by Jane Perdue | Stereotypes
At one point in my career, I was a vice president in a Fortune 500 company with $2 billion in annual revenues. I successfully managed a department of 150 people, consistently delivering projects ahead of schedule and under budget.
When asked by the CEO to describe me, can you guess what my boss said?
He said I was a “soft and round Aunt Polly.”
Wow, that stung.
Okay, I’m a woman. I’m blonde, and I’m overweight.
But why would my boss describe me by my appearance and sex instead of my accomplishments?
Because I’ve hit the trifecta of stereotypes—a blonde, fat woman.
It’s 2019, and gender stereotypes still exist that make it challenging for business women to be seen as both a good leader and a good woman.
That really troubles me.
What about you?
Is that the kind of workplace culture we want for our children and grandchildren?
For the women and men who want their kids and grandkids to have a different experience, now’s the time to partner up for change. Provided both sexes are willing to modify a few workplace practices, together women and men can change how leadership is defined and practiced.
Together, women and men can end stereotypes that limit the potential and passion of too many.
9 ways to say good-bye to gender stereotypes
Practicing these nine actions will bring equity and gender-balanced inclusiveness to your leadership practices.
1. Be mindful of gender stereotypes that influence your thinking about which sex is better suited for certain kinds of work.
Social conditioning nudges people to think about leadership in terms of masculine traits, a practice that puts women and feminine attributes at a disadvantage.
If you find yourself thinking that men make the better bosses because they’re good at taking charge and women the better assistants because they’re the best at taking care, stop. If you always ask the women in your meetings to take the notes or plan parties, stop. If you question the leadership potential of a kind-hearted man, stop. If you describe assertive women as shrill, stop.
Stereotypes push us to apply a specified set of expectations to a whole group of people, whether they apply or not. When we do that, we ignore individual attributes and deny people their potential.
2. Check for inconsistencies in how you select a man or a woman for a job or evaluate their promotion readiness.
Research tells us that women are judged on their past performance, men on their future potential. Why not evaluate all candidates on both their past performance and future potential?
3. Assure that all voices are heard equally in the meetings you conduct.
If the men keep interrupting the women, call them out. If the women remain silent, call them into the discussion. If anyone co-opts an idea that someone presented earlier, assure that proper attribution is given.
4. Monitor how you pay your people.
If you supervise others, look for—and correct—any wage disparities that exists between sexes, ethnicities, etc., holding the same positions.
5. Sponsor both women and men and be proactive about it.
For anyone who has the audacity to insinuate that an inappropriate relationship exists in a mixed sex sponsorship, call out their boorish and stereotypical thinking.
6. Let go of the incorrect myth that power always corrupts.
There are those who use the power of their position for personal gain, but don’t confuse power with the selfish person using it. Power reveals what a person already was.
7. Avoid the “parent” trap.
When a man becomes a parent, it’s assumed he’ll be more dedicated to his work because he has a family to support. When a woman becomes a parent, it’s assumed she’ll be less dedicated to her work because she has a family. Be on the lookout for these incorrect assumptions. Along the same lines, don’t penalize either moms or dads for using family leave time.
8. Don’t confuse physical presence with true inclusion.
Just because there’s a woman or a minority on a team doesn’t mean there’s an inclusive, participative environment with meaningful engagement. Ask yourself some tough questions about whether your leadership practices are reflective of real participation or just window dressing presence.
9. Be willing to be vulnerable so your biases can be detected and managed.
While we all work hard to not be biased, we still are. Create mechanisms so that the presence of biases, gender and otherwise, can be safely and nonjudgmentally identified and eliminated.
Seeing someone else’s biases is much easier than seeing our own. That means using tact, grit, kindness, persistence, and grace are essential for achieving progress, openness, and inclusion.
Psychologists once believed that only bigoted people used stereotypes. Now the study of unconscious bias is revealing the unsettling truth: We all use stereotypes, all the time, without knowing it. We have met the enemy of equality, and the enemy is us. ~Annie Murphy Paul, journalist and author
As you head out to work tomorrow, remember the shining eyes and hopeful faces of your children. Build the kind of place where you would want them to work.
Image credit before quote: Pixabay
by Andrea S. Kramer and Alton B. Harris | Stereotypes
The belief that certain activities are “appropriate” for women and certain careers are not is the result of stereotype threat, pure and simple.
If a woman believes women are good at psychology but not computer science, she is more likely to major in psychology than computer science. If she believes women are good at personal relationships but not finance, she is more likely to take a job in human resources than the treasury department. And if she believes women are not good at negotiating but are good at administrative organization, she is more unlikely to volunteer for a major merger or acquisition and more likely to offer to organize a new filing system.
