sexism

Stopping Harassment in the Legal Profession: The ABA Takes a Stand

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The American Bar Association (ABA) recently passed national standards that prohibit harassment of opposing counsel, witnesses, coworkers, court personnel, and others in the course of practicing law. Elizabeth Olson of the New York Times reports that according to the new standards, “harassment includes sexual harassment and derogatory or demeaning verbal or physical conduct” based on race, religion, sex, disability, age, sexual orientation, or marital or economic status. In a separate article, Olson explains that harassment has long been intentionally used in the legal profession to intimidate or fluster opposing counsel and witnesses as well as to reinforce male-dominated attitudes in the legal profession.  She reports that a recent ABA study found that “stereotypical sexist remarks to female lawyers contribute to their underrepresentation in the legal field.” The study also revealed these statistics:

  • Only 18 percent of partners at top law firms are women.
  • In civil cases, men are three times more likely than women to appear as lead counsel and trial attorneys.
  • In criminal law, men are four times more likely to appear as trial attorneys.
Female lawyers explain that they usually try to ignore sexist and racist comments “for fear of imperiling their careers or being labeled less than a team player”—until they can’t anymore and leave the profession.  These are real concerns, and change will only happen if both male and female lawyers and judges hold offending attorneys accountable with the fines and penalties, such as disbarment, now possible when complaints are made and investigated. The National Association of Female Lawyers, the ABA, and individual male and female attorneys and judges have shown courage and determination in pushing for these national standards.  Let’s celebrate a step in the right direction that has a chance to make the legal profession more welcoming and inclusive for its nondominant members, and the courtroom a place where positive standards of professional conduct are on display.   The image in this post is in the public domain courtesy of David Mark.]]>

Why Sexual Harassment Is Still Happening in the Workplace

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“I am worried about my new boss,” reported my client, Julie, a bright young woman in her thirties. “I had to leave my last job because my boss demanded sexual favors from me in order to keep my job. I had no one to turn to for help because he is so powerful and respected in the small world of our profession. Reporting him would have been career suicide, so I just quit. Now I am worried that my new boss is starting to show signs of the same expectations. I need this job and I don’t know what to do! Can you help me?” Has nothing changed since 1991 when Anita Hill, an obscure law professor, reluctantly described the lewd behavior of her previous boss, Clarence Thomas, during the Senate confirmation hearing for his nomination to the Supreme Court? Unfortunately, the answer is “No, not much has changed.” Professor Hill helped us give a name—sexual harassment—to an ancient practice by powerful people (usually men) over less powerful people (usually women) in the workplace. Since 1991, new laws and organizational policies have been passed to prohibit this behavior, but it has not stopped. In fact, James B. Stewart of the New York Times reports that the problem is still massive and pervasive. Consider the recent sensational cases of Roger Ailes of Fox News and Bill Cosby, the comedian. And consider the experience of my client Julie. Why is this still happening? I believe that sexual harassment continues to be a fact of life for many women because of these factors:

