culture

Tips for Creating Equitable Workplaces from the New Rules Summit

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On June 12 and 13, 2019, the New York Times sponsored the New Rules Summit on women and leadership. Here are some of the tips for how to create an equitable workplace generated during the summit by participants and reported by the New York Times:

  1. Encourage men to be allies—Companies need to build cultures that bring white men into the conversation about diversity and inclusion. Men should become partners in the conversation about inclusion, and the reward system should incentivize behavior change. “What gets measured gets done,” noted Michael Chamberlain of Catalyst.
  2. Create immersion experiences—By asking men to walk a mile in women’s shoes, men can begin to understand the challenges women face. For example, have men take only 80 percent of their salaries for six months and donate the other 20 percent to women’s advocacy organizations. Another example of an immersion experience is for teams to identify one man whose ideas will be ignored or talked over for three meetings. Then have the team members create agreements for how they will engage in ensuring all team members are heard and included. As noted by Damien Hooper-Campbell, “Policies alone will only get us so far.”
  3. Listen to both women and men—Ask men and women what benefits they want from their employers. Here are some of the ones mentioned at the New Rules Summit:
  4. Make paid family leave truly universal and available for employees at all levels.
  5. Subsidize childcare and let parents choose what works best for them: a stipend, access to backup childcare memberships, or bulk discounts on care.
  6. Make sure parental leave does not set off a financial penalty in hidden costs like lost bonuses, stock vestings, billable hours, and commissions.
  7. Close the gap on the “only” experience—Hire more women at every level, not just a few token women. This can be done by setting targets, mandating diverse slates of candidates for promotion, training to better notice biases, and closely scrutinizing the performance review processes. We have written about recent research on the costs of being an “only” in a previous article.
  8. Recognize the double outsider—Dalana Brand, vice president of people experience at Twitter, reminds us that the impact of unconscious bias is more pronounced for women of color than for white women. Diversity efforts should not be “one size fits all,” and leaders need training to understand how to be a better ally to women of color and others.
  9. Women need to build strategic networks differently—Daisy Auger-Dominguez, president and founder of Auger-Dominguez Ventures, points out that men’s networking practices don’t work for women. She advises that women should build an intentional and diverse network of other women, and develop deep connections to each other so they can effectively advocate for and support each other.
  10. Create an anti-harassment culture—Marianne Cooper, a sociologist at the Clayman Institute for Gender Research at Stanford University, notes that “sexual harassment is about the abuse of power, it’s not about sexual desire.” To prevent sexual harassment, organizations need to create cultures where people feel empowered to come forward to report it and are rewarded for doing the right thing. Those accused of sexual harassment need to be consistently held accountable.

What types of strategies are working in your organization to create more inclusive cultures?

 

Photo by Edwin Andrade on Unsplash

Why Are There So Few Female Architects?

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In past articles, I have written about gender discrimination against women in the law, economics, and medicine and physics. New research reveals similar patterns that discourage women from staying in the field of architecture. As in many other professions, such as those mentioned above, women account for half of all graduates from architecture schools but represent only 20 percent of licensed architects and 17 percent of partners or principles in firms. Allison Arieff, writing for the New York Times, reports on a recent survey of 14,360 respondents conducted by Equity by Design, an initiative of the American Institute of Architects. The survey included architects in every state and across six continents, and it found the following:

  • Female and minority architects and designers earn lower salaries than their white male peers and are less likely to hold positions of leadership.
  • Mothers in particular lose out on career and salary advancements.
  • Firms have been slow to follow best practices regarding equity and worker well-being.
  • Assumptions are prevalent that women will quit to marry.
  • Women’s competency and qualifications are often questioned, and they are unable to command authority on job sites.
  • Female role models and mentors are scarce.
  • Male colleagues complain that they do not want to take orders from a woman.
What needs to change? Arieff points out that the culture of male dominance runs deep in the architecture profession. In fact, she explains, “Until 1972 and the advent of Title IX, which forbade gender discrimination in federally funded education programs, most American architecture schools refused to admit women.” Arieff cites Ila Berman, dean of the University of Virginia School of Architecture, who said that the challenge is to “change a culture that will only be changed through representation, when 50 percent of the people in the room are women.” Caroline James, founder of the Design for Equity advocacy group, suggests that women need the following:
  • Tools for dealing with sexism
  • Mentorship
  • Access to salary information
  • Equal pay
  • New definitions of success as an architect
Last but not least, the #MeToo movement made a contribution to shifting the toxic culture of the industry when several male architects were accused of harassment in an online list. Arieff reports that one prominent architect, Richard Meier, was forced to step down from a leadership role in his firm after allegations from five women. A manifesto titled “Voices of Women” calling for an end to “pervasive prejudices and disrespectful behavior” was also introduced by a group of female architects in 2018. Change is coming.   Photo courtesy of Shawn Carpenter (CC BY-SA 2.0)]]>

