By Tina Vasquez (Los Angeles)
The InterOrganization Network (ION) recently released its annual Report on the Status of U.S. Women Directors and Executive Officers and, as has been the case for the past six years the study has been conducted, the results aren’t much to be excited about. Or, as ION more optimistically states, the findings illustrate a “bleak landscape ripe for change.”
The Numbers
ION has 14 regions that are represented by their member organizations, these include: California, Chicago, Dallas-Fort Worth, Florida, Georgia, Kansas City, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Philadelphia, Tennessee, and Wisconsin. In these regions, women were found to hold between 7.6 and 17.8 percent of board seats in the nearly 2,000 companies included in the study.
In Fortune 500 companies located in the 14 regions, women hold between 12 and 19.5 percent of all board seats, while in Fortune 501 to 1000 companies, women hold between 6.3 and 18 percent of all seats.
Often with the results, the bad outweighs the good. For example, companies with boards on which women comprise 25 percent or more range between 1.4 and 21 percent. However, the percentages of companies that have no women directors range between 11 and 55 percent. And women of color have even less representation. ION’s 14 member organizations report that women of color hold between 0.8 and 3.6 percent of the board seats of companies in their respective research pools. It was also found that between 32 and 70 percent of the companies surveyed have no women in their executive suites and between 60 and 78.1 percent of companies surveyed don’t have a single woman among their highest paid executives.
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In Case You Missed It: Business News Roundup
NewsUS Fed Chairman Bernanke predicted a “moderate economic recovery” would unfold in the US during the next several quarters. For Britain, the Ernst & Young Item Club forecast weak 1% growth this year, giving way to 2.7% next year and 3.4% in 2012. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) took action against Goldman Sachs, claiming the company misstated and omitted key facts about a collateralized debt obligation.
Economic Backdrop
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Voice of Experience: Elaine Sarsynski, Executive Vice President, MassMutual’s Retirement Services Division and Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, MassMutual International LLC
Voices of ExperienceTechnically, Massachusetts is in very close proximity to the bright lights and big city that is New York, but the small town of Hadley, where Elaine Sarsynski, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of MassMutual International and Executive Vice President and head of MassMutual’s Retirement Services business, called her home couldn’t have felt farther away. Sarsynski is currently the top ranked female executive at the company and was recently named one of the Top 15 Women in Business by PINK Magazine. But her attraction to business and her early understanding of its most basic concepts actually came as a result of working on her parent’s 60-acre vegetable farm.
“Working on the farm exposed me to the business side of things very early on,” Sarsynski said. “I can remember being a little kid and listening to my parents discuss things like venture capital, wholesale, and investment strategies at the dinner table and I soaked it all up. My mother was actually an astute business woman and was always thinking of clever ways to grow the business and make it profitable. I decided early on that I wanted to be a business woman, too, but I didn’t know it would ever actually take me off the farm.”
Sarsynski’s big chance came when she was just a junior at Smith College majoring in economics. One day, MassMutual came to her campus offering “a Day at MassMutual” to young women interested in the financial services industry. The young college student was eventually chosen to participate in the visit to corporate headquarters and upon making her entrance to MassMutual’s beautiful building, Sarsynski immediately knew she wanted to work at the company someday.
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Taking a Holistic Approach: Diversity Advice from Accenture
Expert Answers“I would first start off by saying we are very comprehensive,” explained LaMae Allen deJongh, managing director of U.S. Human Capital & Diversity at Accenture. “We emphasize inclusiveness, not only of diversity you can see, but also diversity that is invisible. Different interests and backgrounds are what make it special for us.”
She continued, “Regardless of the type of diversity we are talking about, at Accenture we work to integrate and embed it into the fabric of our organization – it’s part of our DNA.”
Accenture, recently named one of DiversityInc’s Top 50 Companies for Diversity for the fourth consecutive year, has, for many years, focused on building gender diversity. Now, as deJongh explained, the organization is moving into a new phase of diversity – from a programatic focus toward a more holistic approach.
She explained, “We continue to evolve. From my optics, achieving embedding is the next stage of maturity.” How can the holistic approach work for your firm? DeJongh has offered several tips based on her own experience at Accenture that may work for your company.
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It Pays to Negotiate: 5 Tactics That Work
Expert AnswersIf you think about it, we’re engaging in negotiations at work all the time. Whether we’re asking for the big promotion, the funding to attend a training or conference, for a vendor to come down on their prices, or to take a vacation during “busy” season, we’re in more bargaining situations than we realize.
With the pay disparity still a reality for most women, we need as many negotiation tools as possible at our disposal. What better time to revisit negotiation than now–as we approach April 20–the fifteenth annual Equal Pay Day? Consider the following strategies the next time you enter a negotiation at work, and remember, real-life practice is the very best preparation for negotiating.
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Accounting: Why Women Leave – and How to Keep Them
NewsIn September of last year, The Glass Hammer informed readers of the first ever Accounting MOVE Project, which was spearheaded by the American Society of Women Accountants (ASWA) along with Joanne Cleaver, president and founder of the research firm Wilson-Taylor Associates. The project and its accompanying report aimed to find out exactly where the glass ceiling is – and it succeeded admirably. It was revealed that a large percentage of female accountants abandon public accounting firms at the senior manager level.
The 2010 Accounting MOVE Project, released today, documents why women leave the profession. Cleaver and her team conducted hundreds of interviews with women at different stages in their career, as well as with academics, firm employees, and recruiters (among many others) in order to provide a 360 point of view of the industry and find out why its failing to retain its female talent. The study indicates that while that women account for more than half of all firm employees (51.4 percent), only 40 percent of them hold senior manager positions and only 17.4 percent become partners. What’s keeping women out of the top ranks?
