Tag Archive for: Gender gap

Women in Tech: Seven Hurdles to Overcoming the Gender Gap

women in techMore women in tech leadership would catalyze innovation, increase revenue and enhance profitability for tech firms. It would challenge the default male world and address the economic liability that the absence creates.

So why is tech still so male-dominated? Research shows gender diversity training programs are not altering the leadership composition in tech.

Perhaps it’s because the gender gap is truly a series of interconnected hurdles that run along the tech trajectory.

Attraction Deficit

Women have been disinvited from tech over the decades, often even steered away by their teachers. Both tech stereotypes and a lack of visible role models are discouraging.

Back in the 1980s, women made up 37% of computer science (CS) graduates. Nationally, women earning CS degrees decreased from only 27% percent in 1997 to 19% in 2016.

Meanwhile, Accenture found there are more jobs in the field than graduates to fill them.

Yet focusing only on attracting female students – who are inclined to be more proficient in engineering and tech tasks at the eighth grade level – is highly oversimplifying.

Fewer Women In Tech Roles

As of 2015, women made up only 25% of computing roles nationally. In the UK, only 17% of the digital workforce is women for a decade now.

“A diverse mix of voices leads to better discussions, decisions, and outcomes for everyone,” says Google CEO Sundar Pichai. But the tech profile does not reflect gender diversity.

As of 2020, women comprise only 20% of Microsoft tech jobs, and 23% of tech jobs at Facebook, Google and Apple.

“Bro Culture”

A stereotype-ridden “bro culture” that is laden with microaggressions creates a sense of women not belonging in tech.

“Diversity in the workplace has a lot to do with psychological safety and a comfortable welcoming environment in the workplace,” writes Kamilika Some in Analytics Insight. “As long as workplaces don’t become women-friendly, they would not feel comfortable enough to speak up and contribute to the team constructively.”

Pew research in 2017 showed that 74% of women in computer jobs felt gender discrimination. In a male-dominated workplace, 79% of women felt they had to prove themselves all the time.

An Ivanti study showed that more than 60% of women in the tech sector felt that long-standing stereotypes still favored men in leadership roles in tech and that women are judged by different criteria. 53% of women felt they weren’t taken seriously in the workplace.

Forbes council member Tendu Yogurtcu writes that increasing women in leadership requires meaningful cultural changes and “happened (at her company) because we focused on creating a fair, inclusive environment where everyone feels empowered to share ideas.”

Less Pay

Pew Research reports that women in computing on average earn 87% of what a man earns, with greater gaps for Black women.

A 2019 IDC report showed that, contrary to stereotype, women (52%) in tech were more concerned about compensation and pay than men (33%). Further, only 42% of women felt their employer paid equitably, while a whopping 75% of men felt they did.

The Ivanti research revealed that 64% of women would see equality in pay and benefits as a main factor in attracting them to a new role.

Low Retention

National Science Foundation data shows that only 38% of women who majored in computer science are actually working in the field (compared to 53% of men).

Previous research showed that US women working in tech, science, or engineering were 45% more likely than male colleagues to quit their job in the first year.

With lower pay, unwelcoming culture and less likelihood of leadership, it’s not surprising.

Missing in Leadership

The Ivanti women survey found that women perceiving a glass ceiling in tech (31%) rose in 2019 (from 24% in 2018).

An IDC report indicated that women in tech senior leadership increased from 21% in 2018 to 24% in 2019. 54% of men felt they were likely to be employed to executive management in their company, whereas only 25% of women felt the same – noting lack of support, self-confidence and sponsorship.

Deloitte found that women who have sponsorship within STEM are 22% more likely to be satisfied with their rate of promotion, 37% more likely to ask for a raise, 70% more likely to have their ideas endorsed, 119% more likely to have their ideas developed and 200% more likely to have their ideas developed.

According to Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), only 41% of new US tech startups have a woman in the C-Suite and 37% have one on the board of directors. Only 4.8% of S&P 500 CEOs are women.

Women make up only 25% of Microsoft leadership, 26% at Google, 27% at Amazon, 29% at Apple and 33% at Facebook.

