The Business Book of the Year 2019 award winner, thoroughly-researched Invisible Women: Data Bias In A World Designed For Men, by feminist advocate Caroline Criado Perez, examines example after example of how women are often missing from the basic data collection that informs how the world – across all realms of human life – is designed: The “default male” premise.
We often see binary gender statistics reported in regards to the small numbers represented by women. Let’s flip the statistics to instead reflect the large numbers represented by men.
Over 93% of Fortune 500 CEO’s are male – a record low. 79% of C-Suite executives are men. 83% of boardroom seats worldwide and 95% of board chairs are held by men, and also 82% of boardroom seats in North America and over 95% of chairs are held by men. 98% of the CEOS for financial institutions and over 80% of executive board members are men.
100% of U.S. presidents and vice presidents are male and so now is the 2020 major party campaign race, which – in the context of many countries with influential strong female heads of state in their cultural history – is hinging on becoming an All-“American” leadership trademark.
75% of parliamentary seats are held by men globally. 94% of Nobel Prizes handed out since 1901 have been to men.
76% of news coverage when considering 20 years and 114 countries focuses on men, and 73% of news stories are reported by men. 69% of characters speaking in popular films are men, 77% of protagonists are men, and 79% of filmmakers are men – across eleven countries.
All Academy Awards for Best Director have been claimed by men amidst primarily male nominees, except one.
When men occupy 70% to 100% of representation across spheres, “underrepresented” is a gross understatement when it comes to women.
What is apparent is the pervasiveness of men in our worldwide culture as the default leader, voice, achiever, speaker, storyteller, even…human.
What Does a “Default Male” World Mean?
In her book Invisible Women: Data Bias In A World Designed For Men, feminist advocate Caroline Criado Perez points to the “default male” premise upon which much of our daily world is created – because women are either not though of at all, or just written off as a complexity.
“When typical female heart attack symptoms are called ‘typical,’ this is default male. When ‘gender-neutral’ toxicity levels for chemicals are determined using data on men, this is default male,” says Perez in an interview for Evoke. “When researchers complain that female bodies are too complicated to test on, this is default male—how else could you justify excluding half the world for reasons of simplicity?”
Social activist and journalist, Perez has a track record of advocating for women’s inclusion and visibility. She previously campaigned successfully to keep a woman on the British banknote. She also co-founded the The Women’s Room – a database of over 2,500 women experts in their fields – to increase the representation of female experts quoted in the media.
The database’s homepage addresses the disproportionate representation of male experts: “The media says that this is because there just aren’t that many female experts around, and the media just reflects the reality of the world. This website is about proving them wrong.”
It could be working to help do so, as women increased from 24% of experts in 2010 to 36% of experts in 2015.
How “Unthinking” Creates a “Default Male” World
As written in Wired about Perez’s findings: “There exists a real gender data gap that is ‘both a cause and a consequence of the type of unthinking that conceives of humanity as almost exclusively male.”
This “unthinking” impacts on women’s health and even lives. What first compelled Perez towards this book was the deadly gender gap of knowledge in the medical world.
As Perez shares in Evoke, “… because public health information focuses on male symptoms, women don’t realize they’re having heart attacks. Worse, doctors don’t realize. The result is that women are more likely to die following a heart attack than men… Our society positions science as neutral; as objective and free of bias. Science deals in facts. In truth. Only, now it turned out that our cultural positioning of men as the default humans was corrupting science.”
Perez gives examples of how ‘default male’ data feeds algorithms that make dangerous leaps and false assumptions: “First, because the datasets on which we train algorithms are hopelessly male biased, voice recognition software doesn’t recognize female voices, translation software translates female doctors into male doctors, and image-labeling software labels men as women if they are standing next to an oven.”
The evidence that the world is not designed for women appears in everything from the size of smartphones, transport and snow-clearing routes that do not reflect the amount of unpaid work women do or their daily travel behavior, automotive crash systems and seats and seatbelts designed for men’s bodies (women have a 47% greater chance of serious injury in a car accident), restroom layouts that don’t reflect the different uses or time needed by the genders, CPR training which normalizes touching male chests only (men have a 23% higher chance of resuscitation in public), and even the temperature deemed comfortable for the office space you may be working in.
The “Default Male” Data and Design Loop
In her book, Perez writes, “No one meant to deliberately exclude women. It’s just what may seem objective is actually highly male-biased.”
The tech industry and the design industry are very male-dominated industries. 74% of computing jobs are held by men, and the turnover rate for women is over double that of men (41% vs. 17%). Across 1980 to 2010, 88% of all information technology patents were obtained by male-only invention teams (only 2% were by female-only invention teams). 88% of engineers in Silicon Valley startups and 89% of executives in Silicon Valley companies are men.
Perez is quick to say that design tends to reflect the needs of the people who are doing the design (for example those who have never been pregnant may not think of pregnancy parking spaces), and there is a catch-22 loop that feeds into male-dominated design.
“Ninety-three percent of venture capitalists (VCs) are men, and these teams suffer from the same problem as male-dominated developer teams: they simply aren’t aware of certain female needs,” says Perez in Evoke. “As a result, entrepreneurs developing new tech for women need good data because they will not be able to rely on a VC already having personal experience with, for example, how terrible all the current breast pump options are. …But because we lack data on female bodies, such entrepreneurs are less likely to have the information they need to make the case for their ideas. They are therefore less likely to get funding. And so tech for women remains, for the most part, of the shrink it, pink it and price it up variety, rather than genuinely catering to women’s needs.”
In Wired, Perez shares that exclusion goes to yet another level when it comes down to excuses or shortcuts for not considering women. She cites a scaled-down male dummy being used to represent a female: “That’s not forgetting. That’s a deliberate act.”