  • Power, unchecked and unchallenged
  • Career damage for women who come forward
  • Employment contracts that require sexual harassment claims to go to arbitration as a condition of employment
  • Isolation of women who are forced to sign nondisclosure agreements when they receive settlements during arbitration of their claim
  • The silence of men and of people in key functions in organizations, such as the HR, legal, and finance leaders at Fox News who helped cover up the misdeeds of Ailes
Sexual harassment happens, for the most part, because it is a power game. Julie’s case is a clear example of an older male boss using his power over a younger female employee to demand sexual favors that she may feel powerless to refuse. Yes, I have seen women with power demand sexual favors from less powerful men, and I have also seen same-sex sexual harassment, but the latter two types are much more rare. Nonetheless, the key to the dynamic is that one person has real power to promote, demote, or fire the lower-power person—to retaliate—if the employee refuses the demand for sexual favors. Fear of retaliation is what makes many women leave good jobs and even walk away from a profession they may have spent years training for. According to Noam Scheiber and Sydney Ember of the New York Times, studies indicate that “the great majority of sexual harassment incidents at work still go unreported” because of fear of retaliation. Carol Costello of CNN, who experienced sexual harassment earlier in her career but did not report it, agrees that women who come forward verbally or file a lawsuit still face consequences. In fact, Scheiber and Ember explain that many plaintiffs’ lawyers argue that the risks to women of coming forward have increased over time as the Internet allows a label of “troublemaker” to follow a woman throughout her life. Jen Agg, writing for the New York Times, describes this challenge for women building careers as chefs. Relatively few top chefs are women, and women know that if they complain about the rampant sexual harassment in the testosterone-fueled environments of most restaurant kitchens, “you get a reputation for not being a ‘team player’ and you will not advance.” Women know they have to stay quiet or leave the industry. Isolation also keeps sexual harassment alive and well. When women go to HR and complain about a high-level boss, they are sometimes offered a settlement to leave and keep quiet—an option that may seem preferable to being fired or demoted—by signing a nondisclosure agreement in exchange for a payment. In this case, no one talks, so each woman thinks that she alone has been subjected to the abuse, and the perpetrator can continue abusing other women for years without consequences, as did Ailes and Cosby. Furthermore, those who know what is going on may collude to protect the powerful man, as happened in the case of both Ailes and Cosby, and women really don’t have anyone they can talk to who will help them. What can be done? We must eliminate nondisclosure agreements and employment contracts with arbitration requirements so that powerful perpetrators can be held accountable, and we need women and men at all levels to break their silence when they know that sexual harassment is going on. It’s time for this to stop. Julie should never have to quit her job or be afraid of her boss again, and neither should anyone else.   The image in this post is courtesy of Sharon Mollerus (CC BY 2.0).]]>

Three Tips for How to Get More Women on Corporate Boards

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The United Kingdom and Australia have significantly increased the number of women on corporate boards in recent years, while representation in the United States has stalled. Nneka Orji of The Glasshammer reports that female representation in the United Kingdom’s FTSE 100 company boardrooms increased from 12.5 percent in 2011 to 26 percent in 2016. Similarly, Alexandra Spring writes in the Guardian that 26 percent of the director positions in Australia’s ASX 200 companies are now held by women, with a target of 30 percent by 2018. In contrast, Linda Colby of Bloomberg News reports that only 19.9 percent of board seats in S&P 500 companies were held by women in 2015, up from 19.2 percent in 2014. At this rate, Colby notes, it will take more than forty years for women in the United States to reach 30 percent representation on corporate boards. How have the United Kingdom and Australia made so much progress? In the United Kingdom, the Davies Review found that setting a clear five-year target in 2011 of achieving 25 percent representation by women, along with a public commitment from senior leaders to proactively address unconscious bias and other obstacles for women, resulted in the increase. In Australia, research from 2005–2011 found that companies with more women on boards showed higher financial performance. This research led to a 2011 report that called for organizations to set numeric targets and report on them. Australia’s implementation of these recommendations also increased the representation of women on corporate boards to 26 percent in 2016. Why does it matter that more women be on boards? A 2016 study by EY and the Peterson Institute of International Economics showed that “companies with at least 30 percent women in leadership may boost profit margins by 15 percent.” In addition, an earlier study by the index provider MCSI found that companies with more women “delivered 35 percent better ROI since 2010 than those groups lacking board diversity.” It just makes business sense to have more women on boards—but talk won’t get us there. Here are three important components of what worked in the United Kingdom and Australia:

  • Setting specific and time-bound goals
  • Being transparent about committing to those goals
  • Building in accountability and linking remuneration to progress against gender diversity targets
These are important lessons for the United States. We have not yet made these commitments. Are there other steps that you think would increase the representation of women on boards? Please share your ideas in the comments section.   The image in this post is in the public domain courtesy of Hillyne Jonkerman]]>

How to Close the Gender Pay Gap: Massachusetts Leads the Way

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The Massachusetts legislature just unanimously passed the strongest equal pay law in the country. In spite of a legal prohibition against gender-based pay discrimination passed by the state in 1945, the gender wage gap has persisted. Shirley Leung of the Boston Globe reports that currently