IDC research shows that at companies where at least half of the senior leadership positions are held by women, the chances of equal pay for women, higher retention and job satisfaction are better.

Yet only a third of start-ups have programs focused on increasing women in leadership and 17% have goals to increase C-Suite representation, according to SVB.

Few Women Founders

The gender of the founder or founding team of startups has a huge impact on gender diversity in leadership, according to SVB.

Only 14% of total startups have a women CEO. But among startups with a woman on the founding team, 46% have a woman CEO. Among startups with only male founders, only 2% have a female CEO.

Yet less than 4% of total startup funding goes to women founders, and Pitchbook reports 77% of US Venture Capital funding in 2019 went to all male founding teams.

When it comes to venture firms who channel the capital, 65% have no female partners. Only 7% of partners at global top 100 venture firms are women.

All in all, tech is currently better at keeping women out than encouraging them in. If the industry wants to catch up, it’s not only one gap that must be addressed, but all of the hurdles at which women drop out.

by Aimee Hansen

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5 Negotiation Tactics Women Can Use to Fight the Gender Wage Gap

Negotiation tacticsNegotiation seems to be the best way to fight the gender pay gap. In general, it has been shrinking in recent years, according to a glassdoor study, the current status of the wage gap in the US is still at about 21%, which figures into women making an astonishingly unfair .79 cents for every dollar a man makes in aggregrate. We understand that each company and each industry differs in efforts to remedy this historical issue, but one thing is clear at the current rate it will take about 40 years to reach an equitable pay scale, according to the Institute for Women’s Policy Research.  Negotiation tactics can be an important tool for women in the fight for equal pay.

Negotiation Tips for Women

Potentially the number one weapon in the arsenal against the gender pay gap is improved negotiation tactics for women. According to a recent Harvard Law article, studies surrounding the negotiation of salary demonstrate that male candidates tend to use tactics that achieve better results than women. Deeply ingrained societal biases surrounding gender roles prevent traditional male-centric negotiation strategies from being as effective for women as they might otherwise be. However, there are ways that women can significantly affect the gap by educating themselves in tactics that work well, combating gender biases and stereotypes.

University of Münster’s Jens Mazei and colleagues studied the strengths women had when compared to men in negotiation in a paper called “A Meta-Analysis on Gender Differences in Negotiation Outcomes and Their Moderators” published in the Psychological Bulletin. They discovered some intriguing ideas that indicated how women could leverage strategies that would narrow the gender pay gap significantly. Here are five findings to use in your negotiation approach:

1. Reframe the conversation: Mazei’s research indicates that due to a societal understanding of women as nurturing, women in negotiation are more effective when they consider the idea that they are working on behalf of someone other than themselves. When women come into a negotiation with a supportive notion that they are fielding a larger purpose, such as getting more for their team or even fighting gender inequality so that the next generation will get a fair shake, they tend to be more effective in negotiation.

2. Get used to the bargaining table: Like anything else, negotiation takes practice. Because, perhaps, gender bias perpetuates the attitude that it is unseemly for women to engage in negotiations, men generally have put a great deal more time into it. This lack of experience, however, is a large factor in the imbalance between men and women in this area. Getting as much negotiation experience as possible will help even the odds significantly. Practicing bargaining with others in simulation on a regular basis can have a very positive effect on the real process.

3. Informational gathering including salary transparency: Having all of the facts surrounding a position may be even more crucial for women in negotiation than it would be for a male candidate. According to Glassdoor, when women know the specific salaries, for example, of those that work in comparable positions, they have an improved ability to negotiate more equitable compensation. Indeed, companies that practice more transparency in salary have been shown to more actively lessen the wage gap in their workplaces. In addition, Mazei mentions, not only do women feel more confident in negotiation when they have this kind of information, because it is not subjective, it is easier for women to reference a concrete number without facing adverse reactions from men who might otherwise feel their authority challenged.

