Image via Catalyst
Metrics, metrics, metrics was the theme of this year’s Catalyst Awards Conference. Held yesterday in New York at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, the Conference honored award winners Campbell Soup, Deloitte, LLP, RBC, and Telstra Corporation Limited.
Each of these companies demonstrated a passionate commitment toward promoting workplace gender diversity, and they had the numbers to prove it. The general consensus within the conference, attended by over 70 CEOs and 1500 industry leaders, was: “if you set targets for other parts of your business, why not set gender and diversity targets as well?”.
“The business case for gender diversity is so clear,” commented Julie Nugent, Director, Research and Chair of the Catalyst Award Evaluation Committee, referring to recent studies showing that gender diversity at the top ranks of companies improves their bottom line. “This is truly becoming a global initiative.”
With the award winning companies based in the US, Canada, and Australia, Nugent explained that Catalyst received applications from all over the world, citing a particularly large increase in applications from the Asia-Pacific region this year.
The international research-based organization works “with businesses and the professions to build inclusive workplaces and expand opportunities for women and business.” The awards honor “innovative approaches with proven results taken by organizations to address the recruitment, development, and advancement of all managerial women, including women of color.”
Intrepid Woman: Betty Ross, Financial Advisor, Sapient Financial Group
Intrepid Women SeriesAfter speaking to Betty Ross, you realize the power that comes with being honest and straightforward and that sometimes, a frank approach is the best approach. So let’s begin: What are the chances that a young black girl growing up in the segregated South during some of the region’s most tumultuous times would persevere and make a grand life for herself after growing up in low-income housing to parents with eighth grade educations? Are her chances even further diminished when she becomes the woman of the house after her mother passed away when she’s just thirteen, baring her with the full brunt of domestic responsibilities for her father and four siblings? What are her chances when she becomes a teenage bride and mother for the first time at eighteen, and a divorced mother of two at twenty?
For Betty Ross, a seventy-year-old financial advisor currently with Sapient Financial Group, who grew up in an area where high school was the height of education, succeeding and going beyond what was expected of her was never a choice, but rather the only option – no matter how long it took.
In 1971, Ross left San Antonio, Texas – where she was born and raised and currently lives today – just seven years after the city had officially been integrated, though it was still experiencing a great deal of racial unrest. “I decided that being in Texas wasn’t good for me or my sons; it held too many painful memories and the city was slow to progress,” Ross said. “I wanted to provide my sons with a different outlook on life.” If you’ve encountered Ross – even for a moment – you’ll understand that her sons would have turned out just fine without the change of location because her strong spirit, fearlessness, and tenacity are enough to facilitate any change necessary.
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Measuring Up: Diversity Accountability Scores Big at Catalyst Awards Conference
NewsImage via Catalyst
Metrics, metrics, metrics was the theme of this year’s Catalyst Awards Conference. Held yesterday in New York at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, the Conference honored award winners Campbell Soup, Deloitte, LLP, RBC, and Telstra Corporation Limited.
Each of these companies demonstrated a passionate commitment toward promoting workplace gender diversity, and they had the numbers to prove it. The general consensus within the conference, attended by over 70 CEOs and 1500 industry leaders, was: “if you set targets for other parts of your business, why not set gender and diversity targets as well?”.
“The business case for gender diversity is so clear,” commented Julie Nugent, Director, Research and Chair of the Catalyst Award Evaluation Committee, referring to recent studies showing that gender diversity at the top ranks of companies improves their bottom line. “This is truly becoming a global initiative.”
With the award winning companies based in the US, Canada, and Australia, Nugent explained that Catalyst received applications from all over the world, citing a particularly large increase in applications from the Asia-Pacific region this year.
The international research-based organization works “with businesses and the professions to build inclusive workplaces and expand opportunities for women and business.” The awards honor “innovative approaches with proven results taken by organizations to address the recruitment, development, and advancement of all managerial women, including women of color.”
