By Kelly Tanner (New York City)
When it comes to gender discrimination in the workplace, we’re having the wrong conversations.
Three former employees of Goldman Sachs have filed individual and joint lawsuits alleging systemic gender discrimination and sexual harassment that resulted in a loss of pay and promotion opportunities, as well as humiliation and inappropriate behavior from fellow employees. In coverage of the case, which prosecutors are attempting to convert to a class action suit, the “salacious” nature of the unwelcome sexual advances detailed in the claim make for good entertainment, and allow bloggers and commenters alike to play the home-game version of judge and jury.
“Wow, 1997 — that’s a long time ago”, says David Lat, implying that the claim is irrelevant years later, and setting up his commenters nicely to write off the former Goldman’s employees as “whiny bitches.” These articles nearly all list the full names and former titles of the accusers and no identifying information regarding the discriminatory managers and harassers who created a hostile work environment in the first place. While they serve for great water-cooler gossip fodder in the current climate of news-as-entertainment, the coverage does little to address the question of why companies such as Goldman Sachs, that have invested time, money, and energy in diversity initiatives and recruitment and retention plans for women professionals, are still seen as environments women describe as “untenable,” as stated in the most recent suit.
Given the backlash, career-ending repudiation, and heckling media circus that results in such high profile cases such as these, should women even pursue sexual discrimination complaints in the first place? I suspect we may get closer to the answers by shifting the focus.
Voice of Experience: Gina Biondo, Tax Partner, PricewaterhouseCoopers
Voices of Experience“Don’t be afraid to make the hard call,” said Gina Biondo, Tax Partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers. “Stand behind the decisions you make, and get the right people behind you. You get to be a leader because you’re successful – and we need more highly visible women in leadership roles.”
She continued, “At some point, you have a responsibility as a woman to continue to help open doors for the women who will follow us.
Building a Career in Alternative Investments Tax
Biondo, a partner for 14 years, serves as the firm’s tax division lead. She is specialized in distressed debt and special opportunity hybrid classes, and works with business ranging in size from startups to established global firms.
“I’ve grown up in New York City. I started off in the New York City office of Coopers and Lybrand and I’ve been with PricewaterhouseCoopers since career start – just over 22 years.”
Biondo, who studied accounting and economics at Queens College and received her CPA and Master of Finance in taxation from Fordham, said, “I spent the first several years on the tax side on the general corporate team, working in corporate consulting. Then I moved to the financial services practice” for about the next ten years.
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Four Unfair Questions Still Nagging Women About Leadership
Expert AnswersDespite the fact that women hold 50 percent of middle management jobs, leadership roles still elude us. Why? After all, more collaborative organizational structures are “in” and archaic “command and control” hierarchies are “out.” That shift was expected to greatly advantage women — but it hasn’t. So what’s the problem?
My book, Her Place at the Table: A Woman’s Guide to Negotiating Five Key Challenges to Leadership Success first offered women in leadership roles practical advice about what they needed to negotiate in order to get and hold onto leadership roles – and in the 6 years since it was published, much as changed.
Carly Fiorina has abandoned business for politics. Ann Richards, former governor of Texas, who’d endorsed the book, died in 2006. Hillary Clinton ran for President. And, Sarah Palin, who’s not endorsed the book, resigned as governor of Alaska.
But a good deal hasn’t changed — questions about women and their suitability for leadership roles still dog women and their employers. What makes it even more complicated is that most of the time we aren’t even aware that these questions are in play.
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Gender Discrimination: We’re Having the Wrong Conversations
Office PoliticsWhen it comes to gender discrimination in the workplace, we’re having the wrong conversations.
Three former employees of Goldman Sachs have filed individual and joint lawsuits alleging systemic gender discrimination and sexual harassment that resulted in a loss of pay and promotion opportunities, as well as humiliation and inappropriate behavior from fellow employees. In coverage of the case, which prosecutors are attempting to convert to a class action suit, the “salacious” nature of the unwelcome sexual advances detailed in the claim make for good entertainment, and allow bloggers and commenters alike to play the home-game version of judge and jury.