4. Control your visual cues: Understanding how you are presenting yourself when in an interview is obviously very useful. Some tactics that have been suggested when it comes to body language that helps women in negotiation is to make regular eye contact. Also, make low broad gestures that originate from the shoulders instead of at the elbow; this is something that expands your body allowing you to take up space more effectively. Making sure you are presenting yourself in a position of strength is something that male negotiators do regularly and should be a common practice for women as well.

5. Think about your word choices: According to executive speech coach Darlene Price, aspects of vocal inflection like upspeak can undermine the idea that you have confidence in your statement. So can putting qualifying words on the ends of otherwise concrete statements; it creates the impression of hedging. If you find you are adding phrases like, “Do you agree?” or “Right?” unconsciously to the end of statements, it is not supporting your cause and promotes the idea that you require validation for your thoughts.

It’s unfortunate that women need to work harder than men in the current system to achieve something as basic as salary equity, but many do. Employing negotiation tactics like these can help women to reach this desired reality more quickly.

Guest Contributed by Sierra Skelly

About the Author

Sierra Skelly is a creative writer and marketer from San Diego. She loves red wine, black coffee, and chilling murder mystery novels with a strong female lead.

The opinions and views expressed by guest contributors are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of theglasshammer.com

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Emotional Intelligence – Part 2: Do Women Have Higher Emotional Intelligence than Men?

By Aimee Hansen

Emotional IntelligenceLast week, we wrote about Emotional Intelligence as a true leadership differentiator beyond IQ or “hard skill” levels or task mastery, and a prerequisite for real leadership belonging at the C-Suite level.

As Daniel Goleman, Ph. D, author of the New York Times bestseller Emotional Intelligence among other publications, highlights: “Members of a successful corporate team must, collectively, have a high level of emotional intelligence. On a team with high EI attributes, it is easy to spot those few who do not…”

But according to research, it would seem that women are significantly more likely to be amongst those who do.

Women Demonstrate More EI Competency More Consistently

Whether women have higher emotional intelligence than men has been a topic for debate by Goleman and others, though a Korn Ferry study of 55,000 professionals across 90 countries found that “women score higher than men on nearly all (11 of 12) emotional intelligence competencies, except emotional self-control, where no gender differences are observed.”

The authors, including Goleman, “found that women more effectively employ the emotional and social competencies correlated with effective leadership and management than men.”

According to the Korn Ferry results, women were 86% more likely than men to be seen as consistently demonstrating emotional self-awareness as a competency (18.4% of women compared to just 9.9% of men). Women were 45% more likely than men to be seen as demonstrating empathy consistently.

Women also outperformed men at “coaching & mentoring, influence, inspirational leadership, conflict management, organizational awareness, adaptability, teamwork and achievement orientation.” The most narrow margin was “positive outlook” (9% more likely), and the only gender neutral competency was “emotional self-control.”

When it comes to excelling at what we value, these findings complement research that shows that men are more likely to undervalue the relationship interaction with customers and clients, which women will tend to emphasize as important.

Closing the Gender Gap of Competency Perception

Generally speaking in the workplace, women tend to undervalue their skills competency and performance while men overvalue themselves on both.

These perceptual differences, reflected in the cultural mirror, can mean women preemptively take themselves out of the game. In one Hewlett Packard report, men went for the job if they were 60% qualified based on job criteria whereas women went for the job only if they were 100% qualified.

Zenger Folkman found that women’s confidence increases with age and experience so that by our mid-40’s, we’ve closed the gender confidence gap to meet men. But it’s the leaps we may have forgone in our 20’s and 30’s, when the gap was prevalent, that still factor in as lost opportunities.

Dr Richard E. Boyatzis, Distinguished University Professor, CWRU, spoke to women undervaluing, and men overvaluing, their competencies in the workplace: “Research shows, however, that the reality is often the opposite. If more men acted like women in employing their emotional and social competencies, they would be substantially and distinctly more effective in their work.”

“The data suggests a strong need for more women in the workforce to take on leadership roles,” said Goleman. “When you factor in the correlation between high emotional intelligence and those leaders who deliver better business results, there is a strong case for gender equity. Organizations must find ways to identify women who score highly on these competencies and empower them.”

