Tag Archive for: Lisa Levey

Why Gender Equality is Good for Men – Part Three of Three

gender pay gap

Guest Contibuted column by Lisa Levey

Parts one and two of Exploring Why Gender Equality is Good for Men have highlighted how the familiar trope that gender equality is a boon for women and a bust for men is just plain wrong.

Today, we spotlight how gender equality is linked to positive career, and most significantly overall life, satisfaction.

Gender equality supports men’s satisfaction in the workplace and in their lives

Men in more egalitarian couples report greater job satisfaction and less intention to leave their jobs. It follows that men who don’t feel as beholden to problematic work norms [having more flexibility and choices] and who spend more time with their children, developing stronger relationships, are better able to enjoy rather than feeling trapped by their work.

Men who feel less pressure to conform to rigid stereotypical gender roles have a stronger sense of being in a high quality relationship with their partner, and may even have more, and better, sex. A controversial 2014 New York Times article Does a More Equal Marriage Mean Less Sex?, that reported more traditional gender norms meant less sex when it came to household chores, caused a stir. The problem was the 1980’s data meant many of the couples married in the 1970’s or earlier, when changing gender norms were far less acceptable.

A Cornell professor and her colleagues analyzed 2006 data and found more egalitarian couples indicated having sex as frequently, if not more so, in addition to reporting as great or greater satisfaction, than peers in more traditional relationships.

Based on data for men across European countries and American states, a 2010 study concluded that men in more gender equal societies – compared with those in more traditional ones – had a better quality of life overall based on factors such as less violence and stronger marriages.

It’s not difficult to understand why many men feel disoriented as shifting gender norms continue to redefine what it means to be a man. The masculinity code – translated as needing to always be in control, focusing disproportionately on accomplishment, suppressing emotions of sadness and tenderness, and perhaps most challenging of all, continually needing to prove one’s manliness, day in and day out – was clear.

But that definition of masculinity, while accruing benefits for men, also does great harm. Ironically, that masculine worldview is largely responsible for the challenges plaguing men today – jobs sent overseas to maximize profits, a revised employer- employee value proposition that’s transactional in nature, an implosion of the financial markets brought on by out-sized risks, technology without safeguards, and the list goes on.

Men demonizing gender equality are sadly fighting the wrong enemy. Gender equality is about men having more choices and less pressure, more support and less isolation. Males live in a gender straight jacket with a long list of “shoulds”that define how men must behave – and not behave – to be deemed worthy.

In recent decades the world has opened up for women to new possibilities and ways of being [and yes, big challenges remain] yet men are deeply constrained by old gender scripts.

Gender equality is not the enemy of men. In fact, it just may be thing that can finally set them free.

Contributor Bio

Lisa Levey is a veteran diversity consultant, having worked with leading organizations for more than two decades to assist them in realizing the underutilized leadership potential of women. Her current work focuses on engaging men as allies and partners. She led the design and development of the Forte Foundation’s Male Ally signature resource platform for engaging men in diversity work and architected a pilot program to launch corporate male ally groups. She blogs for the Huffington Post and the Good Men Project on gender norms at work and at home. In the spring of 2018 partnering with her husband Bryan, Lisa is launching Genderworks, a coaching practice for dual-career professional parents to support them in navigating the obstacles to gender equality at work and at home. Lisa earned an MBA with highest honors from the Simmons School of Management and a BS with distinction from Cornell University in applied economics.

Disclaimer: The opinions and views of guest contributors are not necessarily those of theglasshammer.com

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Why Gender Equality is Good for Men – Part Two of Three

gender pay gap

Guest contributed by Lisa Levey

Part One of Why Gender Equality is Good for Men looked at the positive effects for men in their relationships with their spouses and children.

Part Two focuses on the positive health implications – both physical and mental – for men with a more egalitarian world view.

Gender equality benefits men’s physical health

Gender is highly linked with health risks and outcomes and men continually draw the short stick. But men’s health challenges are substantially driven by their own attitudes and behaviors [which they can change.]

