By Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)
What’s keeping women from reaching the highest echelon of today’s top corporations? If you ask Sylvia Ann Hewlett, Founding President and Chairman of the Center for Worklife Policy, it’s certainly not a dearth of women’s initiatives, mentoring programs, and networking. Nor is it related to performance.
According to a new study produced by the CWLP in conjunction with the Harvard Business Group, a lack of sponsorship for women may be to blame. At a recent event hosted by American Express, Hewlett said, “34% of the marzipan layer, that layer just below senior leadership, is made up of women.” On the other hand, she said, only about 21% of senior leadership is female. And that number hasn’t increased in years.
“It’s about relationship capital,” said Hewlett.
Authored by Hewlett, with Kerrie Peraino, Chief Diversity Officer of Amex; Laura Sherbin Ph.D., Vice President, Director of Research at CWLP; and Karen Sumberg, Vice President, Director of Projects and Communications at CWLP, “The Sponsor Effect: Breaking Through the Last Glass Ceiling” outlines the ways in which women are missing out when it comes to sponsorship.
But more importantly, it is a detailed study into the sponsorship-protege relationship. It explains the urgent need for stronger sponsorship of women and how we can get it.
Surprising New Findings on Gender Wage Gap in IT
Money TalksLast fall, Technisource released its Women & Men in Information Technology Survey, which revealed the many discrepancies in how men and women in the IT industry view the challenges being faced by women.
One of the most interesting findings revealed that nearly half of the men surveyed strongly believed that female IT workers were equally compensated for their work as their male counterparts, while only 22 percent of women surveyed felt the same.
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Measure of Success – Global Gender Equality Initiative to be Launched at Davos
Featured, Managing Change“Gender equality needs to be a strategic priority for organizations. It demands all of the rigor companies usually display when pursuing business-critical objectives and the full commitment of top leadership,” said Aniela Unguresan, co-founder (along with Nicole Schwab) of The Gender Equality Project, a new benchmarking and certification initiative backed by the World Economic Forum and several multinational corporations.
According to Unguresan, the goal of The Gender Equality Project is to enable the world’s largest firms to, both quantitatively and qualitatively, measure progress toward gender equality. What makes The Gender Equality Project stand out, she explained, is that it enables participating firms not only to measure their own progress, but also to accelerate the pace of change by implementing a standardized assessment methodology that can be applied across different industries and regions. This assessment methodology will serve as a basis for the first global certification system in gender equality.
“It’s our experience within the corporate environment that what gets measured gets done,” she explained. By measuring and comparing their progress toward defined goals, just like any other strategic initiative, companies can begin to make headway in the global problem of gender inequality in the workplace. After the launch of its assessment methodology, The Gender Equality project will make available a self-assessment tool and will put in place a global certification system– a veritable stamp of approval for gender equality.
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Voice of Experience: Aine Leddy, Executive Director, Investment Management Technology, Morgan Stanley
Voices of Experience“Just go for it. Don’t be afraid to show interest. If you prefer a career in something considered to be an all-male bastion like Wall Street investment banking, just do it,” said Aine Leddy, Executive Director, Investment Management Technology at Morgan Stanley.
As chief operating officer for the company’s investment technology group, Leddy, who hails from Ireland, has plenty of experience in a traditionally male dominated field, and has found success in “going for it.”
And while she encourages women to enter roles where they may initially be the odd person out, she encourages men to do the same. She continued, “I try to give the same advice to my sons as to my daughter.”
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Intrepid Woman: Educating Children in Goa
Intrepid Women SeriesGoa: the smallest and the richest state in India; a former Portuguese colony, a place of beautiful golden beaches, swaying palm trees and over a million domestic and foreign tourists per year. The wealth brought by the tourists also brings an influx of economic migrants. In search of work and money, they travel to this tiny state in western India from other areas – hundreds and in some cases thousands of miles away.
I first visited Goa in 1999, have been back many times since then and have seen the volume of both tourists and of workers from other parts of India soar in the intervening years. Unsurprisingly, the Goan infrastructure is now creaking under this flood of people; from a tourist’s point of view, power cuts and water shortages are increasingly common but can be dismissed as being “part of the Indian experience.” However, what many tourists never see are the living environments of many of the migrant workers – and, more particularly, how this impacts the health and education of their children.
Before Christmas, I spent time undertaking volunteer work for a small Goan-based charity called Educators’ Trust India – I’m pictured here with some of the children on a trip to the beach. The charity was set up two years ago in order to provide practical assistance to the children of these migrant workers and they now, funded only by donations, run two schools, Leading Light and New Light, and a number of outreach projects where they work with migrant workers in the local slums.
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Female Lawyers Skirt Likeability Paradox – Here’s How
Office PoliticsHow does the likeability/competence double-bind affect female lawyers today? According to some new research, it doesn’t.