Perez told Evoke, “The excuse I came across most often in the course of writing the book was that women are just too complicated. This excuse appeared in fields ranging from the economy, to travel infrastructure, to medicine. Women’s working lives are too complicated, our travel patterns are too complicated, our bodies are too complicated. And instead of engaging with that complexity, researchers prefer to just exclude half the world. They choose to save money rather than to save women’s lives.”
How To Disrupt a “Default Male” World?
Disrupting the “default male” world is overdue, and that too is an understatement.
The way this will ultimately happen is if there’s more women involved in data collection, design and development – so women’s differences and needs will neither be forgotten about nor dismissed.
“Seeing men as the human default is fundamental to the structure of human society,” Criado Perez writes, as noted in Science News. “It’s time for women to be seen.”
Authors Bio: Aimee Hansen is a freelance writer, frequent contributor to theglasshammer and Creator and Facilitator of Storyteller Within Retreats, Lonely Planet recommended women’s circle retreats focused on self-exploration and connecting with your inner truth and sacred expression through writing, yoga, meditation, movement and ceremonies.
By Aimee Hansen
Emily O’Daniel, CFA; Vice President, Intermediary and Retail Specialist; PineBridge Investments
Movers and ShakersThe best strategy is to always be willing to take on responsibilities and be vocal about what you want. “People can’t read your mind, so ask for opportunities and get more comfortable saying no to requests that no longer fit in your job description if you are spread too thin..”
And she adds, it’s hard to know what roles are out there and “what you want to be when you grow up” so you always have to ask questions, attend conferences and do your research to find out what other jobs are like in order to determine what suits you best.
A Growing Company, A Rising Career
That can-do spirit has served her well.
Spending her whole career with one employer has been fulfilling for O’Daniel, if a bit unusual in her generation, she points out. However, it’s given her the chance to wear many hats and take on diverse roles, all at one firm. While she had been offered a position at PwC following an internship in forensic accounting, she liked the possibilities she was offered at PineBridge as she believed working at a smaller firm would be more fruitful and lead to more opportunities faster.
Her first position was as the only analyst covering the Americas institutional sales team. After gaining some experience supporting the larger team as the sole analyst, she asked take on a specialized role within the intermediary & retail team —an area she deliberately chose since it was a channel she knew the least about so the learning curve was steep. That channel has grown since then, as has the company, with four analysts now on the sales team.
Eventually O’Daniel was promoted into her own sales role and for two years has been an independent sales woman focusing on identifying new business. In addition, she supports the firm’s sub advisory business, which she says is much like being a teacher. “You’re working with clients and helping them understand the investment strategy we’ve developed. Often it can be easy to get stuck in your day-to-day job and not see the end result so it’s rewarding to have insight direct impact as you watch people save for retirement and know you’re helping them.”
However, in terms of the professional achievement she is most proud of so far, it doesn’t even have to do with that rapid ascension, but rather in earning her CFA designation, given the challenge inherent in the three-level test, where each level only has about a 30% pass rate. She was able to juggle that massive responsibility with working full time, but she believes that accomplishing that has made a big difference in her career.
Strong Mentors Support and Teach
When O’Daniel began her career, she had expected that the corporate world would be far more competitive in terms of interpersonal relationships, which would make it hard to be yourself, especially as a novice. She has been pleasantly surprised to find that while there are all kinds of people, , by and large people have been friendly and helpful. “Even when I am in meetings with competitors, you get the sense that people want to collaborate and be friendly.”
She has been fortunate along the way to have had several role models—starting with her father, who was in sales and reminded her to always find the fun in what you’re doing. “If you like what you’re doing, you’ll be better at it,” she says, adding that he also taught her that cutting corners is never the way to succeed.
In addition, she was inspired by a women with whom she interned, who ran a successful business while maintaining a caring and kind demeanor. And she’s learned from many other colleagues, both male and female, informally and formally, through the robust mentor program PineBridge offers where you are matched annually with someone new. She says her PineBridge mentors have not only given her great advice, but advocated for her. “It’s been a great way to gain exposure to people outside of my group,” she says.
O’Daniel is also active in a recently developed PineBridge Women’s Network, which is an internal resource group to network and talk about challenges in professional and personal development. And, she’s a member of an external group, the Defined Contribution Institutional Investment Association (DCIIA), that is currently focusing on diversity and inclusion.
Since her role is largely numbers driven, outside of work O’Daniel enjoys exercising her creative side, from knitting to painting, making jewelry and handling any number of DIY projects. In addition she enjoys spending time with her family, frequently traveling to visit them in the Washington D.C. area.
Invisible By Design: The Data Loop that Perpetuates A “Default Male” World
NewsWe often see binary gender statistics reported in regards to the small numbers represented by women. Let’s flip the statistics to instead reflect the large numbers represented by men.
Over 93% of Fortune 500 CEO’s are male – a record low. 79% of C-Suite executives are men. 83% of boardroom seats worldwide and 95% of board chairs are held by men, and also 82% of boardroom seats in North America and over 95% of chairs are held by men. 98% of the CEOS for financial institutions and over 80% of executive board members are men.
100% of U.S. presidents and vice presidents are male and so now is the 2020 major party campaign race, which – in the context of many countries with influential strong female heads of state in their cultural history – is hinging on becoming an All-“American” leadership trademark.
75% of parliamentary seats are held by men globally. 94% of Nobel Prizes handed out since 1901 have been to men.
76% of news coverage when considering 20 years and 114 countries focuses on men, and 73% of news stories are reported by men. 69% of characters speaking in popular films are men, 77% of protagonists are men, and 79% of filmmakers are men – across eleven countries.
All Academy Awards for Best Director have been claimed by men amidst primarily male nominees, except one.
When men occupy 70% to 100% of representation across spheres, “underrepresented” is a gross understatement when it comes to women.
What is apparent is the pervasiveness of men in our worldwide culture as the default leader, voice, achiever, speaker, storyteller, even…human.
What Does a “Default Male” World Mean?