Men who espouse more traditional beliefs about gender make less healthy choices. They drink more alcohol, smoke more, and are more likely to take drugs as well as paying less attention to eating healthily or getting enough sleep. They’re less likely to seek medical care for preventive reasons or to follow their physician’s instructions when they do seek care. Real men don’t seem to think they need to cut their portion sizes as they age, limit how much beer they drink, or spend precious time going to the doctor but they make these decisions at their own peril.

Gender equality benefits men’s mental health

In addition to benefiting men’s physical health, gender equality plays a vital role in men’s mental health. Men more involved in the daily activities of raising children, as they rock their child to sleep, braid their daughter’s hair or give their teenager a shoulder to cry on, have the chance to experience a physical closeness and intimacy that is life affirming. Biology reveals that men are programmed for emotional connection. As men care for their children, the hormone’s associated with bonding rise, just as they do for women.

Gender equality powerfully benefits men’s mental health by countering the tendency toward isolation. In comparison to women, research indicates men struggle to a substantially greater degree with developing and sustaining friendships that feel fulfilling and meaningful.

Gender equality gives men permission to be soft – and bold, to be scared – and brave, to be silly – and serious, to be in control – and let go. It allows men the full range of their emotions, not just the socially acceptable ones like anger and desire.

Men who ascribe to less traditional gender norms have lower rates of depression and suicide, the most extreme response to the masculinity straight jacket that leaves men unable to reach out and to work through difficult emotions. Men commit suicide at four times the rate of women and middle age white men are more than twice as likely to kill themselves as the population at large. Clearly something is amiss for men.

Gender equality lowers men’s work-life stress

Men have been saddled with the primary breadwinning role for too long. And while the bias toward men as primary providers persists, a Pew study suggests there may be change afoot. While more than 70% of women and men reported it was very important for a man to be a good provider, women identified their breadwinning responsibility – and that of other women – as far more important than men.

It’s understandable why many men struggle with not being the primary provider, a role for which they have long felt acute responsibility and received social and financial reward. Yet many men fail to see how their partner’s earning capacity provides not only far greater security for the family but also far more flexibility for them. With a financial teammate, men can more easily contemplate starting a business, leaving a bad employer, or push for a promotion. Gender equality helps men to not feel stuck and without options.

Multiple research studies document that men in more egalitarian relationships report lower levels of work-life stress. What may seem counterintuitive for men is that devoting more time to their lives outside of work actually minimizes their work-life stress. The same has not been found to be true for women.

The conclusion seems to be that women and men who intentionally share home and child care responsibilities can simultaneously enable women to focus more freely on their careers and men to feel less pressured to always be working. It enables men and women to engage in multiple deeply meaningful roles in their lives.

Contributor Bio

Lisa Levey is a veteran diversity consultant, having worked with leading organizations for more than two decades to assist them in realizing the underutilized leadership potential of women. Her current work focuses on engaging men as allies and partners. She led the design and development of the Forte Foundation’s Male Ally signature resource platform for engaging men in diversity work and architected a pilot program to launch corporate male ally groups. She blogs for the Huffington Post and the Good Men Project on gender norms at work and at home. In the spring of 2018 partnering with her husband Bryan, Lisa is launching Genderworks, a coaching practice for dual-career professional parents to support them in navigating the obstacles to gender equality at work and at home. Lisa earned an MBA with highest honors from the Simmons School of Management and a BS with distinction from Cornell University in applied economics.

Disclaimer: The opinions and views of guest contributors are not necessarily those of theglasshammer.com

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The Game Changing Power of Allies

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diversity

Image via Shutterstock

Guest contributed by Lisa Levey

In the challenging work of supporting diversity in the workplace – and diversity as it relates to social justice more broadly – allies play a critical role.

But before exploring why allies make such a difference, it makes sense to begin with the question: what exactly is an ally?

The definition that most accurately captures my vision of a diversity ally is a person who joins with another in a mutually beneficial relationship. While ally relationships can sometimes be framed as a more powerful individual helping a less powerful one, my belief is there is much to be gained on both sides.

Why Do Allies Matter?

Allies matter on both a micro level and a macro level. For an individual, an ally can literally change the direction of someone’s life and in so many cases does: that teacher who believes in a student who is struggling at home against huge odds or that manager who gives a young woman the confidence to imagine reaching her most aspirational goals.