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Don’t Get Dooced! Staying Employable Online
Office PoliticsHeard the one about the girl sacked via Facebook? Or the woman fired for blogging about her sex life? The internet is a dangerous place. “While fewer than 2% of employers have terminated employees for violations committed on business or personal blogs, that number is certain to grow as workplace blogging becomes more prevalent,” says Nancy Flynn, in her book The e-Policy Handbook. There are millions of blogs online, and if you write one you could be at risk of being marched out of your office with your stuff in a cardboard box. There’s even a word for it: dooced.
In 2002, Heather Armstrong, a web designer from Los Angeles, lost her job after her employers decided they didn’t appreciate what she had written on her website, Dooce. And a new word passed into the lexicon. Armstrong now makes a living from blogging and her website supports her family. However, she’s pragmatic about how she ended up writing as a career. “In February 2001, I launched dooce.com as a place to write about pop culture, music, and my life as a single woman,” she writes on her blog. “I never expected more than a couple of dozen people to read it. A year later I was fired from my job for this website because I had written stories that included people in my workplace. My advice to you is BE YE NOT SO STUPID.”
Here are our six tips to keep yourself employable online, and avoid the stupid stuff.
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Ripe for Change: ION’s New Report Highlights Business Case for Diversity
NewsThe InterOrganization Network (ION) recently released its annual Report on the Status of U.S. Women Directors and Executive Officers and, as has been the case for the past six years the study has been conducted, the results aren’t much to be excited about. Or, as ION more optimistically states, the findings illustrate a “bleak landscape ripe for change.”
The Numbers
ION has 14 regions that are represented by their member organizations, these include: California, Chicago, Dallas-Fort Worth, Florida, Georgia, Kansas City, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Philadelphia, Tennessee, and Wisconsin. In these regions, women were found to hold between 7.6 and 17.8 percent of board seats in the nearly 2,000 companies included in the study.
In Fortune 500 companies located in the 14 regions, women hold between 12 and 19.5 percent of all board seats, while in Fortune 501 to 1000 companies, women hold between 6.3 and 18 percent of all seats.
Often with the results, the bad outweighs the good. For example, companies with boards on which women comprise 25 percent or more range between 1.4 and 21 percent. However, the percentages of companies that have no women directors range between 11 and 55 percent. And women of color have even less representation. ION’s 14 member organizations report that women of color hold between 0.8 and 3.6 percent of the board seats of companies in their respective research pools. It was also found that between 32 and 70 percent of the companies surveyed have no women in their executive suites and between 60 and 78.1 percent of companies surveyed don’t have a single woman among their highest paid executives.
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Full disclosure: UK Government steps in to get more women into the boardroom
Featured, NewsUK companies may be required to report on their efforts to get more women into the boardroom. The Government has asked the Financial Reporting Council, which is currently consulting on its UK Corporate Governance Code, to consider adding in a requirement to get companies to disclose what they are doing to increase the number of women in senior management roles. It’s not exactly clear what would then happen to the data disclosed, but it’s likely to be used to highlight firms that aren’t making enough of an effort.
“Britain needs more women in the boardroom,” says Harriet Harman, Minister for Women and Equalities. “Too many British boardrooms are still no-go areas for women. Women are important consumers and employees. We’ll never get a proper meritocracy or truly family-friendly workplaces from male dominated boards.”
Harman’s proposals have been backed by the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown. “We all recognise the value of strong role models for women in all walks of life – and there are many in politics, the arts, public services, sport and the third sector,” he said. “But there are too few in Britain’s boardrooms. When more than half of graduates are women, it is completely unacceptable that some of our top 100 public companies have not a single woman on their boards – and that none at all have a majority of women on their boards. A new principle in the governance code on diversity would build on the provisions in the equality bill, which allow employers to take positive action when recruiting to balance their workforce.”
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Voice of Experience: Susan Allen, FCA, CPA, Audit Partner, TICE Assurance Leader, PricewaterhouseCoopers
Voices of ExperienceMotivated by a “secret love” of being a teacher, Susan Allen, TICE (Technology, Information Communications and Entertainment) Assurance Leader for PwC Canada and Chair of the firm’s Women in Leadership/Retention of Women initiative, has built her career on her leadership capabilities, and is motivated by a passion for encouraging women leaders.
She began her career at the University of Toronto. “I graduated from university with a geography and drama degree, because I wanted to be a teacher,” Allen explained. “I fell into accounting because I took on a job as the University Cashier, and the world of accounting opened up to me as I started taking courses.” Allen joined PricewaterhouseCoopers in 1981, after taking an introductory accounting course, and was offered a position in training as a new manager – which was perfect for her inclination toward teaching. “Funny that I had to get my CA to be a teacher!” she joked.
A 3 year secondment and two children later, Allen was promoted to senior manager. Commending PwC for the company’s flexibility, she said, “I decided that part time was the answer for me.” Working full time January through April, three days per week May through September, and four days per week September through June allowed her to spend more time with her young children – and still make partner in the regular amount of time.
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6 Steps to Take On the Unwritten Rules Keeping Women out of Leadership Roles
Expert AnswersFor years we’ve been told to be patient.
“Just give it time,” say the powers that be. “We’ll soon see more women leaders in government, corporations, law firms, universities, and more… just give it a little more time…”
The fact is, men still lead 80% to 90% of organizations worldwide. Yes, some women have moved up and into corner offices, but they’re relatively few in number, and the rate of change is painfully slow – in some countries it’s actually stalled.
Women constitute half of the world’s labor force. We now make or influence the majority of consumer buying decisions.
Why, then, do we still see so few women making key decisions in boardrooms and executive suites?
A big part of the answer is the unwritten rules.
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