In her book Invisible Women: Data Bias In A World Designed For Men, feminist advocate Caroline Criado Perez points to the “default male” premise upon which much of our daily world is created – because women are either not though of at all, or just written off as a complexity.
“When typical female heart attack symptoms are called ‘typical,’ this is default male. When ‘gender-neutral’ toxicity levels for chemicals are determined using data on men, this is default male,” says Perez in an interview for Evoke. “When researchers complain that female bodies are too complicated to test on, this is default male—how else could you justify excluding half the world for reasons of simplicity?”
Social activist and journalist, Perez has a track record of advocating for women’s inclusion and visibility. She previously campaigned successfully to keep a woman on the British banknote. She also co-founded the The Women’s Room – a database of over 2,500 women experts in their fields – to increase the representation of female experts quoted in the media.
The database’s homepage addresses the disproportionate representation of male experts: “The media says that this is because there just aren’t that many female experts around, and the media just reflects the reality of the world. This website is about proving them wrong.”
It could be working to help do so, as women increased from 24% of experts in 2010 to 36% of experts in 2015.
How “Unthinking” Creates a “Default Male” World
As written in Wired about Perez’s findings: “There exists a real gender data gap that is ‘both a cause and a consequence of the type of unthinking that conceives of humanity as almost exclusively male.”
This “unthinking” impacts on women’s health and even lives. What first compelled Perez towards this book was the deadly gender gap of knowledge in the medical world.
As Perez shares in Evoke, “… because public health information focuses on male symptoms, women don’t realize they’re having heart attacks. Worse, doctors don’t realize. The result is that women are more likely to die following a heart attack than men… Our society positions science as neutral; as objective and free of bias. Science deals in facts. In truth. Only, now it turned out that our cultural positioning of men as the default humans was corrupting science.”
Perez gives examples of how ‘default male’ data feeds algorithms that make dangerous leaps and false assumptions: “First, because the datasets on which we train algorithms are hopelessly male biased, voice recognition software doesn’t recognize female voices, translation software translates female doctors into male doctors, and image-labeling software labels men as women if they are standing next to an oven.”
The evidence that the world is not designed for women appears in everything from the size of smartphones, transport and snow-clearing routes that do not reflect the amount of unpaid work women do or their daily travel behavior, automotive crash systems and seats and seatbelts designed for men’s bodies (women have a 47% greater chance of serious injury in a car accident), restroom layouts that don’t reflect the different uses or time needed by the genders, CPR training which normalizes touching male chests only (men have a 23% higher chance of resuscitation in public), and even the temperature deemed comfortable for the office space you may be working in.
The “Default Male” Data and Design Loop
In her book, Perez writes, “No one meant to deliberately exclude women. It’s just what may seem objective is actually highly male-biased.”
The tech industry and the design industry are very male-dominated industries. 74% of computing jobs are held by men, and the turnover rate for women is over double that of men (41% vs. 17%). Across 1980 to 2010, 88% of all information technology patents were obtained by male-only invention teams (only 2% were by female-only invention teams). 88% of engineers in Silicon Valley startups and 89% of executives in Silicon Valley companies are men.
Perez is quick to say that design tends to reflect the needs of the people who are doing the design (for example those who have never been pregnant may not think of pregnancy parking spaces), and there is a catch-22 loop that feeds into male-dominated design.
“Ninety-three percent of venture capitalists (VCs) are men, and these teams suffer from the same problem as male-dominated developer teams: they simply aren’t aware of certain female needs,” says Perez in Evoke. “As a result, entrepreneurs developing new tech for women need good data because they will not be able to rely on a VC already having personal experience with, for example, how terrible all the current breast pump options are. …But because we lack data on female bodies, such entrepreneurs are less likely to have the information they need to make the case for their ideas. They are therefore less likely to get funding. And so tech for women remains, for the most part, of the shrink it, pink it and price it up variety, rather than genuinely catering to women’s needs.”
In Wired, Perez shares that exclusion goes to yet another level when it comes down to excuses or shortcuts for not considering women. She cites a scaled-down male dummy being used to represent a female: “That’s not forgetting. That’s a deliberate act.”
Perez told Evoke, “The excuse I came across most often in the course of writing the book was that women are just too complicated. This excuse appeared in fields ranging from the economy, to travel infrastructure, to medicine. Women’s working lives are too complicated, our travel patterns are too complicated, our bodies are too complicated. And instead of engaging with that complexity, researchers prefer to just exclude half the world. They choose to save money rather than to save women’s lives.”
How To Disrupt a “Default Male” World?
Disrupting the “default male” world is overdue, and that too is an understatement.
The way this will ultimately happen is if there’s more women involved in data collection, design and development – so women’s differences and needs will neither be forgotten about nor dismissed.
“Seeing men as the human default is fundamental to the structure of human society,” Criado Perez writes, as noted in Science News. “It’s time for women to be seen.”
Authors Bio: Aimee Hansen is a freelance writer, frequent contributor to theglasshammer and Creator and Facilitator of Storyteller Within Retreats, Lonely Planet recommended women’s circle retreats focused on self-exploration and connecting with your inner truth and sacred expression through writing, yoga, meditation, movement and ceremonies.
By Aimee Hansen
Jack Ginter, President, Abbot Downing, a boutique wealth business of Wells Fargo Wealth and Investment Management
Men Who "Get It"Ginter recognizes that mentors and sponsors including “two very strong women” were the people willing to speak up for him on his behalf throughout his career. He has been in wealth management for more than 25 years and risen through the ranks having client facing, portfolio experience as well as significant management experience. Ginter was part of the team that founded Abbot Downing in 2012 merging three businesses previously known as Calibre, Lowry Hill and Wells Fargo Family Wealth and now manages employees and serves clients across all 50 states.
Ginter is inspired to lead from the front on creating an inclusive workforce that runs on meritocratic principles. Personally, he is passionate to build opportunities for talented women, and is motivated to use his voice, power and position to drive change.
