By Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)
“Don’t be afraid to speak up for yourself,” advises Linda Rappaport, a senior partner at international law firm Shearman & Sterling LLP and Practice Group Leader Emeritus of the firm’s Executive Compensation & Employee Benefits/Private Client Group. “And be really prepared – there’s no substitute for being good at what you do.”
Rappaport knows all about being good. She has earned a reputation as one of the top executive compensation lawyers in the US and Europe, working with major financial services firms, entertainment companies and other organizations.
Her rise to prominence was no accident. Rather, Rappaport says, it was the product of traditional business values: hard work, a commitment to client service and a genuine interest in the area in which she practices. “Make sure you enjoy what you do,” she said. “You’re not going to enjoy every moment of every day, but if you’re excited by the ideas, people will sense that and will respond with enthusiasm as well.”
“You want work to be challenging. Never in one day of my life at Shearman & Sterling have I been bored – and I consider that a gift. I’ve been engaged, excited, challenged and occasionally even scared or nervous, which is perfectly appropriate sometimes. That’s a wonderful thing,” she added.
International Women’s Day: Why the Gender Dividend is the Business Case for Gender Equality
Breaking the Glass Ceiling, Featured“There isn’t a glass ceiling, just a thick layer of men” quipped the ever sharp Laura Liswood last week, and this is my favorite description to date of what is preventing women from advancing to executive management and the boardroom.
Others talk about the sticky floor or the marzipan layer preventing women from getting to the top. In the run up to the 100th International women’s day, themed “Equal Access to Education, Training and Science and Technology: Pathway to Decent Work for Women,” the discussion turns to creating a more robust pipeline of female leaders as the statistics don’t show great progress overall – as The White House Project reports, only about 16-18% of leadership roles in almost any industry are held by women. Yet women have long outpaced men in education (with almost 60% of college graduates now female), and capable, highly trained young women are flooding into the workforce.
Some companies are incredibly advanced in their gender work because they take it seriously. They understand, from both a human capital and a consumer perspective, that women are the next big business opportunity. Building stronger, more effective companies means developing and utilizing all of the talent available.
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On International Women’s Day, Hard Questions: How Do You Define Career Success?
Managing ChangeIt’s only appropriate that on Friday, in honor of IWD, Accenture released the results of a global study on attitudes toward work, surveying 3,400 business executives from medium to large organizations across 29 countries. The survey reveals some telling statistics about how people across the globe feel about women, work, success, and ambition.
What may be most surprising about the report is how similar the responses were between men and women. Apparently, securing satisfying, fairly compensated work is important to everyone!
But there were some notable differences between genders – mainly around the areas of career planning and development. Women are seeking their own brand of professional success and taking their own path to get there. The study revealed that fewer women than men (14% compared to 22%) are hoping to attain C-suite roles. Indeed, the freedom to define your own success is wonderful and freeing, but this begs a very difficult question: are women choosing a different definition of success because obstacles, glass ceilings or sticky floors perhaps, are obstructing the path to the corner office?
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Voice of Experience: Joan Steinberg, Managing Director and Global Head of Philanthropy, Morgan Stanley
Voices of ExperienceJoan Steinberg, Morgan Stanley’s Global Head of Philanthropy, was recently named a Managing Director at the firm. Steinberg says that it’s important to project professionalism and leadership when seeking advancement.
“You have to be at the next level,” advised the woman who led Morgan Stanley’s charitable efforts following 9/11. She explained that at a recent event for new Managing Directors within the firm, she saw many people she already assumed were MDs.
“Be the role you want to be, so that it’s easy for others to see you that way,” she said.
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WNSF Hosts Panel on Sustainability Reporting
Green is GoodLast week, the Women’s Network for a Sustainable Future organized an event around new trends in sustainability reporting. With shareholders, regulating agencies, and the public increasingly interested in results, the quality of metrics around corporate sustainability has improved dramatically, as has awareness of the importance of benchmarking and reporting progress.
Ann Goodman, Executive Director of WNSF said, “Everyone from the SEC down and up is clamoring for disclosure.”
Moderated by Helle Jorgensen, US Sustainability Advisory Leader and member of the Global Sustainability Leadership Council, PwC, the panel included Margaret Lindeman, Sustainability Strategist, Lockheed Martin, Erica Matthews, Manager, Public Policy and Sustainability, Pepsico, and Mike Wallace, Director of Sustainability Reporting Framework, Global Reporting Initiative (GRI).
Corporate sustainability metrics matter to investors, consumers, and employees – and improving metrics around sustainability reporting will be critical to corporate success in the future.
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NALP Findings No Cause for Concern – Yet
Managing ChangeLate last year, The National Association for Law Placement (NALP) reported that the representation of women and minority lawyers among law firm associates declined between 2009 and 2010, most likely the result of the massive lawyer layoffs that took place during the recession. The findings made headlines across the country, though the actual drop in the representation of women and minorities was quite small and occurred mostly among associates, not partners.
Despite these facts, some newspapers reported that these findings were significant because they were the first diversity reversals in the NALP’s 17-year history and represent the reversal of what had been, up until 2010, a constant upward trend.