“Wow, 1997 — that’s a long time ago”, says David Lat, implying that the claim is irrelevant years later, and setting up his commenters nicely to write off the former Goldman’s employees as “whiny bitches.” These articles nearly all list the full names and former titles of the accusers and no identifying information regarding the discriminatory managers and harassers who created a hostile work environment in the first place. While they serve for great water-cooler gossip fodder in the current climate of news-as-entertainment, the coverage does little to address the question of why companies such as Goldman Sachs, that have invested time, money, and energy in diversity initiatives and recruitment and retention plans for women professionals, are still seen as environments women describe as “untenable,” as stated in the most recent suit.
Given the backlash, career-ending repudiation, and heckling media circus that results in such high profile cases such as these, should women even pursue sexual discrimination complaints in the first place? I suspect we may get closer to the answers by shifting the focus.
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Are Lawsuits the Right Way to Achieve Gender Equality in the Workplace?
Featured, Office PoliticsTheglasshammer.com is in Norway this week reporting on gender parity and how Norway is working to achieve critical mass for women in leadership positions. Legislation resulting in quotas has furthered progress there, read us next week to see the full findings. Back on home turf, we have media speculation that a gender discrimination lawsuit against Goldman Sachs may become a class action suit stating that Goldman Sachs promotes all men over all women categorically.
I would like to point out that Goldman Sachs was the first company to back the launch of The Glass Hammer and was also the first large financial firm to create internal women’s advancement programs – including the Returnship and annual events like Brokering Change – Multicultural Women on Wall Street. Let’s not pick one bank to crucify, when it is the industry that needs to re-evaluate its appeal to female talent. Instead, let’s make sure that we give credit to companies who are making progress towards critical mass and fair systems to keep women in the game at a time when we are dwindling in numbers.
I believe that very little can be gained from litigation in the workplace and class action suits were surely invented for a different purpose (think Erin Brockovich). Does it actually change the treatment of women in the workplace? Does it advance the mission of creating a meritocracy? In my opinion, no, it achieves neither of these objectives.
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Fastest Way To Gender-Balanced Leadership – Appoint A Woman CEO
Breaking the Glass CeilingCorporations are now, in many ways, as powerful, or sometimes more powerful, than governments. It therefore matters a lot who sits on their boards and executive teams. These are the people who set strategy and make decisions that affect all of our lives.
Some of these companies are smart enough to understand the importance and the competitive advantage of gender-balanced leadership. Men and women working together, using complimentary thinking and behaviors to innovate, understand customers, prevent group-think and limit risk. Achieving gender balance also doubles the talent pool from which to draw our most talented leaders.
But many organizations, even those that set the strategic imperative to appoint more women leaders, struggle to make it happen.
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Voice of Experience: Marcy Engel, COO and General Counsel, Eton Park Capital Management
Voices of Experience“When I was fourteen, I decided I wanted to be a lawyer. I didn’t know what that meant – I didn’t know any lawyers,” Marcy Engel, Chief Operating Officer and General Counsel of Eton Park Capital Management, said with a laugh. Engel went on to attend the University of Michigan and then studied law at the University of Pennsylvania. “During law school, many of my friends were finding jobs with Wall Street law firms. It sounded good to me so I took a position with Sullivan & Cromwell,” she said.
Engel began working in the litigation department, and after three and a half years, she decided it was time to try something new. She explained, “Litigation meant dealing with people’s fights that were three, four, five, six years old. It was very backward looking. I wanted to advise people. I wanted to be forward looking.”
She began a job at Salomon Brothers advising the equity sales and trading groups. “At the time, this was a new area. I had to learn things from the ground up – I didn’t know what a short sale was!” she laughed.