Ginter wants to ensure that everyone gets the chance to understand that diversity is a topic for everyone and encourages everyone to do the work that is needed to clear the deck for honest conversations.
“We have spent time here at Abbot Downing on unconscious bias and what microaggressions are. Men have to engage as allies and really dig deep into the topic to move the needle.”
He urges women to seek out men who get it. Engaging with others who want to embrace the talent within the organization is essential to personal and professional growth.
“I have a daughter who is 19 and I have nieces that I want to have opportunities different than a decade ago. We have incredibly talented women on my current team who I want to see succeed and get to the next level. These women have had a significant impact on our business and the wealth industry. I believe the success of our business depends on contributions from individuals who have different perspectives and innovative ideas.”
Jack participates in supporting women and creating change as an adviser to the Wells Fargo Women’s Team Member Network, a program that is committed to building a diverse and inclusive culture at Wells Fargo for women through personal and professional development, mentoring, leadership engagement, networking and community outreach opportunities.
He is a member of the Diversity and Inclusion Council which spans all Wealth and Investment Management. He recounts how years ago, a female mentor of his team told him something that stuck with him.
“She told me that if I had a voice that has power, I have to use it. I have never forgotten that. Sometimes it is not easy to have uncomfortable conversations but men need to be engaged in the conversation. It is hard to own the fact you might have had privilege, but the overarching message here is that you have to engage and be direct in calling out behavior that needs to be called out.”
Holding People Accountable
Ginter is convinced that leaders can commit and engage in inclusive behaviors that attracts others who also believe to ensure a strong future with a complete understanding of what progress looks like. He believes in always having diverse slate of candidates when recruiting talent, a diverse hiring panel and understanding what a good culture looks like for real retention.
“We need a strong, healthy and diverse team. That is the future of our business.”
Ginter believes reverse mentoring, where a senior leader is mentored by a member of the broader team, has been a successful way for him and other leaders to really learn and listen. In this role, Ginter says he had to trust, be transparent and open with his mentor. Through difficult discussions he was able to work through communication and style issues and discuss common interests and goals.
When Ginter reflects on what advice would he give his younger self, regarding diversity and the narratives and needs of other people’s lives, he offers,
“I think looking back, I would tell myself to be more curious, listen more to other people and most importantly to never take away the other person’s decision making power.”
5 Tips to Manage your Productivity, Sanity and Career during the Coronavirus
Career Advice, Career Tip of the Week!, NewsAided by peace of mind which none of us have right now in the midst of a pandemic.
As someone who invented and launched theglasshammer from my living room in Brooklyn, I can testify to needing utmost grit, tenacity, determination and focus to produce a large volume of work on a daily basis for thirteen years through good and bad times looking at a wall or a screen. In fact, the irony is, social distancing feels rather similar to my everyday professional life of walk the dog, write editorial, do coaching on zoom/facetime, cook lunch, walk the dog, write, coach, cook, childcare on repeat. I even lived in the woods for two years so social isolation is clearly what I have been training for, dear readers.
Here are my top 5 tips for keeping it all going during this time:
1. Set Boundaries- physical, mental and emotion for yourself
Physical boundaries are the easiest. Delineate areas in your house, even a corner of your apartment to work from. Do what you need to do to make it “nice” for you. Pictures, or a bare desk, you know who you are. Keep it clean by clorox wiping the bottom of your laptop and keys and screen once a day. Ditto phone.
Mental and emotional boundaries are harder. Confine work to work and don’t check email on the couch on your phone for example. Also, to emotionally protect yourself during work do not read news, instead listen to soothing classical music, jazz, a radio station that you like ( for me BBC Radio 2 cannot be beaten) or an old “album” that brings you back to a good time. Create nostalgia if you need that on dark quarantine days as this is going to last for a while so stamina and strategy are crucial elements to keeping sane and therefore productive.
2. Get Exercise
Get up and walk outside (while keeping a distance of course) or peleton or bike yourself skinny. Whatever your jam is, and is still ok to do, do it. You can sit on an exercise ball and have a stand up adjustable desk, there are ways to create variety. Get your trainer to work with you virtually. You don’t have to go as far as Sarah Conner in Terminator 2 doing chin ups on the metal bed frame ( humor will get us though this).
3. Get hobbies.
Ever wanted to speak a language? I learned to cook when i lived in the woods, cook like Julia Child with WW2 dried goods. Challenge yourself to be resourceful. Grow veggies, knit, read books about foraging mushrooms even if you never do it. It is amazing what you learn skill wise and more importantly what you learn about yourself.
Have kids? Explore new stuff with them in the down time. Coloring is extremely soothing and Frozen 2 will provide you with plenty to do there including googling “let it go” in many languages and belting it out “Libre Soy”.
If you are a busy person, chances are there are several TV shows you have wanted to catch up on. I just started Outlander, a celtic time traveling tale that lasts for 6 or 7 seasons, that will be a great mental distraction to invest in (also life in 1743 makes our current reality as dire as it is, still better). And novels, remember them? Have virtual book clubs with your friends. Virtual wine and cheese ( i have been invited to one already). Business books and professional development books are also good and here are my recommendations for the next few weeks:
Authentic Gravitas
Act Like a Leader, Think Like a Leader
Everyday Negotiations
You are a Badass
Immunity to Change
Buy extra coffee, tea, candy, chocolate, vodka, wine or whatever you need for the days that you need a cheap thrill.
4. Get reflective time
See this as opportunity to look inwards and reflect what is meaningful to you. Take a list of “should do’s” and figure out what is real and what is not. What is working for you? What is not? What do you want to do differently when we emerge from this? What has been the best of 2020 so far that you can expand on at work? Meditate – however and whatever method works and watch how you can regain the power of your mind.
5. Use technology to get the job done
There is actually a lot to be said for saving time not commuting. You might find you do more old fashioned calling and videoconferencing with someone because you do lack the human contact factor. Email is still email. It is by getting sucked into facebook and other productivity sucks like cat videos that you will wonder why the “to-do” list is still there.