Emotional intelligence is considered a key differentiator at the top leadership level, and it’s a competency asset women can deeply value even as we develop it.

How do you further develop your “EQ”?

According to a Forbe’s Coaches Council article from Cari Coats, there are four main attributes that can be recognized in emotionally intelligent leaders, paraphrased below.

Self-awareness of your own internal motivations and tendencies and emotions and both understanding and acceptance of “the good, the bad, and the ugly”. Emotionally intelligent leaders can take feedback without defensiveness. One practice that can help is to become aware of how you respond when challenged or when things don’t go well.

Transparency both in your own vulnerabilities and flaws and mistakes as well as in speaking with truth and clarity with others. As Dickson writes, “the key is showing up as a whole human and being unafraid of transparency, then working toward improving relationships within an organization, within team communications or with customers.”

Being present to perceive and listen and respond to the person or situation in front of them without judgment, while recognizing the emotional needs of others at play. An emotionally intelligent leader is able to appreciate and allow other’s emotions and handle them with empathy.

Self-mastery of emotional awareness so that they are not yanked into emotional reactions, but instead can more aptly choose how to respond in any given moment.

Want to go much further? For a comprehensive list of leadership training opportunities, books, tips, exercises, videos and assessments to help develop your emotional intelligence, please check out the Positive Psychology Program for resources.

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Hard Talk: Work, Motherhood and the Unfinished Discussion

By Nicki Gilmour

Welcome to my new column called Hard Talk.

Nicki GilmourThis column will surface the topics that are buried by most of us due to many reasons including fear, exasperation, denial, taboos and lack of information until we stumble upon the topic itself as a challenge. Also, happy Mother’s Day.

I am going to start by telling you I do not have all, if any, of the answers, but I do want to create the space for each of us to come up with our own answers while offering insight into the individual and common psychology that binds us. I believe there is value to putting on the table the systemic and psychological reasons that explain why important topics are often ignored by the best of us as it pertains to careers and the person we are inside and outside of the office building.

How to spot a difficult subject

There are so many things that we aren’t willing to talk about in society and, in this instance, corporate life. How do you spot a taboo or something that just isn’t “on the table,” or, weirdly, is half on the table, whereby the topic seems like it is being dealt with or is resolved already, but really isn’t?

A sign to look for is when the topic is mostly talked about in a personalized (subjective) way, pitting women or people against other women or other people, suggesting somehow it is not a systemic issue but rather a matter choices and opinions. This is false reasoning when the so-called choices are a binary revolving around a lose-lose paradigm that only one societal group has to participate in.

The topic must be identified for real solutions to be found.

Why is motherhood a minefield topic?

Motherhood is a tricky topic as it is an identity and a job in itself. Fatherhood, when played out as many fathers do now in the legacy mother role of primary caregiver, also begs analysis for bias, but for now we shall discuss motherhood. Not everyone wants (another taboo) or can have (another under-discussed taboo) babies. But for those who do, there is not a woman alive in a defined career trajectory who has not given serious thought to the timing and logistics of how having a kid will affect her career. Anxiety at worst, mindshare at best. Once in it, motherhood can become both a Chief Operations Officer job and an internship as moving parts and project scheduling and learning plus actual execution are all very much part of the job. This is on top of a (big, busy and important) day job.

Just to be clear, this column is not one of judgment or even grouping as everyone has different feelings towards ambition, guilt and their own individual needs regarding work and what they glean intellectually, emotionally and financially from doing it. Additionally, there are so many influencing elements around each person’s spousal division of labor, capacity to organize and delegate support. Then there is the other topic of how much money each person has to throw at solutions should their preference lie there. And if the primary care giver is your spouse – man or woman – the conversation certainly changes slightly.

The difficulty of saying small humans disrupt life as we know it

Why has it taken me 13 years and 8,000 articles published to touch this topic? Simply put, we were in another time era. It is only very recently that corporations are in a place to discuss policy around parental leave as opposed to maternity leave. Equal pay for the same job in the US and elsewhere – such as the UK – is still being truly decided and addressed. We are not as advanced as we think we are.