  • Women in Massachusetts, in general, make eighty-two cents for every dollar a man earns
  • Black women fare worse at sixty-one cents for every dollar a man earns
  • Latinas fare even worse at fifty cents per dollar
Clearly, having state and federal laws prohibiting pay discrimination on the books for decades has not worked to close the pay gap. The Massachusetts law, which takes effect in July 2018, addresses the wage gap in the following ways:
  • The new law takes steps to promote salary transparency. While companies are not required to publish salaries, employees in Massachusetts can now openly discuss their salaries and join together to compel employers to monitor and fix wage gaps. Employees are still responsible for demanding that wage monitoring occur, but a group of fifty companies in Boston have volunteered to do wage-gap audits and publish their results, which could influence other organizations to act before their employees pressure them to do so. The state treasurer has also set up a website, equalpayma.com, to help women understand how underpaid they might be.
  • The law sets new standards for determining comparable work. These standards did not previously exist, so winning a lawsuit claiming unequal pay for comparable work was almost impossible.
  • The law provides companies with new incentives to monitor and correct wage discrepancies—if they do so, they get legal protection if workers sue for gender-based discrimination. They will be given three years to demonstrate they have corrected the problem if employees sue.
  • The new law also prohibits employers from asking the wage history of applicants until after the employer makes an offer with a salary figure attached. This can help prevent women and minorities from being locked into lower salaries.
This new legislation arose from Boston mayor Tom Menino’s establishment of the Women’s Workforce Council in 2013. This council included representatives of many stakeholder groups and drew upon extensive research reported by Iris Bohnet in her new book, What Works: Gender Equity by Design. Transparency and accountability, two of the most important findings reported by Bohnet, are at the core of the new Massachusetts laws. Focusing only on the gender-wage gap is not enough—we must also address the race-wage gap. New state and federal laws must be passed to provide transparency and accountability for pay equity across race and gender. As Shirley Leung notes, wage gaps are often not intentional. In fact, they are often the result of unconscious bias. But as noted by Katie Donovan, founder of Equal Pay Negotiations, “as long as organizations do not analyze and publish salary data, they have ‘plausible deniability.’” While I believe the Massachusetts law could have gone further, it is a great start, and I hope other states will follow with their own innovations until we finally close the gender- and race-wage gaps.     The image in this post is in the public domain courtesy of Thomas Breher.]]>

Wage Gaps and Work Gaps: Implications for Women’s Lives

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Recently, during a women’s leadership program I was facilitating, a participant, Amy, had an insight. She had been complaining about being exhausted and stressed all the time while trying to juggle a full-time job and family life—she loved her demanding job and her family, but she had no time for herself and was tired all the time. What was her insight? She realized that her husband expected her to do almost all the work of maintaining their home and family and did not really do much to share this load. She had never seen so clearly that she was carrying an unfair share of the burden, and she had also taken it for granted that this was her role. She now began to question these assumptions. In a previous blog, I wrote about the costs to relationships and women’s careers when both partners do not share the responsibilities for family and home care equally. I also wrote about the ways that we, as women, collude in keeping this imbalance in place as Amy was doing as well as the ways we can reverse this imbalance. Tyler Cowen of the New York Times writes that in several ways, women are in fact working more while men are working less. He explains that the Great Recession had a major impact on labor supply numbers:

  • In 2014, about 12 percent of American men ages twenty-five to fifty-four neither had jobs nor were looking for them, compared to 8 percent in 1994.
  • Fewer than 20 percent of men over the age of sixty-five are in the workforce.
  • Fewer teenagers have jobs—35 percent, compared to 55 percent several decades ago.
Cowen points out that women’s increased participation in the workforce has supported American economic growth. The unfair part is that women continue to carry a bigger share of the household chores and childrearing while also working full-time. The distribution of stress is uneven, and Cowen notes that while barriers are falling for women in the workplace, the distribution of work in the home is uneven and results in another type of inequality. No wonder Amy is so tired! But while women are working more, the gender wage gap continues, and women are still paid less than men who do the same work. Suzanne Woolley of Bloomberg News reports on new studies showing that one of the implications of the wage gap for women is a sleep gap. The author explains that people tend to lose sleep over things they feel are not in their control. In a poll conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates International, the sleep gap for women has increased by 8 percentage points over the past year. The survey found that the biggest cause of sleep loss is fear of not having saved enough for retirement—56 percent of men reported losing sleep over money compared with 70 percent of women, for good reason:
  • Lower earnings from the gender wage gap mean less savings and social security for women.
  • In 2010, women received one-third less than a man’s average benefit for social security.
  • At age sixty-five and older, women are 80 percent more likely than men to be impoverished.
Yes, the wage gap is important, but it is not the only gap that needs attending to. We also need to pay attention to the inequality of work itself. The implications for our health and our security in our later years are serious. If you and your partner have successfully addressed an imbalance in household responsibilities, I’d love to hear about it in the comments section. Tell us what has worked for you!   The image in this post is in the public domain courtesy of Public Domain Pictures. ]]>