Why There Are So Few Senior Women on Wall Street

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Why are there so few women in senior management in the banking and investment industry, also known as Wall Street? In spite of a plethora of diversity committees, women’s leadership programs and retreats, and inclusion training in Wall Street firms for at least the last two decades, the representation of women in senior positions has not changed much. A major investment bank has never had a female CEO, and only 2 percent of hedge fund managers are women. Sam Polk, a former hedge fund trader, explains in an article in the New York Times that the hypermasculine culture of Wall Street firms remain unchanged because “men rarely do or say anything” to challenge the overt and covert sexism all around them. The pressure to conform and fit in to be promoted is reinforced from day one. The overt sexism that women experience, such as pressure to sleep with bosses, retribution when they don’t, and loss of opportunity after taking maternity leave, is one type of sexism that creates barriers for women, but it is covert sexism that Polk is most concerned with in his article. He explains that “most of the sexism on Wall Street occurs when women aren’t in the room.” He calls this “bro talk,” where men casually talk about women as sex objects and body parts as a way of bonding with each other. Polk reflects on his own experiences in high school, in college, and as a bond trader on Wall Street where he heard men who were role models—fathers, coaches and bosses—denigrate women. He notes that while he felt uncomfortable hearing and participating in this type of talk, he never said so because “it feels really good to be in the in-crowd.” Protesting would have been “embarrassing and emasculating” and, he admits, bad for his career. Now the father of a daughter, Polk regrets his silence and explains, “‘Bro talk’ produces a force field of disrespect and exclusion that makes it incredibly difficult for women to ascend the Wall Street ladder. When you create a culture where women are casually torn apart in conversation, how can you ever stomach promoting them or working for them?” He urges men to be allies—to finally bring about change in the Wall Street culture and other organizational cultures they are in, men must insist that women be spoken about with respect. He makes the point that a relationship exists between “bro talk” and the rape and sexual abuse of women and girls. Polk states, “When we dehumanize people in conversation, we give permission for them to be degraded in other ways as well. . . . Our silence condones this language.” In another article describing the new movie Equity about female executives on Wall Street, author Melena Ryzik interviewed women who are currently investment bankers who agree that the culture of hypermasculinity still exists. They detail a number of sexist assumptions and double binds that create barriers for women:

  • The assumption that women will leave to marry or have children so there is no reason to promote them.
  • The demand that women have to continually prove themselves before they get promoted, while men are given a chance to prove themselves after promotion.
  • The conflict between being too tough or too pliant and being called overbearing when expressing an opinion.
Barbara Byrne, an investment banker at Barclays and a producer of the film, asks, “When do we get our fair share, when do we get a seat at the table?” It will take both women and men to change the culture of sexism. Let’s hope that many men heed Polk’s call for an end to their silence. Are you a man, or do you know a man, who speaks out when other men are demeaning women behind closed doors? We need men to stop participating in “bro talk” and challenge other men to stop, too. It will help us all to hear your success stories.   The image in this post is in the public domain courtesy of Helpsg.  ]]>

Next Steps for Connecting Across Differences

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  • Identify the sides on your prism that are most relevant for you at this time in your life and career, keeping gender in the center. For example, I might ask myself how being a Jewish woman, white woman, US-born woman, and woman in my sixties are all currently impacting my experience. What is important for others to know about me as I turn the prism that reflects my wholeness?
  • Make a list of the sides of your prism. Reflect on how each side interacts with being a woman for you at this time in your life and career.
  • Become more curious and open to learning about the experiences of other women who are different. Listen to understand, and be willing to share your experience.
  • Make a connection once a month with someone from a different culture whom you don’t usually interact with. Cultural differences can include different employment levels, ages, races, nationalities, religions, and other differences.
  • Read the histories of other groups or watch movies about the experiences of women from different cultures, such as Real Women Have Curves.
    •   An excerpt from my book, New Rules for Women, available at Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/dp/0982056982/).]]>