board started back in 2003 when he attended a Women in Code session at a developer conference. “It was clear that at the time, the issues women dealt with in breaking into—and being accepted into—the developer community were different than those that guys faced,” says Maunder. “I always wanted to dig a little deeper and see if these issues were truly stopping women or if there were actual things, simple things, that could be done.”
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Voice of Experience: Jennifer Wu, CFA, Senior Vice President, Institutional Sales and Relationship Management, ING US Investment Management
Voices of Experience“My advice for women starting out in the asset management industry is to seek out mentors within their respective firms and broadly in the industry,” began Jennifer Wu, CFA, Senior Vice President of Institutional Sales and Relationship Management at ING US Investment Management. “When I entered the industry, I asked people for their insights on career advancement and everyone had the same advice: find mentors who can champion for you.”
She continued, “As long as they are in a position to influence your career development, you need to be open-minded and thoughtful about finding someone who identifies with your ambition, understands your constraints, and someone who is willing to invest in your career.”
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Queen Bee or Mother Hen: The Contradictory Images of Professional Women
Office Politics“Queen bees halt the wannabes” (Article headline from The Times Higher Education, 2004)
“I was really looking forward to a new opportunity at work but I just found out that the team manager will be a woman (audible sigh).” (Anonymous colleague)
No doubt you’ve heard this sentiment or read a similar headline a number of times during your career. I certainly have and I only started my career two and a half years ago. Young female colleagues and friends talk about avoiding female managers because of concerns around lack of support, hidden agendas, and jealousy. The question here is should they genuinely be concerned? Do senior female figures in organisations really exhibit non supportive behaviour to other women (the Queen Bee Phenomenon), or do they go out of their way to mentor more junior women (Mother Hen behaviour)?
For both the young females and more senior female figures working in corporate environments, it’s important to address this issue. There are numerous articles that are targeted at women who are at the threshold between management and senior management or executive level, but not nearly enough that provide guidance for more junior females who are still further away from the sometimes elusive glass ceiling.
Here, we look at this issue in more detail particularly in light of the discussion around senior and junior female relationships. Should we heed the advice to avoid all female managers, or ignore the naysayers and proactively seek opportunities to work with female colleagues at all levels and in our firms?
Let’s take a look at both sides of the argument.
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Catalyst Celebrates Global Diversity and Leadership
Managing ChangeYesterday Catalyst honored three companies for their remarkable initiatives aimed at increasing gender diversity at its annual awards conference at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York City. The three companies – Alcoa Inc, the Coca-Cola Company, and Unilever – all presented global initiatives that were then tailored to match local needs.
All three companies also produced results. Alcoa’s program, for example, increased the percentage of female executives at the company from 15.8 percent to 19 percent. Professional plant managers rose from 22.6 percent to 25.3 percent. And employee engagement increased from 52 percent to 70 percent.
At Coca-Cola, women in senior leadership rose from 23 percent to 29 percent between 2008 and 2012. Women in the immediate pipeline rose from 28 percent to 34 percent. And the recruitment of global external women rose from 47 percent to 50 percent.
Finally, Unilever’s initiative, which involves a high potential women and mentoring program with an agile working model, led to an increase of 16 percent to 21 percent women at the executive vice president and vice president level, a 27 percent to 32 percent increase at the director level, and a 40 to 43 percent increase at the manager level.
While the programs are different, all three were global and were based on ambitious diversity goals. They also had strong support from company leadership in building the business case for women.
As Coca Cola Chairman and CEO Muhtar Kent said during the Opening Plenary, “This is hard work. It doesn’t happen because you want it to happen.” Kent went on to explain how he experienced pushback when he announced the gender initiative, and it has meant continuous pipline work, bechmarking, accountability, and communication. But when business units with women leaders started showing better results, he continued, people began to get on board. “We’re still learning,” he added. “This is a journey.”
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Why the Financial Advisor Industry Needs Women
Money TalksOn average, women financial advisors make just 58 cents for every dollar made by their male peers. That’s a significant wage gap, and it’s even higher than the national average (which lies somewhere around 80 percent). One reason for the gap is that men in the industry tend to work at larger, more lucrative companies than women. But why?
Similarly, women only make up about 30 percent of the industry (and even fewer take up executive roles). “Why are there so few women in this industry? Why does that red carpet get rolled up for women? Are women taking themselves out? Or was the industry perceived as unfriendly?” asked Kim Dellarocca, Director and Head of Practice Management at Pershing.
Dellarocca and her team set out to find the answer to these questions in Pershing’s latest report, “The 30% Solution: Growing Your Business By Winning And Keeping Women Advisors” and its previous one, “Women are Not a Niche Market.” She hopes the research will help the industry usher in more women, and ensure they are treated fairly.
And attracting and retaining women and diverse talent is critical for the survival of the industry, Dellarocca reasoned. The financial advisory space is expecting a talent shortage of 237,000 new advisors in the coming decade. It needs to look beyond the status quo to fill those seats – and in order to do that, the industry is going to have to change.
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Emerging Economies Overtake G7 in Gender Diversity at the Top
Managing ChangeA new Grant Thornton / Forbes Insights study [PDF] shows that the percentage of women in senior management roles around the world has now risen to 24 percent. According to the report, “Women in senior management: setting the stage for growth” the proportion of women in corporate leadership is now even with pre-recession levels. The percentage dipped to 20 percent in 2011 and rose to 21 percent in 2012.
Most striking in the study was how much greater the percentages of women in senior leadership in emerging markets were than in mature markets. For example, the proportion of female executives in China rose sharply to 51 percent this year (compared to just 25 percent last year). The Asia Pacific region reported much a much higher percentage (29 percent) of women in senior leadership than the European Union (25 percent), Latin America (23 percent), and North America (21 percent).
According to Francesca Lagerberg, Head of Tax at Grant Thornton UK and the new Global leader of Tax at Grant Thornton International, G7 countries should take notice – while these markets are stagnating along with their percentages of women in leadership, emerging markets are growing and so are their rates of female leaders. She said:
Companies in emerging economies seem to be taking the value of gender diversity seriously. Will those in mature economies follow suit?
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