A Gender Pay Gap for Female Physicians: New Research and Solutions

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To the surprise of many, a large new study found a persistent gender pay gap for female physicians. Catherine Saint Louis reports in the New York Times that contrary to previous studies of physician salaries, which drew from incomplete data and could be easily dismissed, this study draws on a large objective sample of ten thousand physician faculty members at twenty-four public medical schools in the United States. The researchers carefully controlled for a variety of factors that can influence income, such as volume of patients seen, years since residency, specialty, and age. Saint Louis reports that after adjusting for these factors, the researchers found the following discrepancies:

  • Female neurosurgeons, cardiothoracic surgeons, and other surgical specialists made roughly $44,000 less than men in those positions.
  • Female orthopedic surgeons made nearly $41,000 less than male orthopedic surgeons.
  • Women made about $38,000 less among oncologists and blood specialists, $36,000 less among obstetrician-gynocologists, and $34,000 less among cardiologists.
  • Only in radiology did women make more—about $2,000 more than men.
  • Female professors made about the same salary as male associate professors even though the female professors outranked them.
Dr. Kim Templeton, the president of the American Medical Women’s Association, notes that while this new research is important, “just having it out there isn’t going to fix the problem.” What will fix the problem? I am proud to report that the state of Massachusetts, where I live, is moving closer to passing legislation to close the gender pay gap, which has persisted in spite of the legal prohibitions against gender-based pay discrimination passed by the state in 1945. Michael Bodley of the Boston Globe explains that the new legislation, if passed, will take the following proactive steps:
  • Require all companies in Massachusetts to undertake a study of their gender-based pay practices and publish the results.
  • Protect employers from being held liable for pay-discrimination lawsuits if they can show that they have undertaken a study of wage disparities in the past three years and can demonstrate reasonable progress toward eliminating the gap.
  • Prohibit employers from asking applicants about their salary history until the employer has made a salary offer. This helps eliminate the negative impact of women’s historically lower salaries.
As long as organizations do not analyze and publish their salary data, they have “plausible deniability,” explained Katie Donovan, founder of Equal Pay Negotiations. But as we know, tracking and researching the numbers are not enough. Both employees and legislatures need to hold organizations accountable for closing the gender wage gap. Do you have success stories for closing the wage gap? I would love to hear them.   The image in this post is in the public domain courtesy of Darko Stojanovic.       ]]>

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.  ]]>

Gender-Neutral Family-Friendly Policies: The Unintended Consequences for Women

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Where are the senior women scholars? Universities have been concerned about the underrepresentation of women at senior tenured levels for more than twenty years, especially in the STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) disciplines. I wrote about several studies seeking to explain this dearth of senior women scholars in a previous article. In response to the underrepresentation of women, many of these institutions implemented gender-neutral family-friendly policies in the 1990s. Justin Wolfers, an economist writing for the New York Times, reports new research on the careers of economists in the United States that shows surprising, unintended consequences of these policies for female economists. Wolfers reports that in fact, some gender-neutral policies have advanced the careers of male economists at the expense of women’s careers, which is probably also true in other disciplines. The specific gender-neutral policy under investigation here is the tenure extension policy, which grants one extra year to the seven-year tenure process to both women and men for each child. The intention of this policy is to create some family-friendly flexibility in the early years of an academic career, when the pressure to achieve tenure (publish or perish) in order to keep an academic job collides with the years when young women and men are ready to start families. Wolfers reports that new research by three economists—Heather Antecol, Kelly Bedard, and Jenna Stearns—shows a significant differential impact of the tenure extension policy on the careers of women and men. These researchers compiled data on all untenured economists hired over the past twenty years at fifty leading economics departments. They then compared promotion rates at institutions with tenure extension policies to those without them. This is what they found:

  • Tenure extension policies resulted in a 19-point rise in the probability that a male economist would earn tenure at his first job.
  • In contrast, women’s chances of gaining tenure at their first jobs fell by 22 percent.
  • Before the implementation of tenure extension, a little less than 30 percent of both women and men at these same institutions gained tenure at their first jobs. Consequently, the new policy significantly decreased the number of women receiving tenure.
One of the main flaws in the logic behind the gender-neutral tenure extension policy is that women and men experience the same distractions from their writing and research after the birth of a child. Wolfers cites Alison Davis-Blake, dean of the University of Michigan’s business school, as saying, “Giving birth is not a gender-neutral event.” Wolfers goes on to observe that “women receive parental benefits only after bearing the burden of pregnancy, childbirth, nursing, and often, a larger share of parenting responsibilities. Yet fathers usually receive the same benefits without bearing anything close to the same burden.” In fact, the study authors found that men who took tenure extension used the extra year to publish their research, resulting in higher tenure rates. No parallel rise in publication rates was seen for female economists. One of the study authors, J. Stearns, cautions that not all gender-neutral family policies are harmful. She notes that standard parental leave policies for both parents have reduced the stigma for women. Let’s note that it took female economists to uncover the harmful impact of this tenure extension policy on women—and there are not many female economists. What other unintended consequences could be negatively accruing for women from well-intentioned family-focused policies? What else might we be discovering if we had more female economists asking these questions? Do you have experiences or thoughts about the possible unfair impact of employment policies where you work? Let me know.   The image in this post is in the public domain courtesy of anekarinebraga.]]>

Hillary Clinton and Theresa May: How Gender Bias is Still with Us

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Every so often things happen in the world that, for a moment, make underlying biases and stereotypes visible that are usually underground and hard to see. I believe this happened in the United States with the subtle, and not-so-subtle, emergence of racism when Barack Obama ran for president, was elected, and tried to govern. I believe gender bias and sexism are emerging now with the first-ever nomination of a woman, Hillary Clinton, by a major party for the presidency in the United States, and with the election of Theresa May as Britain’s new prime minister. Julia Baird of the New York Times writes, “The fact that a cluster of men lead the world merits no comment. But if women start to slowly enter the ranks—Theresa May, Angela Merkel in Germany, possibly Hillary Clinton in the United States—it’s treated as . . . some kind of gynocratic coup d’etat: a new ‘femokratie’ . . . the ‘dawn of a female world order. ’” One British paper warned, “The women are coming!” Baird notes that several insulting stereotypes have been used to describe May as a leader, including the Nanny (because she will now have to “mop up” after the Brexit mess created by her male counterparts) and the Thatcherite label of Iron Lady because she is known to take strong positions and be persistent. Baird observes that “our notions of mature women in power urgently need updating.” In the online publication Vox, Ezra Klein surfaces some other sources of gender bias in presidential politics when he tries to understand and explain the gap between Clinton as a public speaker—described as careful, calculated, cautious and uninspiring—and Clinton described by staff and colleagues as brilliant, funny, thoughtful, effective, and a good listener. Being a good listener is the hallmark of Clinton’s campaign style. In 2000, she conducted her senate campaign in New York State by doing “listening tours.” She won her senate seat against long odds because she listened and came to deeply understand what people in New York cared about. Once in office, she got legislation passed that addressed the concerns of her constituency. But, as Klein writes, “modern presidential campaigns are built to reward people who are really, really good at talking”—not listening. Klein goes on to point out that “we ran a lot of elections in the United States before we let women vote in them—a process developed by men, dominated by men and, until relatively late in American life, limited to men. ” Our election process also favors traits particularly prevalent in men—talking over listening. Klein cites one of my favorite gender linguistics scholars, Deborah Tannen, who explains that women value listening to build rapport and relationships. She contrasts this preference with that of men who emphasize the status dimension of communication—talking to increase status, or to win, versus listening to gain allies and build coalitions. A point by Klein that I find most interesting is that “presidential campaigns are built to showcase the stereotypically male trait of standing in front of a room speaking confidently—charismatic oration versus deep relationship.” Klein also offers observations by Brookings scholar Elaine Kamarck, author of Why Presidents Fail and How They Can Succeed Again. She found that “successful presidential leadership occurs when the president is able to put together and balance three sets of skills: policy, communication, and implementation.” Campaigns only test communication. Clinton is criticized for not being an inspirational speaker, but she has a long track record of making policy and getting things done in government through relationship and coalition building. While I agree that she has made some mistakes in her political career, isn’t it sad that her depth of policy and legislative experience and her track record for getting things done are overshadowed by an opponent who is all entertainment bluster with no accomplishments or experience in governing? Trump loves to talk about the process being “rigged” against him, but it seems to me it is actually rigged for him as a man who loves to talk to large audiences and increase his status by putting other people down. This is a form of gender bias I had not seen before, and it explains a lot. Is it new to you, too? What other gender bias is getting clearer for you in this election? Please share your observations in the comments section.   The image in this post is in the public domain courtesy of Jens Junge.]]>