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You Can’t Be Serious? 6 Ways to Get Taken Seriously at Work
Office PoliticsWhen a previous boss of mine told me I’d be a more significant player at work when I looked older, I almost rushed out and bought a twin set and pearls. But surely there are other ways to get taken seriously at work, aside from dying your hair grey and borrowing clothes from your elderly aunts.
The Glass Hammer spoke to six experts about how to come across confidently, professionally, and seriously in the workplace. Here’s what they had to say.
“Women often have less confidence than men – even when they have the same or superior smarts, experience, and talents,” says Ann Demarais, Ph.D., author of First Impressions: What you don’t know about how others see you, and owner of a business communication consultancy. “Their confidence is not always commensurate with their competence. Women leak this lack of confidence in their body language – by appearing quiet, fidgety, or overly perky.”
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PwC’s GLBT Diversity Initiative: “I am Open”
NewsAt PricewaterhouseCoopers, diversity means openness – about oneself and about accepting others’ differences. The company explains that “open working relationships are stronger and more productive.” Openness about difference allows colleagues greater opportunities to learn about one another, and find common ground.
Jennifer Allyn, Managing Director, Office of Diversity, explained that GLBT inclusiveness is often overlooked within diversity programs, because “the gay dimension of diversity is invisible.” That is, people can’t usually tell if someone fits into this group simply by their appearance.
“Five to six years ago, PwC convened a board of GLBT partners to advise our diversity team, to make sure GLBT staff feel included and welcome at our firm,” Allyn explained. “The advisory board is made up of very visible role models” – role models for both GLBT individuals, as well as PwC employees at large.
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Ada Lovelace Day: Our Top Five Women in Technology and Science
Industry Leaders, LeadershipAda Lovelace
By Elisabeth Grant (Washington, D.C.)
Why so few? Why so few women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics? This is the question the American Association of University Women (AAUW) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) sought to answer in a joint report they recently conducted and released. The report addressed a myriad of factors that contribute to the low numbers of women in technology and science, from “beliefs about intelligence” to “workplace bias” (see the New York Times’ excellent analysis of the report in the article, “Bias Called Persistent Hurdle for Women in Sciences“).
In the Forward of the report, the AAUW explains that the study “focuses on practical ways that families, schools, and communities can create an environment of encouragement that can disrupt negative stereotypes about women’s capacity in these demanding fields.”
In an effort to support this, we present five extraordinary women in technology and science to encourage and promote the inclusion of women in these fields. There are, of course, so many more women that could be have been mentioned in this post, and please feel free to add their names to the comment section below.
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New FWA Report: Optimistic Outlook Despite Discouraging Numbers
News“I think that the numbers pretty much speak for themselves,” said Ziporah Janowski, co-chair of the Financial Women’s Association of New York’s Corporate Governance Committee. “They’re discouraging.”
The 2009 FWA100 Study:The Time Has Come, released last week, analyzes the presence of women at the highest levels of major corporations in New York. According to this year’s report:
“On an aggregate basis, the percentage of board seats held by women in the overall population remained virtually unchanged at 17.8% (17.6% in the 2008 study). Women gained a net total of one board seat. The number of companies in the sample with no women on their boards actually increased from 9 to 11 this year, a 22% increase.”
But rather than dwell on the negative aspects of the report, Janowski said, “we want to focus on positive signs of change.”
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Women at the Top of Tech: Two New Reports Released by the Anita Borg Institute
Breaking the Glass Ceiling, FeaturedTwo new reports published yesterday detail the challenges faced by women at the top of the tech industry, as well as practical steps to keep them there. The Anita Borg Institute, a non-profit organization working within the technology industry and academia to make the tech field more welcoming to women, has released Senior Technical Women: A Profile of Success and the 2009 Technical Executive Forum report on the Recruitment, Retention, and Advancement of Technical Women: Barriers to Cultural Change in Corporations.