Video call your friends near and far, call your parents and older friends as they have to stay in the most.
Good luck and if you need executive and frankly, life coaching on how to thrive professionally and personally during this unusual time, book in with me at nicki@theglasshammer.com – 3 video sessions x 90 mins long that you can use all year long for $899 or book a 15 mins chat to see if it for you here
I am a professionally certified coach (PCC) with a masters in Social (I/O) Psychology, i am your person on this one.
Write “coach me” in the email headline and we can set up a time or book now if you are ready for a full session here.
You will get through this! STAY SAFE.
14 Best Tips for Working Virtually From Home
Career Advice, NewsIn today’s challenging environment with more and more sent home to work, it’s imperative to know how to work virtually. When you haven’t done it previously, it can be overwhelming, but it doesn’t have to be.
These tips should help.
Best Tips for Working Virtually:
The most important thing to do is take it slowly and try and remain calm. Contact a friend or associate and chat. Reach out and say hi. Turn off the news. Now I’m not saying don’t listen to the news, just avoid the 24/7 news cycle as that can be overwhelming. And finally, know that this too shall pass. We all will get through this and the other side will be spectacular.
Author Bio:
Diana Ennen, President of Virtual Word Publishing, https://virtualwordpublishing.com offers PR and Marketing services, book marketing services, virtual assisting services, and PR and Virtual Assistant Coaching. She is also co-author of Virtual Assistant the Series: Become a Highly Successful Sought After VA. She has been featured in USA Weekly, Forbes, Inc. Radio, Fox News, Women’s World, USA Today, CNN, Wall Street Journal, and many more. She also has many valuable resources such as her PR Success Webinar Series – https://virtualwordpublishing.com/coaching-and-classes/pr-success-series/
Voice of Experience: Raquel Rosenthal, CEO of Digilant
People, Voices of Experience“Don’t let the little stuff get to you, but keep looking at the goals with your eye on the prize,” she says, an attitude that she attributes to her sales background.
“When you’re young and on a superstar path, you want to get there quickly, but you need to continue to work on yourself. With any blip, I kept focused and realized that even if my time wasn’t now, it was coming.”
Riding the Wave of Transformative Technologies
That determination has given Rosenthal a front row seat to the transformation of the digital world over her career. In college she worked at her campus radio station as a sales manager, then got a position at a local publication called the Advantage where she worked for a year before starting her own publication, which she ran for four years. “While I started on the traditional side, I focused my career on the digital advertising industry and emerging markets. I have always been entrepreneurial, which has shaped me and how I’ve grown my career,” she says.
While she loved advertising and selling, when she started her career at DoubleClick, a company acquired by Google, she realized she had found her passion. With the digital industry just emerging,it was an exciting challenge to work with large companies to convince them to pivot their marketing budgets. She held management roles at other tech companies, including Belo Interactive Media and dataxu, and then seeking a new challenge, she joined Digilant in 2011, ascending from Senior Vice President of Sales and Chief Revenue Officer to CEO.
“I feel very fortunate to have been part of this emerging field,” she says, adding that while she is proud that she’s been able to switch gears from being a contributor to becoming a CEO, even more so she considers herself a “turnaround” CEO. “I was able to leverage my revenue mindset and take the company from where it was losing money to today, where we are headed into our third consecutive year of growth,” she says.
Always on the forefront of emerging trends, Rosenthal closely watches the current landscape within the advertising space, where there’s been a merger of adtech agency services and consulting. “It’s significant when companies with that financial prowess enter the space, so we have been focused on retooling our company to ensure we can compete alongside the larger companies.”
Along with that, Digilant is focused on eliminating siloed data within organizations and the industry to help create a seamless customer experience. Rosenthal states, “we are shifting to a single source of truth to help understand how the consumer is looking to get their data and how analytics can help us improve the consumer journey.”
A Growing World of Opportunity
Looking at the talent landscape, Rosenthal sees many more opportunities for women in middle management and leadership positions than when she started, and although there are still fewer women than is ideal, she feels optimistic about what lies ahead. Using her own company as an example, Digilant has four women in executive leadership positions, attributed to recent growth.
With a focus on diversity of gender and culture, they have implemented “Women and Wisdom”,a monthly discussion group that covers a diverse array of topics, from gender roles to climate change, all chosen by women. A robust mentorship program is also key to helping elevate women.
Rosenthal believes it’s important to stay focused on your work, but in order to bring your best self to work and position yourself for success, you also have to focus on yourself. She says, “it could be walking the dog or reading a chapter every day, but you have to have something that helps you decompress and get away from work to bring that fresh mindset that breeds creativity.”
She definitely takes her own advice, including a daily three-mile walk with her dogs and setting aside time to read books on managing, such as Radical Candor and Good to Great. “People are in constant evolution, including myself, so I love to focus on those topics that will help both myself and the company.”
Women’s History Month 2020: Stories We Tell Ourselves.
Op-EdSo, What is Really Holding Women Back?
In the April 2020 edition of HBR, Robin Ely and Irene Padevic pose and answer the eternal question of “What’s really holding women back?” In their specific case study, they conclude that a crushing long hours game was actually causing dissatisfaction for everyone, but disproportionately affecting women because they singularly were expected to take accommodations which ended up being career damaging actions sometimes. The researchers state,
“Social defense systems are insidious. They divert attention from a core anxiety-provoking problem by introducing a less-anxiety-provoking one that can serve as a substitute focus.”
Ely and Padevic studied a firm where the core problem discovered by them (impossibly long work hours) was not what the firm’s espoused challenge focus which was the ‘inability to promote and retain women’ creating a substitute problem to avoid the real one. The researchers concluded that by using family accommodations or flex work as the solution to the “substitute problem”, an invisible and self-reinforcing social-defense system was created with the result of covering inefficient work practices “in the rhetoric of necessity” while perpetuating gender disparities since only women were truly culturally expected to take advantage of the accommodations.