On a macro level, allies change the game by collectively redefining what is normal and acceptable. The 1960’s Freedom Riders were an important piece of the puzzle leading to the passage of the Civil Rights Act and the engagement of those who are heteronormative has played an important role in expanding LGBT rights in recent decades.

Allies provide much needed help in shouldering the heavy load of driving societal change. They provide inspiration, energy, protection, resources and validation. They send the message that you are not alone.

What Does an Ally Look Like?

There is no one recipe for being – or becoming – an ally. Allies do a wide variety of things and come in many different packages. There are allies who are bold and confrontational and those who fly under the radar, quietly driving change.

Male allies described myriad ways in which men support gender equality, responding to problematic situations as they arise as well as working proactively to change norms. With the goal of stopping a male colleague from regularly interrupting women in meetings, a male ally could call out the situation in the moment or reach out to the individual in private at a later time.

Alternatively he could create meeting ground rules that normalize not interrupting others or make it a habit to pick up the thread of conversation and return the floor to the woman after an interruption.

What Do Allies Do?

While there is no one formula for being a diversity ally, there are clear behaviors and activities that are characteristic, as outlined below. You’ll also find examples with ideas for someone seeking to become a diversity ally.

1. Seek to understand the experiences of others:

Allies communicate interest in wanting to listen and learn, doing so in a way that’s respectful and honors the lived experience of others.

Examples: Read articles about families and consider the extent to which these articles reflect the experience of LGBT women and men. Ask women in your life how, if at all, gender has affected their work lives. Conversely, ask men how gender has, if at all, affected their role as a parent.

2. Observe with a fresh eye:

Allies seek to pay close attention, often beginning to develop a new lens and seeing things that previously were invisible. They see the power that systems and structures play in driving outcomes, previously seeing only individual choices and situations.

Examples: Watch who speaks and who listens in meetings at work. Think about the last five to ten people who have been promoted at work and see if there is a pattern.

3. Practice humility:

One of the biggest challenges in discussing inequity is the guilt people feel, or fight mightily to not feel, which puts them on the defense and unable to listen. Allies have a willingness to move out of their comfort zone and to manage their emotional responses so that they can listen to understand rather than to respond.

Examples: Consider what thinking about – racism, sexism, heterosexism – brings up for you and how you can put it in context. Participate in an activity where you are out of your comfort zone and reflect on how that makes you feel – powerful? effective? successful?

4. Are willing to reflect:

Allies observe their own thinking patterns and default assumptions. Becoming conscious of their own internal biases and tendencies enables them to interrupt automatic patterns, think more critically, and respond more effectively.

Examples: Take an Implicit Bias Test to explore your thinking biases. Realize bias is how everyone’s brain is wired and awareness is the first step to disrupting the pattern.

5. Engage as partners:

Allies get involved but are conscious to not take over. They engage in the spirit of walking beside those they are seeking to support and helping to amplify their efforts.

Examples: Attend an employee network meeting at your company to show your support and to learn. Participate in an activity for a group you want to support such as walking in a Pride Parade or attending a conference such as Fatherhood 2.0.

6. Avoid contributing to the problem:

With greater understanding of the challenges of diverse groups, allies become far more conscious of how their own behaviors may contribute to the problem, and act accordingly. If they are unclear about the impact of their behaviors, they ask for feedback.

Examples: Don’t get on the band wagon of stereotypes, woman always do this or men always do that.

7. Work to empower others:

One way allies do this is by responding as an advocate, in both subtle and more overt ways, particularly when others marginalize individuals [or groups.]

Examples: Don’t give oxygen or attention to the guy who consistently cracks sexual jokes. As a team leader, be proactive in ensuring women of color in the group [who face major challenges to advancement] get their fair share of stretch assignments.

8. Provide resources:

Allies might provide monetary resources to groups or causes they care about, but they also contribute their time and energy. They demonstrate support by sharing their social capital.

Examples: If someone’s viewpoint in a meeting is being silenced, interrupt and say, “I’d look to hear more about this issue.”

9. Support changes in policies, practices and legislation:

A powerful way to be an ally is to help change the structural norms that reinforce inequality.

Examples: Support equal rights for LGBT men and women. Look at suggested interventions focused on combating sexism, and suggest to your manager or leader an experiment to try one with your team.

