By Tina Vasquez (Los Angeles)
Oftentimes, the problem with gender bias is that it acts like a filter, affecting how we see people, what we notice about them, and how we interpret their behavior. If you’re human, you have biases, and like other stereotypes, assumptions about a person based on their gender are made automatically. Both men and women are guilty of bias, but in the workplace it’s women who pay the ultimate price for these biases.
According to Iris Bohnet, a professor at Harvard Kennedy School and the director of its Women and Public Policy Program, even those with the best intentions who don’t want to discriminate are likely to fall prey to stereotypes they’ve come to believe are emblematic of how society works.
“In today’s society seeing is believing, so if you don’t see women in leadership positions, you don’t naturally associate women with leadership,” Bohnet said.
Because hidden gender bias is automatically triggered, it should be thought of as a negative impulse that you fight to control. Bohnet has made an interesting connection between gender bias and studies concerning image, nutrition, and saving money: things that require intention: things we know we should do, but we don’t do because it’s easier not to – like being on a diet.
“The key to fighting gender bias is changing the environment so that being biased becomes more difficult,” Bohnet said. “When you’re on a diet, you’re not going to keep ice cream in your refrigerator. If bad food is available, you will eat it. Changing the environment so that it becomes more difficult to eat poorly or so that it becomes more difficult to discriminate against women can make all the difference.”
According to Bohnet, doing the right thing and creating the right environment requires a “nudge.” Bohnet took inspiration from the book Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness, which focuses on choice architecture – how outcomes might be influenced – or nudged – by how choices are presented.
Movers and Shakers: Jane Newton, Partner and Wealth Manager, RegentAtlantic Capital
Movers and ShakersJane Newton was drawn to Wall Street fresh out of her graduation from Tufts University. “What better place is there for an econ major who wants to learn about business in the Big Apple?” she asked. “I wanted to learn from the smartest people around.”
Newton joined JP Morgan, working in investment banking for 12 years, then moving to private banking for another six. “Switching to work with high net worth clients was probably the best strategic decision I could have made – having that direct impact on the important people I work with and their families.”
She continued, “And moving to RegentAtlantic Capital seven years ago was the other best decision I’ve made professionally. The firm has fostered my leadership and created an environment where I can hone my focus and skills toward a specific market.”
Now Partner and Wealth Manager at RegentAtlantic, Newton is also an enthusiastic advocate of networking, especially for women. In 2010, she launched the annual Wall Street Women Forum®, an event designed specifically for high-level women on Wall Street to help them continue their professional success. “Conceiving of the Forum takes me totally out of my comfort zone. I created something from scratch to meet a need I identified. The Forum changes women’s lives in a way I didn’t expect from the beginning and it has touched a nerve. There’s a gap we’ve been able to fill for these professionals,” she explained.
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Which of Your Strengths is Holding You Back?
Ask A Career CoachYou’re an achiever. You can put in long hours without burning out. You have a great ability to get started on new tasks and take on new challenges. You set new goals and levels of productivity for your group or work team. This has made you successful throughout your career. Keep doing what you’re doing because it’s all good, right? Wrong. Our achievement drive applied in the wrong situations can cause us to be blind to the needs of others and drive our teams to exhaustion. Many of the strengths we have can also be sources of derailers in our career. Does this mean we abandon our strengths? How do we truly leverage our strengths AND prevent them from becoming derailers?
The following are three leadership practices that can help.
1. Fully Understand Your Strengths. I am a big fan of Strengthsfinder 2.0 and recommend it to all of my executive coaching clients. The first step to success in our careers is to fully own and understand our strengths and to look for opportunities to exercise these strengths in our work situations. Research indicates that our success comes from fully developing our strengths rather than focusing on our weak points. So take a moment to:
a.) Discover your strengths. You can take Strengthsfinder 2.0 or use performance reviews and other 360 feedback tools to discover your strengths.
b.) Look for situations in work and life where you can bring these strengths to drive success.
c.) Proactively plan your career toward those kinds of roles where your strengths will help you stand out.
d.) Proactively think about how you can further develop these strength areas.
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One Year After the Davies Review: Progress for Women in the Boardroom
Managing ChangeThis week marks the one-year anniversary of the report by Lord Davies of Abersoch on women in the UK boardroom, which argued that companies should take action now to increase the number of female board directors. The report called for a target of 25% women on boards by 2015. In order to do this, it suggested, 33% of board appointments would have to go to women over the next year. The Davies report catapulted the issue of boardroom gender diversity into public discourse and for the past year, companies have been urged to diversify their table of power.