In my opinion, without knowing the name of the client that these revered psychologists conducted this work at, this is the type of firm that probably charges other firms five million dollars per consulting project to tell them how to work more efficiently but entirely misses the point on the social psychology and how behaviors are formed for humans, both in their own firm and the firms they are busy also creating substitute problems for regarding “diversity” and people. I mean isn’t it hypocritical of big consulting firms and banks to write studies about gender progress when they themselves are so far from getting their own house in order? People notice, eventually or seemingly they don’t notice or choose to ignore it?
Behaviors and Diversity – we tell ourselves what is what (falsely)
A new UN study on “Tackling Social Gender Norms” reports that 50% of the humans in the world still think men make better leaders and in some countries, 70% of people believe men deserve a job more than women do and overall on all factors over 90% of people have bias against women or bias in favor of men if you want to look it at that way. This study importantly and perhaps uniquely measures gender inequality from a social norm perspective and how this is operationalized through beliefs, attitudes and practices most notable the prescribing social roles and power relations between men and women in society that are shockingly defined in western developed countries like the USA over southern European countries like Spain who literally invested the word “machista”. This methodology is super important as the diversity panels and parties that have focused for the past twenty years on “awareness” just aren’t converting behaviors in anyone, women included to ones that make people vote in female leaders in government or at work. Equality begins and ends with equitable behaviors and systems thinking to reduce or destroy the legacy processes and this is just absent in the design of work and the workplace.
Robin Ely along with Herminia Ibarra and Deborah Kolb are also among my favorite academics on this topic and in many ways nothing can best explain the seemingly large and continued demand for white male leaders than their 2013 piece Women Rising: the unseen barriers which states that women are basically expected to turn into men as those traits are still the ‘mold’. Yet face the double bind when they try to gain experience that would let them internalize the identity and affirmation of a leader that is needed and given to the legacy group of who we believed to be leaderlike.
As the 2013 piece suggests, it is the absence of recognizing bias which is now second generation and covert harder to spot bias that leaves people with beliefs that limit the progress of women and as the Barriers Unseen study reveals,
“People are left with stereotypes to explain why women as a group have failed to achieve parity with men: If they can’t reach the top, it is because they “don’t ask,” are “too nice,” or simply “opt out.” These messages tell women who have managed to succeed that they are exceptions and women who have experienced setbacks that it is their own fault for failing to be sufficiently aggressive or committed to the job.”
This past week we have had an applied case study on who we endorse for as a leader with Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar both folding their campaigns while being criticized for being too shrill and strident and then too nasty respectively. Meanwhile, two ancient white men battle to face off with another ancient incumbent white guy in the other team come November. Some women are licking their wounds on Facebook over Warren it seems in particular, but we know when women and people of color call out gender inequality, the cost of this can be actually emotionally high as well as career damaging.
Are we getting anywhere?
Over twenty years ago, Robin Ely co-wrote with David A. Thomas a piece in HBR called “Making Differences Matter: A New paradigm for diversity” that suggested then that we get past the “fairness (and discrimination)” paradigm or simply put the business case of “it’s the right thing to do”. Ely and her co-author also suggested that the next paradigm in 1998 was only the penultimate one and that this second phase was witnessed when companies believed in appointing women to sell to women, and LGBT just sell to LGBT and minorities to sell to minorities with invisible limitations of side show type exclusion from the main attraction. The emerging paradigm from twenty-two years ago is I guess, is still sadly only slowly emerging and that is the learning-and-effectiveness paradigm which requires real work to get to the structural change that is needed. They write,
“Companies in which the third paradigm is emerging have leaders and managers who take responsibility for removing the barriers that block employees from using the full range of their competencies, cultural or otherwise. Racism, homophobia, sexism, and sexual harassment are the most obvious forms of dominance that decrease individual and organizational effectiveness—and third-paradigm leaders have zero tolerance for them. In addition, the leaders are aware that organizations can create their own unique patterns of dominance and subordination based on the presumed superiority and entitlement of some groups over others.”
We are in 2020 still hiding behind our deeply ingrained beliefs that women aren’t as leaderlike and that babies are the reason we are not promoted in the same numbers or authorized in the same way as our male counterparts are. Yet, childless women do not get promoted or authorized any more than women with kids do as they are hit by the same stereotype which is easier than addressing the real issues for all women and all humans, which is work simply isnt working for most people anymore without one person taking a back seat and due to pay inequity, it is usually the woman if we are speaking heteronormatively in the structure.
Women can be great, smart, experienced, and full of solid plans and still be dinged with a negative stereotype even when like the Elizabeth and Bernie situation are the saying the same thing. While the positive stereotype of great leader, competent, full of potential is still attributed to the male version of themselves or a much lesser version of themselves.
The stories we tell ourselves about the way it is, or what is better have been whispered in our ear by our grandmother, our parents and our surrounding society and are reinforced everyday of our lives. These stories are placed both subliminally and explicitly and create our beliefs and criteria and our behaviors. The stories that we tell ourselves that time will fix inequality are not true. The only thing that will stop this within our lifetime or even our children’s lifetime is to do the work regarding our deepest constructs of “what boys are and what girls are” while addressing the systems that enable and endow advantage and create disadvantage for no other reason than biology.
Op-ed: Don’t Call it a ‘Pipeline Problem’
Op-EdI can tell you from my fifteen years of experience investing in areas overlooked by most investors that the opportunities are definitely there. To take just one example, Black women are starting businesses at the fastest rate in the United States – and are receiving under 0.1 percent of all venture funding.
That’s a number that should shock you. For investors, it should also get you excited. As the head of the Urban Investment Group at Goldman Sachs, through which we’ve invested over $1 billion in opportunities led by people of color, and as one of the lead investors for Launch With GS, it’s my job to drive capital where talent is abundant but access to capital is not. And let me just say this: That is an incredibly compelling investment strategy.