The perception around women and babies and how that somehow negatively affected productivity or competence was just too strong. It felt like even indulging in the conversation of babies impacting careers was an admission that there was validity to the possibility that it was so. Instead of speaking in terms of systemic changes, we were very much stuck in an individual choices discussion.

The denial around impact of any kind was necessary because it felt like a betrayal to the messaging around “you can do it,” “just lean in” and other Generation X messaging to women. Good men with willingness to change have continued to be messaged more or less the same “provider” talk until recently and those who bucked the trend have had their own bias to deal with, from being excluded from mommy coffee dates to how to enter a bathroom to change their babies.

Motherhood has been said to be the unfinished work of feminism in a matricentric theory and movement being proposed by Andrea O’Reilly. Motherhood has been largely left out of feminist theory and I think this is why my usual “push the envelope and talk about it anyway” trait, which has allowed us to talk about intersecting identities at work in so many forms, has not attracted me to this topic until now. Apparently I was not on my own but like my evolution on the willingness to talk about it, others indicate a sea change with The Guardian’s Amy Westervelt opining that, “Most surprising to me, as someone told by women’s magazine editors for years ‘we don’t cover motherhood’, is the fact that publications like Elle and Marie Claire appear to have lifted their long-standing ban on motherhood.”

Still an issue to resolve

Ann Crittenden, in her book “The Price of Motherhood”, states, “once a woman has a baby, the egalitarian office party is over thoroughly.”

And other people have written at length regarding the bias of motherhood for pay and promotions so it is felt currently by some and is far from a resolved issue, culturally. In fact, if you look at Wikipedia’s definition of “mommy track” it is interesting to see that they define it almost as a choice for women to take, instead of an action that happens to women by others.

No company has this issue cracked. But, some are trying hard to create conditions culturally and programmatically. It still feels like the conversation needs to be reframed and developed to redesign the workplace of the future with a society to match. In the meantime, look for those companies that remove the subjectivity of flextime or where parental leave is taken by men for real amounts of time. Live your values and instead of the lean in message, and perhaps focus on personal renewal while the system catches up.

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Tech’s Gender Gap Should Surprise No One

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bottom lineRecently, tech-news website The Verge published a report on diversity at at the U.S.’s biggest technology companies. In data scraped from Equal Employment Opportunity reports filed with the government, the article revealed official stats on workforce diversity at Amazon, Apple, Google, Facebook, Intel, Microsoft, and Twitter.

The numbers weren’t assuring. While women made up 47% of the U.S. workforce in 2014, the seven big, publicly traded tech companies that The Verge tracked only averaged 29% female. Amazon had the highest share of women workers at 37%, while Microsoft came in with the lowest share of women workers at 24%.

The share of women in leadership roles was even more stark. On average, at the seven companies studied, only 18% of executives and senior managers were women. The company with the highest percentage of female leaders was Facebook, at 23%, while Microsoft had the lowest percentage at 13%.

These are embarrassing numbers (and just as embarrassing were the statistics on racial and ethnic diversity – on average, only 21% of leaders at these companies weren’t white). But they shouldn’t come as a surprise. Researchers have long identified the problems behind the lack of diversity in the technology industry.

What is surprising, though, is how clearly defined the solutions to these problems are. Women keep leaving the industry; we know why; we know how to fix it. Yet the gap persists. A recent report by Catalyst identified several concrete reasons high potential women in tech leave for greener pastures and what these companies can do about it.

The technology industry purports to create innovative solutions to the world’s toughest problems. Perhaps it’s time for industry leaders to shift their gaze toward their own ranks, and implement the solutions experts have crafted to solve one of tech’s toughest problems: the workforce gender gap.

Leaky Pipeline

Tech companies like to tout their work to develop the “pipeline” of women into the industry, sponsoring programs designed to get girls and young women interested in STEM fields. This work is important and laudable. But an early lack of interest in science and technology isn’t the only reason for the low rate of women leaders working now in the industry.