10. Identify and act on where they can have impact:

No matter what one’s role, there are many ways to be an ally. The goal is to determine where you can use your influence to make a difference.

Examples: As a parent think about what messages you send through your words and actions about gender roles. As a manager, understand how much you impact the people that work for you. Step back and consider what would you change if your goal was to be an ally.

In a nutshell, allies educate themselves and work to proactively make a positive difference!

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The Business Case for Gender Diversity: Necessary But Not Sufficient

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diversity

Image via Shutterstock

Guest contributed by Lisa Levey

The business case or economic justification for gender diversity is front and center in any discussion of the subject.

Yet as a veteran diversity consultant, I don’t see the business case is getting the job done. It’s not that the business case is unimportant. Clearly, it’s critical but while the business case is necessary, it’s not sufficient.

There has long been evidence of the links between gender diversity and positive business outcomes – enhanced financial performance, greater creativity and innovation, and less risk among others. In 2008 the U.S. and the world fell into an economic downturn of epic proportions. Yet as late as the spring of 2007, the International Monetary Fund or IMF was messaging continued optimism for the global financial markets.

How could the IMF – explicitly tasked with monitoring the health of global financial markets – have missed the signs? An independent study found that ‘groupthink’ fueled by lack of diversity in perspective was to blame and gender diversity is a powerful means to bring that diversity of perspective to the table.

In June 2011 Christine LaGarde became the first female leader of the IMF replacing her predecessor Dominique Strauss-Kahn who was at the helm in the run-up to the global financial crisis. In 2016 LaGarde was unanimously voted for another 5 year term.  

The IMF example powerfully illustrates the limitations of the business-case only bias characterizing our current approach to justifying a focus on gender diversity. If bringing the world’s economies to their knees does not provide sufficient evidence of the business case for diversity – and the economic hazards of homogeneity – it’s clear the business case must only be a piece of a bigger puzzle.

Most white men approach gender diversity, all diversity truth be told, with trepidation. They experience the topic as harmful, fraught with conflict and risky. For some men, the very idea of enhanced gender diversity elicits anger. They perceive women’s initiatives as reverse discrimination and see support for greater gender diversity as undermining their professional security and status. Gender diversity makes many men feel awkward, confused and guilty; they keep their distance thinking, ‘I’m not one of those guys. I’m a good guy. I’m not doing anything wrong.’ But of all men’s problems with gender diversity, the biggest barrier to their involvement is indifference and apathy. In their mind’s, gender diversity is a women’s issue.

But that is where they would be completely mistaken!

Diversity is about evolving work cultures so that men can be the far more engaged fathers they long to be. Diversity is about men being able to take paternity leave – without career penalty – so they can experience the profound bonding with their child in his or her earliest days. Diversity is about men’s wives and partners being paid equitably, so she can contribute more financially, and he can feel less financial pressure. Diversity is about men’s mothers being able to reenter the workforce after divorce so that she can support herself and rebuild her self-esteem, in many cases. Diversity is about men’s sisters who want to leave unfaithful or violent husbands but don’t feel financially able to do so.

Diversity is about men’s daughters having the same professional opportunities as their sons and their sons having the same opportunities to be involved parents as their daughters. Diversity is about men’s daughters not having to deal with the sexually inappropriate norms that are pervasive in the workplace. Diversity is about men’s female bosses, many incredible mentors, not getting the opportunities they deserve because they’re deemed too nice – or not nice enough – to be a senior leader.

Diversity is about men recognizing that many of their seemingly harmless behaviors – assuming a new mother is not up for the challenge of a new job or stretch assignment without even asking her, making sexual jokes that demean, talking over women in meetings, paying the women you manage less than the men because you can – don’t just affect those other women. They affect his women [and girls] too by normalizing and perpetuating the status quo.   

While gender diversity is the smart thing to do in a business sense, it is also the right thing to do in so many ways. We shouldn’t be so reluctant in the business world to say that aloud! Helping men realize the connections between gender diversity at work – and in their lives outside of work – has been an enormous missing link. Gender diversity is not just about men helping women to thrive at work. It is about men being full partners in driving change because they know just how much gender diversity at work is connected to so many parts of their lives and has repercussions far beyond their workplaces.   

