Archive for May, 2010
C This
This edition of C This looks at the relevance of cavemen to modern office behavior; some lessons from feminists that resonate even more today; the widening financial gap between white and black Americans; and how stilettos may (or may not!) be a predictor of market performance. Enjoy!
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Pre-historic Caves and Modern Offices?
Hearkening back to old stereotypes of “violent cavemen battling with clubs while passive women, fetching in furs, wait helplessly to see who wins her,“ the author ponders recent research on the stereotypes around expectations of strength for men and penalties for women if they show the same assertiveness at work. Men are rewarded; women are accused of poor social skills. I agree with the study’s author on this point: maybe we should be training employers to look beyond stereotypes of how men and women should behave in the workplace. Evolutionary biology is not destiny.
Early Feminists Fighting to Change the World – Lessons for Us?
With a respectful nod to the audacious utopian feminists of the 19th and 20th centuries, this article challenges women in the UK and around the world to imagine what might be and to act on it.
Read: “Feminists Fighting to Change the World,” by Sheila Rowbotham, The Guardian, 5/21/10
The Widening Gulf Between White and Black Wealth
Dr. Tom Shapiro, who directs the Institute of Assets and Social Policy at Brandeis University, shares his study on wealth on black and white upper and middle income families over the past twenty-plus years. The study shows that the gap between white and black families more than quadrupled during those years. He points to the whys and ways to restore fairness to a system that may favor the wealthy and white.
Read: “The Black-White Wealth Gap Is Growing,” by Tom Shapiro, The Root, 5/24/10
Stilettos Sink to New Lows
Are high heels an economic indicator? This article explores the so-called correlation between this year’s lower “kitten heels” and our sinking market to the five inch stilettos paraded two years ago.
Read: “Stilettos—So Two Years Ago,” by Ray A. Smith, The Wall Street Journal, 5/22/10
Diversity of Nature
Guest blogger: Laura Liswood, Secretary General, Council of Women World Leaders, and Senior Advisor, Goldman Sachs
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I love nature and its diversity. It provides many wondrous experiences—a plethora of flowers and animals, diverse landscapes, and a fabulous array of human beings.
And yet nature is tricky, too. I’m particularly focused on two parts of nature.
One part is that nature promises to happen “naturally.” And some things do. The sun rises and sets naturally, salmon swim upstream to spawn naturally, birds migrate naturally.
For women, we have often been told that our progress will occur naturally. That is, fill the pipeline, get into the organizations, educate and provide healthy lives for girls and women, and we will prosper and succeed naturally. Turns out some things just aren’t as natural as we thought.
For example, the World Economic Forum has published a gender gap index for five years. It tracks the gaps between resources allocated, and positions in society, for men and women in four areas: health, education, economic empowerment and political participation. The good news is that gaps in healthcare and education are almost closed in many countries of the world. Many of us believed once those gaps closed, the economic and political gaps would close naturally. Nothing could be further from the truth. The gaps in the latter two categories are staggering—only 59% of the gap closed economically (and even worse in some countries) and just 17% of the gap closed politically. It turns out we will need much more affirmative approaches to close these two gaps, and that won’t be easy nor will they close naturally.
Companies are hiring women (and other diverse groups) in higher and higher numbers. But they don’t seem to be making it to the top—women are 50% of the labor force and only 3% of CEOs at Fortune 500 companies. Nature abandoned these groups.
The second bone I have to pick with nature is the sleight of hand it has played on us in regards to diversity. There is no question that diversity of plants, animals, foods, people, or ideas is a good thing. But when organizations commit to that goal of diversity when it comes to people, they often stumble. As Catalyst points out in its extensive research, even in a simple dyad of diversity—women and men—we are baffled and burdened by stereotypes and preferences and assumptions and archetypes.
In my book, The Loudest Duck, I reflect on how the Noah’s Ark approach that many organizations take isn’t working. (“If we could only get two of each in the Ark, we’ll have our diversity.”) The workplace giraffe looks at his colleague, the zebra, and thinks, consciously or unconsciously, that this zebra is one funny looking animal and can’t possibly perform given its stubby neck, silly stripes and propensity to “talk” kind of strangely.
Our unconscious beliefs and perceptions about who others are get in the way of creating a fair and meritocratic workplace for those who are diverse. I once saw a sign that said, “We hire because they are different and fire because they are not the same.” Nature provided us with diversity. If only it had given us the tools to naturally use it.
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Laura Liswood co-founded the Council of Women World Leaders with Vigdís Finnbogadóttir, President of Iceland. Liswood serves as Secretary General of the Council, which is composed of women presidents, prime ministers and heads of government. In 1997, Liswood co-founded The White House Project, which is dedicated to electing a woman President of the United States. Her work with women presidents and prime ministers was the inspiration for the Project, which seeks to change the cultural message in the United States about women as leaders. In 2001, Liswood was named Managing Director, Global Leadership and Diversity, for Goldman Sachs, a global investment bank, and today is a Senior Advisor to the firm.
C This
In today’s C This, Yahoo! CEO Carol Bartz colorfully explains her leadership philosophy, the top earning jobs for women are revealed, and a new Forbes study on the gender wage gap yields some interesting findings on the role of networking and equal pay.
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Telling It Like It Is
This provocative interview with straight-talking Yahoo! CEO Carol Bartz asks: Are women better listeners than men? “I don’t know,” she responds. “I mean, I’ve never been one of you, so I don’t have a clue.”