The diversity benchmarking and solutions organization Catalyst says high potential women actively seek to leave the industry. According to Catalyst, women who took business jobs in the tech industry after earning an MBA were more likely than men to leave for another industry (women, 53%; men, 31%). And women who started in business roles in other industries were less likely than men to migrate to the tech industry (women, 9%; men, 13%).

Male MBAs who left the tech industry were more likely than women to say they changed jobs for greater opportunities (men, 67%; women, 52%), while women MBAs were more likely to say the left for personal reasons (women, 21%; men, 12%).

“Organizations invest tremendous resources to attract high potentials, and if that talent walks out the door—for any reason—it is incredibly costly for the company. Not only has that talent taken their skills and training elsewhere, but new employees have to be recruited and trained,” writes report author Anna Beninger, director of research at Catalyst.

The attrition problems are well documented, and so are the reasons behind them. Catalyst says women regularly start in lower level positions in the tech industry than men after earning MBAs. That means they also start at lower salaries from day one, a pay gap that persists over time.

In the study, high potential women MBAs in tech said they faced unclear requirements for evaluation and advancement, while men said their goals were clear. High potential women MBAs in tech said they had fewer role models than men, and vastly fewer said they felt similar to their coworkers than men did.

“Feeling like an outsider relative to their coworkers affects their access to development opportunities, sponsorship, and ultimately their aspirations to the top,” Beninger writes.

“Given the dearth of women in tech-intensive industries, including those in business roles, it is crucial for senior-level men in tech-intensive industries to champion women, and in time, create more women role models.”

Clarifying evaluation and promotion requirements, paying employees fairly, ensuring workers are able to meet family responsibilities and still get their jobs done, building cultures that value people outside the majority, and having corporate leadership set the tone from the top on diversity — these are all things that can help stop the female and minority attrition from the tech industry.

In practice, these solutions will take hard work to achieve. Implementing new policies is easy — it’s changing people’s mindsets that is difficult. But it is possible and necessary. The tech industry needs the best minds out there to solve problems in an increasingly complex business environment. It won’t be able to attract and retain the top people until business leaders approach this problem earnestly. Their work is cut out for them.

By Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

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That Harvard MBA Won’t Be Enough to Close the Gender Gap

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women shaking handsThe danger of conventional wisdom is it doesn’t have to be true to influence reality. New research reveals that the gender gaps in career growth between Harvard MBA graduates are not a result of women prioritizing family over career more so than their male peers. Rather, the unspoken assumption they do seems at play in affecting outcomes in their lives.

The “Life and Leadership After HBS” study surveyed 25,000 graduates of the Harvard Business School, majority MBAs, aged 26-67. Marking fifty years since HBS started admitting women to the MBA program, the researchers Ely, Stone, and Ammerman wanted to find out what graduates trained for leadership had to say about their experiences to date with life, work and family.

The study found that, “(All) Harvard MBAs value fulfilling professional and personal lives — yet their ability to realize them has played out very differently according to gender.”

Both male and female graduates marked success early on by career achievement and then both evolved their definition with age and experience to reflect that both profession and personal life mattered to them. Nearly 100% considered quality family and personal relationships highly important.

The researchers found both sexes also equally valued career fulfilment, stating “Their ratings of key dimensions of professional life, such as ‘work that is meaningful and satisfying’ and ‘professional accomplishments,’ were the same, and the majority said that ‘opportunities for career growth and development’ were important to them.” Women actually rated growth and development slightly more than men.

It’s no surprise that high-aptitude Harvard MBA graduates sought both personal and professional fulfilment, but seeking similar things with similar capabilities did not mean that men and women netted similar outcomes.

The Fulfilment Gap

Harvard MBA women did not step back from their career values, but their career opportunities seemed to stepped back from them.

Across three generations of graduates, 50%-60% of men were “extremely satisfied” or “very satisfied” with their experiences of meaningful work, professional accomplishments, opportunities for career growth, and compatibility of work and personal life. Across the dimensions, only 40% to 50% of women were as satisfied.