My vision is for white men to be an important voice at the diversity table, listening, sharing, and working to co-create new norms. Gender diversity is not a zero-sum game. It’s about evolving the work world for the 21st century in ways that improve the lives of women and men.

When we talk about gender diversity, in addition to articulating the economic case, let’s also talk about how it deeply affects men – the people they care about, the values they hold, the lives they want to lead, and the world they want to create for themselves and their children.   

Contributor Bio

Lisa Levey is a veteran diversity consultant, having worked with leading organizations for more than two decades to assist them in realizing the underutilized leadership potential of women. Her current work focuses on engaging men as allies and partners. She led the design and development of the Forte Foundation’s Male Ally signature resource platform for engaging men in diversity work and architected a pilot program to launch corporate male ally groups. She blogs for the Huffington Post and the Good Men Project on gender norms at work and at home. In the spring of 2018 partnering with her husband Bryan, Lisa is launching Genderworks, a coaching practice for dual-career professional parents to support them in navigating the obstacles to gender equality at work and at home. Lisa earned an MBA with highest honors from the Simmons School of Management and a BS with distinction from Cornell University in applied economics.

Disclaimer: The opinions and views of guest contributors are not necessarily those of theglasshammer.com

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Let’s Move from a Gender War to a Gender Partnership

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nominate

Guest contributed by Lisa Levey

Gender equality is not about winning a war!

The war metaphor distracts us with finger pointing, blaming, and endlessly seeking to justify who’s the perpetrator and who’s the victim. The war metaphor keeps us stuck. The reality is we all – both women and men – fall victim to highly gendered thinking. We are stuck in gender binaries and it has been, and in many ways continues to be, our conditioning.

In an experiment that has been repeated many times and redesigned in multiple ways, both women and men demonstrate a male-bias for leadership positions in the workplace. The experiment might go something like this: participants are asked to rate the resumes of candidates for a leadership position. They are told that each group will be evaluating the strength of one among multiple candidates. What the participants don’t know is that everyone is looking at the same exact resume. The only thing that has been changed is the name and gender [and in other experiments the race or ethnicity] of the candidate. Both women and men evaluate the supposed male candidate more favorably, even indicating he should be paid more.

The Revolution of Declining Expectations

Several years ago at the pinnacle of the financial implosion, I listened to Harvard Law Professor Nancy Gertner’s keynote address at a women’s leadership conference where she passionately described the women’s movement in the 1970’s as a revolution focused on changing the workplace and changing families, not about women having the choice to work outside the home. She went on to say that far too little had changed in either sphere and that change requires viable alternatives, which remained elusive, with companies overwhelmingly still family unfriendly and as a result, continued skewed gender norms at home. Retired Federal Judge Gertner [appointed during the Clinton administration] described the current state as the Revolution of Declining Expectations which needed to be remedied by igniting the consciousness of women and men[LL1] [LL2].

Yes, women can be a top leader -but if she has children, she had better be a good mom first. And men get major kudos for being an involved dad, BUT he better be a breadwinner too or we’re not quite sure what to make of him.
Both men and women suffer from a dissonance between their egalitarian ideology and their behavior. Take for instance the common scenario where a man strongly espouses gender equality, yet somehow that doesn’t translate to his negotiating a parental leave for more than a paltry week or two or realizing that his relationship to work must evolve if he plans on being a co-parent rather than a parent-assistant. No more flying out to a client on a day or two’s notice or heading out for 18 holes of golf, feeling fully justified because he spent an hour on Saturday morning playing with the kids.

I saw this dissonance in stark relief as a member of a research team examining millennial dads. In The New Millennial Dad: Understanding the Paradox of Today’s Fathers, two-thirds of men reported they should share care of their children equally with their spouse but only one-third actually did so. At the same time, over 90% of millennial fathers indicated wanting greater responsibility and men were twice as willing as women to seek advancement, even if it meant more time spent at work.