We recognize that the entire subject of gender-appropriate activities is a highly sensitive one.
Pointing out the gender segregation in college majors—85 percent of health service majors are women but only 19 percent of engineering majors are—and occupations—80 percent of social workers are women but only 15 percent of computer programmers are—can quickly be interpreted as a form of “blaming the victim.”
Pointing out gender segregation in careers can be taken as an attempt to hold women responsible for having lower status and lower-paying jobs than do men.
We want to make clear that we don’t think some college majors are better than others, that some occupations are better than others, or that some career roles are better than others. There are multiple factors affecting women’s decisions with respect to all of these areas, and we have no interest in making judgments about anyone’s actual choices.
What we do have an interest in, however, is making you aware of the segregation by gender that pervades America’s college majors, occupations, and career responsibilities.
We believe that if you are sensitive to this segregation, you will be less likely to place limitations and restraints on your own work-related attitudes, choices, and behavior simply because you are a woman. We don’t want women to be more like men, but we do want women to believe and behave as though they can do anything in their careers that men can do—and do it just as well, if not better.
Forty percent of college-educated women and men would need to change their occupations to achieve gender parity across all United States occupations. This occupational gender segregation is most often attributed to “demand-side” influences, that is, employers’ decisions about who they will hire and who they will make feel welcome.
There is some evidence that “supply-side” factors also play a role. This means that women’s and men’s personal decisions about where (and at what) they want to work contribute to this segregation. Researchers from McGill University and the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania looked at the jobs comparably qualified woman and men applied for after having attended an elite, one-year international MBA program.
Their study focused on three factors influencing a person’s choice of a job: how the applicant values the specific rewards offered by the job, whether the applicant identifies with the job, and whether the applicant expects an application for that job will result in a job offer. The study examined how each of these factors affected women’s and men’s applications to work in the fields of finance, consulting, and general management.
The researchers found no differences in the monetary and other values women and men assigned to these jobs. Nevertheless, women were far less likely to apply for jobs in finance and consulting and far more likely to apply for general management positions than were men.
The researchers found this gender disparity in applications was due almost entirely to women not “identifying” with finance jobs because of the strong masculine stereotypes associated with them or with consulting jobs because of anticipated difficulties with “work–life balance.”
The researchers concluded that the low number of women in the fields of finance and consulting is largely the result of women’s “gender role socialization,” that is, the stereotypes they held about themselves and particular careers. They also concluded, however, that when a woman can overcome exceptionally high barriers to female participation early in her career, this may actually reduce her “gendered behavior” in subsequent stages of her career.
Gendered behavior is behavior that is shaped or caused by internalized gender stereotypes.
Take one well-documented phenomenon: men typically apply for jobs when they meet 60 percent of the job criteria, but women typically don’t apply until they feel they meet 100 percent of the criteria.
This is gendered behavior, pure and simple, and it is due in all likelihood to stereotype threat: women’s belief that they are just not as good at particular tasks as men and, therefore, their fear that if they are not fully qualified for the jobs for which they are applying, they are likely to fail.
This same fear too frequently causes some women to choose assignments and positions that involve less risk, lower visibility, fewer challenges, less responsibility and less external pressure than those chosen by their male colleagues.
If you are in a traditionally male work environment, there are lots of people and situations at work that will hold you back simply because you are a woman.
You are as talented, prepared, and capable as the men, so be your own best fan and avoid thinking negatively about yourself or what you are capable of.
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This article is adapted with permission from Breaking Through Bias: Communication Techniques for Women to Succeed at Work by Andrea S. Kramer and Alton B. Harris
Image source before quote added: Pixabay
by Jane Perdue | Stereotypes
In spring 2014, New York Mets second baseman Daniel Murphy took three days of paternity leave when his first child was born.
Sounds like a perfectly reasonable thing for a new dad to do, yet many sports announcers and fans soundly criticized his decision. Why? Because it resulted in him not playing in two baseball games.
Why would such a simple decision create such an uproar? (more…)
by Jane Perdue | Stereotypes
Do you work for a company where the CEO and other executives say they support gender equality but little else happens to make it a reality?
I’ve worked at several places where that’s true and guess other women might have, too. Places where saying anything about the say/do gap is political and career suicide.
Since being proactive puts paychecks at risk at places like that, perhaps you can shine a light on the situation by leaving the following letter someplace where your CEO might read it…and be inspired to act positively.
Let’s hope!
Here’s to progress and ending the need for anonymity!
Dear Mr. CEO, (more…)