So, are these findings important or not? According to the NALP, aggregate statistics about the representation of women and minority lawyers at law firms do not tell the whole story. For example, among the employers listed in the 2010-2011 NALP Directory of Legal Employers, just over 6 percent of partners were minorities and 1.95 percent of partners were minority women, and yet many offices reported no minority partners at all. In addition, the representation of minorities by specific race and ethnicity varies considerably by size of law firm and geography. The NALP also found that the drop in minority representation among associates was not uniform across specific racial/ethnic groups, which also influenced their findings.
Others believe that while the NALP’s findings are interesting, women in law have bigger fish to fry.
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Voice of Experience: Linda Rappaport, Partner, Shearman & Sterling
Voices of Experience“Don’t be afraid to speak up for yourself,” advises Linda Rappaport, a senior partner at international law firm Shearman & Sterling LLP and Practice Group Leader Emeritus of the firm’s Executive Compensation & Employee Benefits/Private Client Group. “And be really prepared – there’s no substitute for being good at what you do.”
Rappaport knows all about being good. She has earned a reputation as one of the top executive compensation lawyers in the US and Europe, working with major financial services firms, entertainment companies and other organizations.
Her rise to prominence was no accident. Rather, Rappaport says, it was the product of traditional business values: hard work, a commitment to client service and a genuine interest in the area in which she practices. “Make sure you enjoy what you do,” she said. “You’re not going to enjoy every moment of every day, but if you’re excited by the ideas, people will sense that and will respond with enthusiasm as well.”
“You want work to be challenging. Never in one day of my life at Shearman & Sterling have I been bored – and I consider that a gift. I’ve been engaged, excited, challenged and occasionally even scared or nervous, which is perfectly appropriate sometimes. That’s a wonderful thing,” she added.
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Facing Failure: Why Resilience Must be Part of Leadership Development
Next LevelBy Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)
“The public seems to hold the belief that the fight for parity has been won,” said Sara Manzano-Diaz, Director of the Women’s Bureau at the United States Department of Labor.
She continued, “We know that’s not the case.”
Manzano-Diaz spoke Monday afternoon the National Council for Research on Women‘s panel discussion on building the pipeline of women for leadership in the public, private, and non profit sectors. Linda Basch, President of the NCRW explained, “Today we’re exploring a particularly vexing problem… the stalled pipeline to women’s leadership.”
“When I run into young women today… many think the world is their oyster and that anything is possible,” she continued. “But a few years out, I see some frustrated and demoralized young women.”
Statistics show that females are outpacing males at almost every level during their education. Yet, women drop off the career path in their early 30s in startling numbers. The result is that only about 15-18% of leadership roles in the United States are held by women. The panel discussed possible reasons why larger numbers of women are not making it to the top layers of the leadership pyramid, while highly educated and capable women are in no short supply at its base.
One key issue panelists settled on is resilience – that today’s young women are unprepared to face adversity.
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Op-Ed: Overcoming the Main Barriers to the Advancement of Women in Law
Expert AnswersAs a female attorney, I often witness firsthand the barriers that women face in advancing careers in finance, law, and business. Rarely are women promoted as often as men in these fields, and more tragically, their salaries typically remain lower.
According to a recent research study in 2010 from the National Association of Women Lawyers (NAWL), a majority of staff attorneys at large law firms are women. Women make up about 60% of the staff attorneys at a large law firm, which means they have little to no chances of receiving promotions or moving up to partner. In addition, further research from the NAWL found that over 90% of law firms terminated lawyer positions in the year of 2010 for economic reasons. While the numbers of men and women laid off were in equal percentages, the highest number of terminations occurred amongst part-time attorneys. Unfortunately, a majority of women hold positions as part-time attorneys, meaning more women than men were let go. In 83% of firms that let go part-time attorneys, women made up a larger percentage than men.
Even more disheartening, women only currently make up 15% of the partners at law firms across the country. This number also compares with the business field, in which only 11% of senior executives at Fortune 500 companies are women.
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Honoring Trailblazers at the NCRW Women of Vision Awards
Industry Leaders, LeadershipLast night the National Council for Research on Women hosted this year’s Making a Difference for Women Awards Dinner. Honorees included Michelle Bachelet, Under-Secretary for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women, United Nations; Peter and Patricia Gruber, Founders of the Peter and Patricia Gruber Foundation; Ed Gilligan, Vice Chairman of American Express; Dr, Ruth J. Simmons, President of Brown University; and Muriel Siebert, Founder & CEO of Muriel Siebert & Co., Inc.
Event emcee Natalie Morales, NBC Today Co-host and National Correspondent, noted, “Women and girls are showing us that they have the talent and the skills to inspire us, and can pretty much do it all.”
But, she continued, “we still have a long way to go.”
The individuals the NCRW honored last night have shown remarkable vision and effort toward advancing women. Yet they each recognized that there is more work needed before gender equality becomes reality.
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Voice of Experience: Vanessa Lau, Group CFO, Global Rolled Products, Alcoa
Voices of ExperienceVanessa Lau, Group CFO for Global Rolled Products at Alcoa has never shied away from a challenge. Named on Crain’s New York’s 40 Under 40 list last year, Lau has had the drive to fuel an exciting and esteemed career from the very beginning.
Her advice? Don’t be shy about your goals.
She said, “I find that my male colleagues are more willing to show their ambitions and my female colleagues are less willing to show their ambitions. They feel like they are being pushy.”
“But management really values transparent discussion. Be ambitious.”
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