Engel continued, “It was a time of increased regulation, and in terms of derivatives and futures – this was a time when it was really growing.”
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Dodd-Frank and Diversity – Will It be a Game Changer?
NewsWould greater diversity in financial institutions strengthen or, as some have charged, destroy them? Next year, we may find out.
The recent financial reform legislation is making new waves recently due to a provision buried 454 pages in that requires 30 federal agencies to create an Office of Minority and Women Inclusion, in order to “take affirmative steps to seek diversity in its workforce at all levels of the agency consistent with the demographic diversity of the United States and the Federal Government.
Each office is required to appoint a Director, who must be at senior staff level and report regularly to the agency administrator, ensuring that this new office cannot be tucked safely away into some basement corner and ignored. The Director holds the power to cancel contracts with companies that do not show a good faith effort to actively promote diversity. The bill calls out the agencies in question, including the FDIC, Department of the Treasury, Federal Reserve banks, and the SEC.
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In Case You Missed It: Business News Round-Up
NewsTough rules to clamp down on the use of privately-traded derivatives and speculation in shares by short-selling were unveiled by European Commission in bid to tame the “wild west” of financial markets. The central bank in Japan intervened to force the yen lower. Mixed economic data in the US and talk on a further quantitative easing pushed gold prices to record highs.
Economic Backdrop
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Are Quotas the Answer in the EU and UK?
NewsThree years ago, Professor Lynda Gratton of the London Business School used the phrase the “leaking pipeline,” when she declared:
As the global economy slowly emerges into a brave new post-credit crunch world, statistics from Catalyst, McKinsey, the University of Cranfield and others indicate that the last three years have seen little change for women in business, and there is certainly still no evidence that the leaking pipeline will fix itself – so has the time now come for more direct action?
Time for Quotas in the EU?
Viviane Reading, who heads up equality and equal rights in her role as the European Union’s Fundamental Rights’ Commissioner, seems to think so. She has warned that, unless more board room seats are filled by women by the end of 2011, she will use new powers under the Lisbon Treaty to impose gender quotas at the European level, meaning that privately owned British companies (and others from countries which fall under EU legislation) would be required to more than double women’s representation from the current 1 in 10 number of seats now occupied by female board members.
Quoted in the Daily Telegraph, the Commissioner hopes that her ultimatum will change both the European business culture and the gender mix and has suggested that she does not “… rule out the possibility of legislation in this area.”
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When is an ERG not an ERG?
NetworkingCorporate America has seen the rise of ERGs – Employee Resource Groups – to help advance women and minorities in the workplace. Though this is a good trend, an employee resource group will do no good if there is not a definitive, concentrated effort toward getting women into clout title positions i.e. CEO, CFO, COO, Boards of Directors. An ERG group simply for the purpose of having one only increases the perception of how progressive the company seems to be rather than actually advancing women through the barriers keeping them from corner offices. A female colleague sent me an email the other day about an ERG in her company that seems to the former rather than the latter.
The Fortune 500 company – who I’ll refer to as Company X to protect my colleague who works there – has created an Employee Resource Group called “Women Our Way.” The stated mission of Women Our Way is to “fulfill our vision by encouraging inclusion in the workplace. We will provide a voice to our leadership regarding barriers and opportunities. We will encourage women to maximize their potential and advancement through education, leadership, networking, and mentoring.” The question this mission statement does not address is: “To what end?” The company says they will provide a voice to their leadership regarding barriers and opportunities… but through what barriers and to what opportunities? Advancement to where? Middle management? Senior management? As mission statements go this one is vague and creates more questions than it answers. Mission statements as a whole have been a pet peeve of mine for years because they usually contain a lot of warm, fuzzy phrases that are more slogan than substance. We only need look to Patrick Henry for the best mission statement ever – “Give me liberty or give me death!” No ambiguity there. A lot of companies could learn from Mr. Henry’s example.
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