This week Lord Davies released “One Year On,” a review of progress made over the past year, in conjunction with Cranfield School of Management’s annual “Female FTSE Board Report,” revealing that many UK companies have stepped up to the challenge. Davies wrote:
Research produced over the past year had shown that companies were not making progress fast enough to meet Davies’ 2015 target – but a twist in the data indicates that the UK may just meet that goal. He added, “…should we maintain this momentum we would see a record 26.7% female board representation by 2015. This is great news, and demonstrates how a voluntary business-led approach can work.”
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Real Advice from Active Mentors
Mentors and SponsorsNavigating office politics can be tricky – but there are tactics women can employ to avoid playing games and climb the corporate ladder successfully and graciously.
Jamie Parrot, Managing Director, Investor Relations and Marketing at Perry Capital, points out, “The most rewarding thing about seeing women succeed is knowing how far we’ve come from our grandmother’s generation to now…my generation has an abundance of opportunities to choose from…and not because we’ve finally been given a shot but because we’ve earned our rightful place beside the men who have dominated certain industries.”
A success for one woman, in any industry, is a success for all women striving for equality in the workplace. So let’s celebrate other’s success, because when your turn comes, you’ll want others to celebrate for you. Here are five pieces of advice from women who frequently mentor others.
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Voice of Experience: Maria Castañón Moats, Chief Diversity Officer, PwC
Voices of Experience“Think about behaviors – like inclusion. We need to understand not only how we are similar, but we need to understand how we are different.”
“Taking an interest in that difference and leveraging that makes us better as a team,” she explained. “If we could all behave as advocates for one another, think of how powerful that would be.”
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Intrepid Woman: How I Got My Career Back on Track as a New Mom
Intrepid Women SeriesI lost my job at Goldman Sachs in the midst of the 2009 economic meltdown, and soon after, I found out I was expecting my first child. Taking a break from work to spend time with my baby was something I had always looked forward to, so I thought the timing was perfect. It wasn’t until the start of 2011, when my son turned a year old and I felt that he was ready to be “let out into the world,” that I realized how much time had actually gone by.
As I began to revise my resume and speak to people in the financial industry, I realized how far I had fallen behind my peers. The gap in my resume was daunting. Would someone really want to hire me after I had been away from the corporate setting for such a long time? I realized that choosing to be a stay-at-home mom had taken a toll on my self-confidence, but there was no way I was going to get anywhere feeling sorry for myself. I had the relevant experience, and I had worked for excellent firms, including New York Life, Bears, and Goldman Sachs, and I had an unbeatable enthusiasm about returning to work. Why not hire me?
Well, I can tell you, not too many people appreciated that I took leave from my career to be there for my son, in his first year of life, and most were not shy to express this. To make matters worse, there were those who poked fun by calling me a big dreamer for believing that I could still have a career. If my so-called friends thought this way, then what would actual employers say? One friend even suggested that I lie about the reason I chose to take time off – to actually deny having my baby! To me, choosing to be a stay-at-home mom was a gift. I was very proud of having made this choice, and there was no way I was going to hide it.
Hearing these negative voices made things even more challenging. I have always been a dreamer, a trait that has enabled me to visualize the life I want to have and follow the right path to make those dreams come true.
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EU Moving Forward with Gender Quotas
Industry Leaders, LeadershipLast Year, EU Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding encouraged companies to pledge to increase the representation on their corporate boards significantly. She said it was companies’ “last chance” at self-regulation – and she meant it.
The deadline for companies to commit to raising the percentage of women board directors is today – International Women’s Day – and based on the unsatisfactory turnout (only 24 companies), Reding said, it may now be time for quotas.
The New York Times reported:
Reding will begin meeting with governments, unions, companies, and other groups through the spring, and plan the details of the law enacting boardroom gender quotas across the EU. She told the Times, “Let all those who are concerned come in and say how we should proceed.”
One thing is for sure: Reding doesn’t seem to be bluffing.
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Three Challenges to Demonstrate Real Power on International Women’s Day: Women Helping Women
Mentors and SponsorsA lot of talk gets made about so-called “mean girls” in the workplace – women who disparage other women, women who gossip, women who hold one another back. Workplace bullying is a problem, but the “mean girl” stereotype just doesn’t hold true for the majority of women. Based on the numbers in a 2007 study, only 15% of women in the US have been bullied by other women at work. And, in fact, a new study out of Switzerland shows that female leaders are more benevolent than their male counterparts.