As their lives progressed, women reported feeling underchallenged by the work and responsibilities they found waiting for them, and subtly “mommy-tracked” right off the career ladder. The study revealed that only 11% of HBS women were out of the workforce for full-time child care – and then often because they were stuck in unfulfilling roles with weak prospects, so most Harvard MBA women were not “opting out”. Rather those seeking challenging part-time roles or flexibility found themselves being placed to the periphery as though they were only part-in.

Beyond that, HBS women working full-time were significantly less likely than their male peers to have direct reports, profit-and-loss responsibility, and positions in senior management, showing the gender bias reflected no matter what.

The researchers shared, “The message (to women) that they are no longer considered ‘players’ is communicated in various, sometimes subtle ways: They may have been stigmatized for taking advantage of flex options or reduced schedules, passed over for high-profile assignments, or removed from projects they once led.”

Importantly, 77% of all HBS graduates, and more women than men, believed that prioritizing family over career was the number one obstacle for women’s career advancement. But the researchers voiced with exasperation that different “choices” that would objectively reflect that priority could not explain the gap in leadership.

“We considered not only whether graduates had gone part-time or taken a career break to care for children, but also the number of times they had done so. We asked about common career decisions made to accommodate family responsibilities, such as limiting travel, choosing a more flexible job, slowing down the pace of one’s career, making a lateral move, leaving a job, or declining to work toward a promotion. Women were more likely than men to have made such decisions — but again, none of these factors explained the gender gap in senior management.”

In fact, previous research has demonstrated that even when working mothers overcome doubts about their workplace commitment through “heroic” efforts to visibly demonstrate it to their employers, they face a secondary form of “normative discrimination”. Hyper-committed mothers are perceived to violate the gender norm that they should be prioritizing family over work, and this projects negative attributes on their personality (not the same for hyper-committed fathers), which in turn harms career development. Hence, “efforts on the part of mothers to overcome doubts about their workplace competence do not eliminate discrimination; these efforts just change the mechanism of discrimination.”

It may be the persistence of the belief that women prioritize family over career (or should) that’s truly at play in tapering the career trajectory of Harvard women.

The Expectation Gap

The Harvard research reported, “we found not just achievement and satisfaction gaps between men and women, but a real gap between what women expect as they look ahead to their careers and where they ultimately land.”

Men started out with more traditional expectations, and life mostly satisfied them. 60% of male graduates expected their career to take priority, and that’s what happened 70% of the time. A strong majority of men expected their partner to take primary childcare responsibility, and 86% of the time, they did.

Women, however, launched their careers with stronger expectations that their partnerships would be equal, but reality fell short. Fewer than a quarter of female graduates expected their partner’s career would take priority, but 40% of the time it did. And while only half of women expected to take primary responsibility for raising children, two-thirds ended up doing so.

The researchers reported, “The fact that HBS alumnae are finding themselves in relationships in which their careers are subordinate to their partners’ more often than they anticipated strikes us as meaningful. Our findings indicate that ending up in less-egalitarian partnerships is disappointing—perhaps especially so when a career has stalled.”

Women whose careers and child care responsibilities were seen as equal to their partners felt more satisfied with their career growth than those in traditional arrangements. Tellingly, men in more equal relationships reported lower career satisfaction, likely thrown against their own expectations and gender norms too.

The Guardian lamented, “Somewhat depressingly it seems that we are still in something of a time warp, with the reality of working life for mothers falling far below expectations and ambitions.”

Who needs to Lean in?

The researchers concluded that, “Women are leaning in”. At least when it comes to Harvard MBA graduates, “Women want more meaningful work, more challenging assignments, and more opportunities for career growth. It is now time, as Anne-Marie Slaughter has pointed out, for companies to lean in, in part by considering how they can institutionalize a level playing field for all employees, regardless of gender or caregiver status.”

The study suggests we need to get beyond the conventional wisdom that a “woman’s primary career obstacle is herself” – and the premises hiding underneath it that silently justify brushing women’s career ambitions discreetly under the corporate rug.

Theglasshammer has an organizational consulting arm called Evolved Employer that specializes in helping companies do the necessary work to ensure the future progress of all employees.

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