Senior Technical Women details the challenges faced by women who have climbed to the top of their companies – and discusses how they managed to succeed despite these challenges. According to the report, “women hold 24% of technology jobs, yet represent half the total workforce. This underrepresentation persists even though the demand for technical talent remains high…” The report, based on a 2008 “survey of 1,795 technical men and women at seven high-technology companies in Silicon Valley,” focuses on the responses given by senior technical women – 4% of the individuals who participated in the study.
“This report asks ‘what about the women who beat the odds and made it to the senior levels?’” explained Dr. Caroline Simard, Vice President of Research and Executive Programs. Dr. Simard went on to explain that the report should be useful to companies looking to retain senior technical women as well as for young and mid-career women looking for advice as they work to advance into leadership roles.
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Voice of Experience: Heike Eckert, Executive Director, Eurex
Voices of ExperienceImage via MarketsWiki
In the mid 1990s, Heike Eckert launched DTB’s US office in Chicago (DTB is a predecessor of Eurex) and after successfully establishing Eurex’s electronic trading business in the US moved back to Frankfurt in 2000 to head up global marketing and sales for Eurex. She moved back to Chicago in 2006 to further expand Eurex’s North American offices in Chicago and New York, and in late 2009, headed back to Frankfurt where she currently resides.
Throughout her career, Eckert has worked with people from many different cultures and expressed the need to differ her management style in the U.S. and Germany.
“We always think that Western culture is the same wherever you go but it is very different. The U.S. has a hierarchical structure and is very goal orientated,” she said. “In Germany, everything is much more of a discussion. We are a society of debate historically.”
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Where’s My Yacht? Conceptualizing the Wage Gap
Money TalksAccording to a recent article in The Glass Hammer, and numerous recent studies, women make, on average, about 76 – 80 cents on the dollar compared to men. But what does this mean over the course of a lifetime?
Luckily, Women are Getting Even (WAGE), a nonprofit organization based in the United States and led by Evelyn F. Murphy, author of Getting Even: Why Women Don’t Get Paid Like Men and What To Do About It and Annie Houle, National Director of Campus and Community Initiatives, has done the math for us. According to WAGE, over the course of a lifetime, a female high school graduate will lose about $700,000. A female college graduate will lose $1.2 million. And a female professional school graduate will lose $2 million dollars, because of underlying assumptions and outright discrimination based on gender.
These dollar amounts certainly help us conceptualize the cost of gender discrimination in the workplace. But wouldn’t more concrete examples better illustrate the cost of today’s wage gap? Or better yet, what could you purchase with those lost dollars?
Yes, of course. The best things in life are free: a loving family, a fulfilling life, having the last laugh, etc. But let us indulge our materialistic sides, though, for just a bit.
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It’s Not Too Late to Set Career Goals for 2010!
Office PoliticsNew Year’s Eve has come and gone, but that doesn’t mean it’s too late to set career goals for 2010. Even if you have found yourself higher up the corporate ladder than you ever thought possible, it’s important to reflect on what success means to you. Does it simply mean attaining a specific title or earning a large paycheck? Setting career goals for yourself, no matter how much you’ve achieved or how idealistic they seem, is a good way to stay on top of your game and motivate yourself to not only do more, but do better.
Women need to take a more aggressive stance with their careers and the goals outlined below will help them do just that. It should be pointed out that though it’s great to have major career goals like become partner or CEO of a company, these five goals can actually be accomplished over the course of the remaining year so that by New Year’s Eve 2011, you’re on your way to bigger and better things. Here then, are five career goals that women at any level in corporate America should consider taking on over the remainder of the year:
It’s a given that most of your colleagues in corporate America have impressive accomplishments and a wide range of skills, but what gets certain people – men in particular – the promotion you’ve been hoping for? It’s a proven fact that networking leads to jobs and with so many qualified candidates in the job pool, sometimes it really does come down to who you know. Networking can mean schmoozing at a company event, attending an industry dinner, or maybe even hitting the golf course, but it’s got to be done. Read more