The “mean girl” stereotype is unfairly giving women a bad reputation, and it’s drawing away our power to advance.
In the same vein, we don’t hear enough about the women who have helped us every day throughout our careers, women who have taken a chance on us, and women who have given us a hand up the ladder. According to Gloria Feldt, activist, former president and CEO of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, and author of No Excuses: 9 Ways Women Can Change How We Think About Power, embracing power frequently means embracing it alongside other women.
She said, “In my research for No Excuses, I found women are able to embrace power enthusiastically when we think of it as the expansive ‘power to’ rather than the oppressive traditional ‘power over.’ And one of the best ways to express the power to is to join hands with other women. We all got where we are because of women who came before us and each of us has the obligation to bring another women with her as we move through a door or up a ladder.”
“There’s a parable of the mother with five daughters. She asked each of them to bring two sticks to her. She had them try to break one stick, which they easily did. Then she asked them to put their remaining five sticks together and try to break them – they couldn’t do it. Similarly, we women are all stronger when we stand together and when we mentor and sponsor each other in our careers,” Feldt added.
Real power is the ability to help someone else. As Cynthia Steer, Head of Manager Research & Investment Solutions at BNY Mellon, told us last week: “I can’t remember a time when a woman hasn’t helped me.” This year, for International Women’s Day, let’s shine a spotlight on our real power and showcase the women who’ve helped us along the way.
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Courage and Authenticity: How Women Exercise Power
Featured, Industry Leaders, Leadership“There will be people who… will wish you had just kept your mouth shut,” said Anita Hill, discussing the challenges women face when speaking in the face of adversity. “But you have to deal with reasserting yourself, and being your authentic self.”
Hill was speaking at the National Council for Research on Women’s annual awards dinner last night, and she commented passionately on the importance of having courage. Hill said, had she known the outcome of her 1991 televised testimony on sexual harassment claims against US Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas, and the character and credibility smear she endured afterward, she still would have gone through with it.
Honorees for the night included Soledad O’Brien, CNN Anchor and Special Correspondent; Beth Brooke, Global Vice Chair, Public Policy, Ernst & Young; Anita Hill, Senior Advisor to the Provost, Professor of Law, Public Policy and Women’s Studies, Brandeis University; and the creators of the PBS Series Women, War & Peace, Abigail Disney, Pamela Hogan, and Gini Reticker.
Speaking on the panel, Hill was joined by O’Brien, Brooke, and Disney, discussing the nature of courage, authenticity, and power.
“When it comes to women and leadership, many of them get into leadership because of something that happens to them and they have to do it,” Hill said. “They care about a problem and they want it addressed and know they have something to add.”
“Find an issue you are passionate about and become the leader to address it.”
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What to Do If You Experience Gender Bias
Office PoliticsOftentimes, the problem with gender bias is that it acts like a filter, affecting how we see people, what we notice about them, and how we interpret their behavior. If you’re human, you have biases, and like other stereotypes, assumptions about a person based on their gender are made automatically. Both men and women are guilty of bias, but in the workplace it’s women who pay the ultimate price for these biases.
According to Iris Bohnet, a professor at Harvard Kennedy School and the director of its Women and Public Policy Program, even those with the best intentions who don’t want to discriminate are likely to fall prey to stereotypes they’ve come to believe are emblematic of how society works.
“In today’s society seeing is believing, so if you don’t see women in leadership positions, you don’t naturally associate women with leadership,” Bohnet said.
Because hidden gender bias is automatically triggered, it should be thought of as a negative impulse that you fight to control. Bohnet has made an interesting connection between gender bias and studies concerning image, nutrition, and saving money: things that require intention: things we know we should do, but we don’t do because it’s easier not to – like being on a diet.
“The key to fighting gender bias is changing the environment so that being biased becomes more difficult,” Bohnet said. “When you’re on a diet, you’re not going to keep ice cream in your refrigerator. If bad food is available, you will eat it. Changing the environment so that it becomes more difficult to eat poorly or so that it becomes more difficult to discriminate against women can make all the difference.”
According to Bohnet, doing the right thing and creating the right environment requires a “nudge.” Bohnet took inspiration from the book Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness, which focuses on choice architecture – how outcomes might be influenced – or nudged – by how choices are presented.
Read more