How Women Decide: A Book Review

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Therese Huston has written an important new book: How Women Decide: What’s True, What’s Not and What Strategies Spark the Best Choices. The book combines her own research with a comprehensive review of literature on gender differences in decision making. Some of her findings disprove stereotypes about gender differences, while others confirm and explain differences in decision making between women and men. To address these differences, Huston offers decision-making strategies for women. She notes, “Books with advice on decision making for men can be terrible for women. . . . Women need their own playbook.” This is the best playbook on decision making for women I have seen. Here are some of the findings and strategies that stood out for me.

Some Challenges for Women

Huston notes these and other challenges that women face as decision makers in organizations:
  • Women face underlying sexist assumptions that they can’t be trusted to make big decisions. A man only has to worry about making a judgment when making a big decision, while a woman has to worry about making the judgment and being judged because her judgment will be questioned.
  • If a man makes one pivotal decision for his organization, it will carry him a long time. Williams and Dempsey note that women, on the other hand, experience the “prove it again bias” as their good decisions are considered to be a fluke.
  • Women’s decision making is also impacted by something Huston calls “stereotype threat,” or the fear of living up to negative expectations that others have of your group. This fear can create distraction and anxiety for women that can result in hesitation and underperformance. I experienced stereotype threat as a young woman when my high school guidance counselor told me, “Girls are not good in math.” I became terrified of math and avoided it throughout college, thereby limiting my career options in significant ways. I later discovered that I am actually quite good in math, but my anxiety and hesitation from this stereotype threat limited my options. Women may avoid leadership positions and fear decision making for similar reasons.

Some Ways Women and Men are Equal as Decision Makers

Huston debunks a number of myths and stereotypes about men’s and women’s decision-making abilities:
  • Although many people believe that men are more decisive than women, scientists find that men and women struggle with their options equally.
  • Stereotypes suggest that women make decisions intuitively while men make decisions analytically. There is, in fact, no such term as “men’s intuition.” However, Huston reports that men get gut feelings about decisions as often as women, and women are as analytical—perhaps more so—than men in decision making because they know their decisions will be questioned and their case must be solid.
  • Men can read emotions and body language—both important sources of data for decision making—as well as women, but they don’t feel as motivated do so. Women are more motivated to pay attention to nonverbal cues as a self-protection skill because they have less power.

Differences in Risk Taking

Although men and women are equally skilled decision makers, significant differences exist between women and men in making risky decisions. Huston reports:
  • Risk taking is a skill, not a personality trait, and boys get more encouragement to practice this skill than do girls.
  • Several studies show that men overestimate their knowledge and abilities while women underestimate theirs. Overconfidence has been shown to be a major obstacle to smart decisions. Women’s more accurate self-assessment means fewer errors in judgment.
  • Neuroscience has uncovered evidence that the spike in cortisol levels produced by stress has the opposite effect on men’s and women’s approaches to risky decisions. The most stressed-out men pursue options that have big costs and a small chance of big benefits, while the most stressed-out women go for the smaller, more guaranteed success.

Effective Decision-Making Strategies for Women

Huston offers practical strategies for women at the end of each chapter. Here are some that I found particularly thought-provoking and useful:
  • Use your intuition, an important source of data, as a starting point in your decision-making process—but only trust it up to a point. Then hunt down the data to ground your decision before you make it. Don’t rely on intuition alone.
  • When you are talking about your successes in a job interview, draw attention to the successful risks you have taken. This will help counteract the stereotype that women are not decisive and do not take risks.
  • Keep your confidence dialed down when making a decision to ensure it is grounded and smart. Then dial your confidence up when you need to sell your decisions to others.
Women receive a lot of mixed messages and are subject to many confusing double binds as leaders and decision makers. Huston offers an important playbook for how women can navigate these minefields and leverage their strengths. Reading this book will open your eyes and give you practical strategies for overcoming the challenges of making decisions as a woman. Let me know what you think.   The image in this post is in the public domain courtesy of Helpsg.  ]]>