Similarly, a woman passionate about gender equality, especially about her husband sharing the load at home, fails to realize that her dictating the terms of engagement when it comes to parenting and household management renders him a servant, not a partner. Instead of grabbing the baby in frustration if dad doesn’t know what comforting techniques work best, she – and he – are better served in the long-run by her encouraging his efforts and giving him alone time with the baby when he can develop his comforting repertoire. And, if she blows a gasket when her husband returns from school shopping with their daughter sporting – to mom’s mind – an awful haircut, she must realize her parenting micromanagement not only saps his confidence but chills his desire to be involved.

The Mirror Image of Gender Inequality

The metaphor I’ve coined to illustrate the complexity of gender, and the fight for equality, is that of a mirror image.
Men, because of their gender, enjoy a privileged status in the workplace, which I’ve seen is highly challenging for many men to see or accept. His path upward is facilitated by countless subtle and not-so-subtle norms, ranging from male senior leaders who see in him themselves earlier in their careers, his knowing – having been schooled in the masculinity code – the importance of self-promotion for advancement, and his intense commitment and singular focus on work fueled by having a spouse or partner who is accountable for home and family management.

Similarly women, because of their gender, enjoy a privileged status as a parent and the leader at home. Everyone assumes a mother knows how to nurture a child instinctively, rather than the reality of her building skill through trial and error. School and camp default to mom as the go-to parent, even if dad explicitly asks to be called first, as my husband and I witnessed year after year after year. If a woman decides to step out of the workforce for a time, because the pressure at work feels too great and/or she wants to spend more time with her child, she is comforted by the familiar trope that she is being a good – no better – mother. But it’s hard to imagine a man feeling supported to stop working – or even cutting back at work – so he can be a better father. Ask dads who are the primary caretakers, as I have, about feeling welcomed into the mom clique at school or on the playground. While some have a positive story to tell, it’s far more common to hear about their feeling excluded, literally like the odd-man out

While women continue to struggle for their rightful place at the workplace leadership table, similarly men continue to struggle for their rightful place at home and as a parent/ caretaker for their loved ones.

The Power of Gender Partnerships

For the last 2 ½ years, I have seen the type of consciousness raising that Judge Gertner described as a remedy for the Revolution of Declining Expectations in a very unlikely place, the campuses of elite business schools. It began with my attending the first event hosted by the Harvard Business School Manbassadors, a group of men who sought to support gender equality at business school and in the workplace. Over more than two years, I have been researching male ally groups across the country and it has given me great hope for the future of gender equality.
These young men work closely with their female peers who are involved with women’s leadership groups on campus. They have candid conversations about gender, educate themselves about gender inequalities at work and at home, and work together to affect change.

I have been deeply inspired listening to young men share their desire to be a good partner in fully supporting their girlfriend’s/ wife’s career aspirations and being an inclusive leader that facilitates the professional development and advancement of women and men. They see supporting gender diversity and gender equality as both the smart thing as well as the right thing to do. They have seen the struggles of their sisters, mothers, friends and work colleagues and they have heard the challenges of their female business school peers. They want to make it better, not only for women but for themselves too. They don’t want to be absent dads and they’re tired of the locker room talk and behaviors. It doesn’t square with the women they see all around them, including the women they care about in their lives.

Male ally groups have provided a powerful forum for men to get involved and to transition from ‘the problem’ to ‘part of the solution.’ Working side-by-side with their female peers, these men and women are grappling with gender in all its complexity and seeking to rewrite the gender rules.

Rather than sapping our energy fighting with one another, or becoming resigned to ‘that’s the way it is,’ women and men can be far more effective working together to make gender equality real and not just aspirational in our lives.
That my friends, is key to getting us unstuck!

Contributor Bio:
Lisa Levey is a veteran diversity consultant, having worked with leading organizations for more than two decades to assist them in realizing the underutilized leadership potential of women. Her current work focuses on engaging men as allies and partners. She led the design and development of the Forte Foundation’s Male Ally signature resource platform for engaging men in diversity work and architected a pilot program to launch corporate male ally groups. She blogs for the Huffington Post and the Good Men Project on gender norms at work and at home. In the spring of 2018 partnering with her husband Bryan, Lisa is launching Genderworks, a coaching practice for dual-career professional parents to support them in navigating the obstacles to gender equality at work and at home. Lisa earned an MBA with highest honors from the Simmons School of Management and a BS with distinction from Cornell University in applied economics.  
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