In the 18 months since we started Launch With GS, our commitment to invest in businesses with diverse leadership, we’ve invested $230 million globally, backing businesses with game-changing ideas, innovative products and cutting edge technology. Our returns-driven investment thesis spans geographies and sectors – from a software provider in Atlanta, to a fintech company in Bengaluru and a pediatrics clinic in Shanghai. Along the way, we’ve heard from more than 7,000 entrepreneurs and investors, whose insights continue to shape the initiative.
But our ambition is to do much more. We started Launch With GS with the clear conviction that diverse leadership teams perform better. We knew there was opportunity in what is essentially an underinvested asset class. But we also knew that the forces behind that lack of investment were complex. The gap is about relationships, networks, biases, resources – the entire structure of the global funding ecosystem.
That’s why today, we’re announcing our first Launch With GS Black and Latinx Entrepreneur Cohort to connect growth-minded founders with the very best of Goldman Sachs. Over the course of 8 weeks, we’ll pair emerging companies with leaders at the firm who are experts in their fields – whether that’s an enterprise software investor, fintech research analyst, or a consumer retail-focused investment banker. And just as importantly, we’ll connect these companies to the Goldman Sachs network, including Fortune 500 companies that could be their customers, and leading start-up advisors who could help support their growth.
I’m an investor. I get excited by meeting ambitious people who are building great companies. Launch With GS is about connecting those founders to Goldman Sachs, a recipe that for more than 150 years has led to some pretty extraordinary successes. Launch With GS is already a part of that history. With the Black and Latinx Entrepreneur Cohort, this is one more step toward building an inclusive future.
Voice of Experience: Lisa Atlas Genecov, Partner, Katten
People, Voices of ExperienceTrust your instincts and let them guide you, advises Katten’s Lisa Atlas Genecov. Her instincts lit the way to a path that has allowed her to have a fulfilling career and simultaneously raise a family.
Finding Success Through Forging An Alternate Way
Genecov began her law career in Dallas as a Mergers and Acquisitions attorney, with stints at several large regional and national law firms. After her youngest child, now 26, was born, she decided it was time to downshift for a period, and she began to work three days a week for a smaller firm.
“I didn’t want to miss all those important milestones that my kids would have, but I didn’t want to stop working completely,” she notes, echoing a common theme among many working moms. At the smaller firm, she found herself handling numerous healthcare transactions, along with her general M&A work, and realized how much she enjoyed it. She pivoted to the health care space, and it soon became 100% of the focus of her legal practice.
When Genecov decided to return back to a larger firm and a full-time practice three (3) years later, she maintained that specialty, eventually becoming the firm’s Health Care Practice Group leader. Looking back, she has come to appreciate the fact that transitioning to part-time status led to the most rewarding shift for her career—not only did she have more time with her kids, but it allowed her the opportunity to try something new which propelled her practice into a different and very busy direction, just as health care reform came into focus and the Affordable Care Act was later signed into law, dramatically reshaping the country’s health care landscape.
About eight months after Katten opened its Dallas office in February 2018, Genecov joined the firm as Co-Chair of its National Health Care Practice Group. She came to Katten with two female lateral partners – Cheryl Camin Murray and Kenya Woodruff – both of whom she has respected and known for years but they hadn’t practiced together. They established Katten’s first Health Care practice in Dallas, counseling health care providers in connection with major transactions and regulatory issues while working closely with the firm’s white collar attorneys on health care litigation matters.
“I’m proud that I came together with these other partners to grow our complementary practices,” Genecov says. “It’s exciting to be working at a growing and successful office of a well-respected national law firm and health care practice where I enjoy working with my colleagues every day. And along with that, I’m proud to have been able to maintain a robust and satisfying career while raising two awesome kids who have become two awesome adults.”
Succeeding in the Balancing Act
In fact, Genecov believes that one of the biggest issues for women when choosing a place to work—whether it’s a firm, public service or in-house position—is to make sure you are well supported at your workplace, but also at home if you are planning to raise a family.
It’s important to proactively find mentors and sponsors at the start of and throughout your career, she said. “Look for mentors who are good at helping you in particular aspects of your career. If there’s a job that’s not working, find one that better suits your needs, and don’t be afraid of making a change,” she says, pointing to her own experience as the catalyst for a positive new path. “I wasn’t afraid to take an opportunity if it seemed like the right one.”
Along the way she has appreciated the people who have helped her, and for that reason Genecov says she always tries to be a good mentor to other women lawyers, some of whom are now in the C-suite in-house or in legal departments of large companies, of which she’s very proud.
Diversity has always been a key value for Genecov. In fact, at her prior firm she was chief diversity officer, where she felt she was able to make a positive impact on retention and advancement. She’s also invested in helping ensure the success of the next generation and pleased that Katten recently moved its Dallas office to the Uptown “Park District” area. “We are always looking for ways we can appeal to what younger attorneys value, and our high-tech, flexible office that focuses on green space will help us to successfully do that.”
In addition to her busy practice, Genecov is president of the Executive Committee and a founding member of the Center for Women in Law at the University of Texas, which helps to advance women at all phases of the legal profession. For many years, she has also been an active volunteer and Board Member with the Jewish Federation of Greater Dallas.
Now that her children are adults, she and her husband continue to find meaningful ways to spend time together; often traveling to places, including Europe and Colorado, as well as enjoying sporting events and music closer to home. “I’m so proud of my kids, and the best part is that we really enjoy one another’s company,” she says.
2020 International Women’s Day: A Call To Take Individual Reins On Collective Equality
International Womens DayThe theme for the 2020 event is “An equal world is an enabled world” – and the campaign hashtags are #EachforEqual and #IWD2020. Supporters are asked to strike the campaign ‘hands out equal pose’ on social media in order to spread the word for a stronger call-to-action globally.