A new paper published in the Duke Journal of Gender Law & Policy has surprising new insight into the classic likeability vs. competence dichotomy reviled by professional women. We’ve discussed this issue on The Glass Hammer in the past, that women tend to face disproportionate penalties when they are perceived as being “pushy” or “aggressive,” while a man displaying the same behavior would simply be perceived as “assertive” or “confident.”
But according to the study, Likeability v. Competence: The Impossible Choice Faced by Female Politicians, Attenuated by Lawyers, “in style and in effectiveness, there is no difference between how female and male lawyers are perceived.”
This flies in the face of many women’s experiences in the professional space – what are these women doing right?
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Key Issues and Developments for Women Managers in Asia
Managing ChangeAs we sit amongst the wreckage of the post-2008 ‘credit crunch’ and global financial crisis and consequent economic mess, several other business and management shibboleths have also seemingly come crashing down. These include those such as ‘the war for talent’, ‘work-life balance’, ‘managing diversity’ and so on. Some commentators may now argue these are less important. However, our all too common ethnocentricity may blind us to a clearer view of the situation. I will use the case of women managers in Asia to illustrate this. After all, we can learn more about our own systems and practices by looking at those of others.
Asia’s rapid economic growth led to a significant increase in demand for managers and professionals. Indeed, in parts of Asia women’s labour force participation rates ranked highly, aided by better educational participation levels and falling fertility rates requiring the best use of all talent. It seemed that as women became more educated and qualified for managerial positions, their numbers would rise. However, this is not an unalloyed picture of progress.
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10 Ways to be More Powerful
Expert AnswersMany women I work with have a love-hate relationship with Power. They want to be powerful, but the definition of power in their heads leaves a bad taste in their mouths. For many women, power conjures up pictures of a dictatorial, hierarchic, dominating, aggressive, “my way or the highway” person. So, without even realizing this, many women give away their power.
Women often try to fulfill what they believe is society’s version of an acceptable type of power for women, which is much nicer, much more accommodating. This leads to what Catalyst calls “The Goldilocks Syndrome.” Women find themselves in situations where they are perceived as either “too hard” or “too soft,” but never just right for that top job.
The interesting thing is that power is not just something that is bestowed from the outside. It is something that is developed from within, and when others recognize you as having personal power, the external power comes to you. The good news is that how powerful we are and feel is 100% in our control. Here are the 10 tips to BE more powerful.
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How Sponsorship Can Help Senior Women Break the Marzipan Ceiling
Featured, Office PoliticsWhat’s keeping women from reaching the highest echelon of today’s top corporations? If you ask Sylvia Ann Hewlett, Founding President and Chairman of the Center for Worklife Policy, it’s certainly not a dearth of women’s initiatives, mentoring programs, and networking. Nor is it related to performance.
According to a new study produced by the CWLP in conjunction with the Harvard Business Group, a lack of sponsorship for women may be to blame. At a recent event hosted by American Express, Hewlett said, “34% of the marzipan layer, that layer just below senior leadership, is made up of women.” On the other hand, she said, only about 21% of senior leadership is female. And that number hasn’t increased in years.
“It’s about relationship capital,” said Hewlett.
Authored by Hewlett, with Kerrie Peraino, Chief Diversity Officer of Amex; Laura Sherbin Ph.D., Vice President, Director of Research at CWLP; and Karen Sumberg, Vice President, Director of Projects and Communications at CWLP, “The Sponsor Effect: Breaking Through the Last Glass Ceiling” outlines the ways in which women are missing out when it comes to sponsorship.
But more importantly, it is a detailed study into the sponsorship-protege relationship. It explains the urgent need for stronger sponsorship of women and how we can get it.
Read more
E.U. Considers Lengthening Maternity Leave – What About U.S.?
Work-LifeIn October of last year news broke that the European Parliament, which covers 27 nations, was attempting to extend maternity leave from 14 to 20-weeks on full pay. On January 7, 2011 European Union ministers rejected the move, citing the cost as the biggest hindrance. Among the countries lobbying against the plan were the UK, France, and Germany. Assessments said the proposed measure would cost UK businesses approximately $3.8 billion a year; France estimated it would mean extra healthcare costs of about $1.75 billion; and Germany put its additional costs at $1.6 billion.
The plan also included paternity leave and a stipulation that pregnant workers would have their job or an “equivalent” position reserved for them. Also, the plan specified that women returning to their jobs could not be dismissed for six months once their maternity leave drew to a close.
In order to reach a happy medium, The European Commission has proposed extending the plan to just 18-weeks as a way of improving work-life balance. Belgium, the current holder of the EU presidency, is showing early support for the 18-week plan, but no deal is expected until at least 2012.
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Happy Martin Luther King, Jr. Day!
NewsDear Readers, we are taking the day off in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. 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.”