Read: “Hi, I’m Carol Bartz…” by Cal Fussman, Esquire, 5/3/10
Top Dollar
What are the top paying jobs for women today? New to the list this year: computer programming.
Read: “Best-Paying Jobs For Women,” by Jenna Goudreau, Forbes Women, 5/3/10
Catalyst in the News
A round-up of the award winning initiatives at our 2010 Catalyst Awards Conference. Congratulations again to all our winners—and best of luck to next year’s candidates!
All About Mom
Author Marcia Reynolds talks about the role of her Mom in her life, and the effect a mother can have on a daughter’s success.
Closing the Gap
A new study by Forbes suggests women may increase their chances at better pay through better networking. But is this only one piece of the puzzle?
Read: “Whose Responsibility is Fixing the Wage Gap?” by Tina Vasquez, The Glass Hammer, 5/4/10
Guest Post Preview: Laura Liswood
On Monday, May 17, 2010, Laura Liswood, Secretary General, Council of Women World Leaders, and Senior Advisor to Goldman Sachs, will be guest blogging on Catalyzing. Her post will discuss the gaps in female economic empowerment and political participation—I look forward to reading it.
Check the Label
Monica Palacios, the famous comic and writer, has navigated various labels over the course of her career. On stage, Palacios riffs: “When I was born, I was of Mexican-American persuasion. Then I became Chicana. Then I was Latina. Then I was Hispanic. Then I was a Third World member (my mom loved that). Then I was a woman of color. Now I’m just an Amway dealer. And my life is happening.”
Her comments are in jest but the underlying meaning rings true: unique identities are blurred when society puts a label on an entire group. But a person’s gender, race and sexual orientation are part of his or her identity—part of what makes a person valuable to an employer.
“For whatever reason, people assume I am black, but I am also Latina,” a bi-racial friend told me recently. “When a Latina group was forming at my company, no one even asked me if I wanted to join it!”
Recognizing the fact that broad labels can unintentionally exclude some individuals, Catalyst recently renamed one of our main research areas. The areas formerly called Women of Color in the U.S. and Visible Minorities in Canada are now called Diverse Women & Inclusion. Deeper layers of identity among women—especially in global contexts—can involve class, sexual orientation, caste, disability, nationality, and immigrant status. The new term Diverse Women & Inclusion was intended to cover all of these particular factors in a more sensitive and inclusive way.
And that’s what it’s all about.
Careless labels can engender blatant stereotyping. More than a decade ago, Catalyst released a groundbreaking report on the way managers perceive women from diverse backgrounds. Latinas reported being stereotyped as lazy or too focused on family, citing managers who consistently underestimated their talents and capabilities because they spoke English with an accent. Black women reported facing stereotypes about being too direct. They described having to worry about whether the braids in their hair contributed to a perception that they were too radical or too bold. Asian women reported being stereotyped as passive “China dolls.”
In more recent Catalyst research, LGBT women discussed various dimensions of discrimination in Canada. “As a lesbian woman, I have sometimes had to fend off occasional stereotypes of lesbian women as all butch and muscular and ungainly—I’m none of these,” said one employee. Roughly a quarter of the LGBT women reported that their manager was not comfortable interacting with them.
These attitudes may explain why diverse women are so poorly represented at the top in Fortune 500 companies. In 2005, the most recent year for which data is available diverse women held 1.7% of corporate officer positions and only 1.0% of top earner positions. I’ve talked a lot about the glass ceiling, but for diverse women the ceiling is concrete. To fix this, workplaces need to embrace, develop and leverage their diverse workforce.
Catalyst is committed to representing the full spectrum of women worldwide. To do so, we’ve updated our own labels. The question is: are you working to change yours?
C This
In this edition of C This, Royal Bank of Canada President and CEO Gordon Nixon talks about the importance of diversity, PepsiCo Chairman and CEO Indra Nooyi is cited as a visionary global leader and new statistics on the female talent pipeline are revealed.
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Diversity Is Not a “Cause”
In this clip, Gordon Nixon, President and CEO of Canada’s biggest bank, Royal Bank of Canada (RBC), outlines the importance of a diverse workforce. “You need to have an employee base,” said Gordon, “that reflects the diversity of your customer base.”
Watch: “RBC’s Nixon, Part III,” BNN, 4/9/10
Emerging Pipeline
Gender bias is truly global—more than 30% of managerial women surveyed in emerging countries reported unfair treatment because of their gender.
Read: “The Potential Of Women In Emerging Markets,” by Hana R. Alberts, ForbesWoman, 4/22/10
Future of Leadership: Indra Nooyi
According to the Harvard Business Review, Indra Nooyi, Chairman and CEO of PepsiCo, “embodies characteristics that will be increasingly sought in leaders for a globalizing world.” As an admirer of the innovative work she is doing at PepsiCo, I couldn’t agree more!
India’s Glass Ceiling
Does this sound familiar? “At the end of the day, being a woman I don’t get appraised like my male colleagues do.” New data suggests gaps in pay and promotions are rife in India.
Into the Deep
In 2012, women will report for duty on U.S. Navy submarines—a first. “We’re going to look back on this four or five years from now, shrug our shoulders and say, ‘What was everybody worrying about?’” said Rear Adm. Barry Bruner, the top sub commander at Kings Bay Naval Submarine Base, Georgia.
Read: “Navy To Allow Women To Serve On Submarines,” by Russ Bynum, Associated Press, 4/29/10
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