As theglasshammer pointed out last year, both the celebration of achievements and shedding light on overlooked issues are valuable. But while one day of talking and hashtagging and ‘striking a pose’ creates salience and hopefully momentum, change asks for something less visible, less glib and even closer to home. The substance is in the message.
It’s not only about advocacy for systems and organizations and political bodies to change. It’s not only in the PR and action-based global campaigns. The call-to-action might both feel full circle and also frustrating, but it remains a big part of how change happens – especially in the places of privilege: We each have a daily, personal responsibility to create equality.
Beyond what we ask of governments or organizations, we can each work to advance the practice of equality in our own thought processes and actions. We can wake up more to the ways we each, on a daily basis, are often reinforcing the very discrimination and inequalities that we advocate against.
Gender Gaps Persist In Power and Visibility Across Spheres of Influence
A categorized breakdown by UNWomen.org highlights the immense gap between current reality and gender parity across several important fields of influence.
It has taken 25 years for political representation of women to double to women holding still only 1 in 4 global parliamentary seats. The Fortune 500 reported a peak in Women CEOs in June 2019, but that milestone “peak” is less than 7% of 500 CEO seats. To date, only 53 of the 900 Noble Peace Prize winners have been women, with only 19 winners in the categories of physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine. Only 30% of STEM current researchers are women, and only 35% of STEM students are.
When it comes to media representation, the creative engine of our cultural narrative, women are one third as visible as men. A global media study across 20 years and 114 countries showed that “only 24 per cent of the persons heard, read about or seen in newspaper, television and radio news are women.” Women are also only 26% of persons covered in digital media and a decade-long stagnant 37% of news reporters. Only a pithy 4% of total stories challenge gender stereotyping.
Entertainment, it seems, reflects reality in the relative skewed representation towards men’s voices and men’s experience. A popular films analysis across 11 countries found that only 31% of all speaking characters were women and only 23% had a female protagonist, perhaps not shockingly mirroring that 21% of filmmakers are women.
Women are not only scarce in positions of power and influence. We are simply less present in the cultural feed that influences so much of our conditioned perception.
UN Women “Generational Equality” Campaign Also Iterates Individual Agency
As stated on the campaign site, #EachforEqual is calling for ‘Collective Individualism’: “Individually, we’re all responsible for our own thoughts and actions – all day, every day. We can actively choose to challenge stereotypes, fight bias, broaden perceptions, improve situations and celebrate women’s achievements.”
The UN International Women’s Day 2020 campaign also reflects the ‘collective individualism’ theme: “I am Generational Equality: Realizing Women’s Rights,” with a continued focus on uniting all advocates for equality – regardless of race, age, country, gender, religion, ethnicity etc – but especially across generations.
2020 represents 25 years since the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action at the UN’s Fourth World Conference on women, which is “recognized as the most progressive roadmap for the empowerment of women and girls, everywhere” and set out to achieve global gender equality across 12 critical areas.
According to UN Women, this is a pivotal year for taking worldwide stock of progress made on women’s rights, and accelerating gender equality now.
The organization reports, “The emerging global consensus is that despite some progress, real change has been agonizingly slow for the majority of women and girls in the world. Today, not a single country can claim to have achieved gender equality. Multiple obstacles remain unchanged in law and in culture. Women and girls continue to be undervalued; they work more and earn less and have fewer choices; and experience multiple forms of violence at home and in public spaces. Furthermore, there is a significant threat of rollback of hard-won feminist gains.”
What Could Collective Individualism Look Like?
“We are all parts of a whole,” iterates #EachforEqual. “Our individual actions, conversations, behaviors and mindsets can have an impact on our larger society.”
In resonance with #EachForEqual, UN Women states that change “isn’t just about big headline moments, legal victories and international agreements: the way we talk, think, and act every day can create a ripple effect that benefits everyone.”
On this point, the UN Women campaign has introduced “12 Small Actions with Big Impact for Generation Equality.” These include: share the (domestic, unpaid, parenting) care, call out sexism and harassment, reject the binary, demand an equal work culture, exercise your political rights, shop responsibly, amplify feminist books and movies and more, teach girls their worth, challenge what it means to be a “man”, commit to a cause, challenge beauty standards and respect the choices of others.
Hira Ali in Forbes also offers up four suggestions for activating #EachForEqual: create awareness about generation equality; support non-profit organizations for women; celebrate, support and collaborate with other women; and start mentoring girls early.
Most of all, when it comes to all belief constructs, we need to challenge where we’ve swallowed the story ourselves. While we cannot control or choose every thought that crosses the pasture of our minds, we can wake up to realizing that our thoughts, instincts, feelings, etc are unconsciously biased by internalized societal gendered conditioning. And we can know that this is further reinforced by systemic bias, so we’re often more supported to go down the well-trafficked path of bias.
Paradigms are hard to shake. Often we neither realize insidious bias is in play, nor how it permeates our thoughts, our fears, our assumptions and our actions. As theglasshammer CEO Nicki Gilmour recommends, “Test assumptions for best results.”
This is part of why Catalyst’s #BiasCorrect Campaign, launched in 2019, actively focuses on helping “individuals identify and mitigate the biases that exist in our workplaces and within each of us.”
The overall IWD campaign message of 2020 seems to boil down to this: Call yourself to action, for the collective change. Anything that is systemic will eventually falter if more and more individuals no longer acquiesce, consent, conform or comply – in the many conscious and unconscious daily ways we do – to support the status quo.
This year’s IWD2020 theme is iterating that agency for change begins with intentionally becoming more equality, inside and out, in how you perceive and show up in the world.
Authors Bio: Aimee Hansen is a freelance writer, frequent contributor to theglasshammer and Creator and Facilitator of Storyteller Within Retreats, Lonely Planet recommended women’s circle retreats focused on self-exploration and connecting with your inner truth and sacred expression through writing, yoga, meditation, movement and ceremonies.