http://www.forbes.com/2010/01/12/small-business-job-market-forbes-woman-entrepreneurs-economic-growth.html

I was wondering about a concept I’d love to get your thoughts on –
In my organizational psychology course we discussed the PwC v Hopkins case where Ann Hopkins – a strong and qualified employee was denied partnership. She had been evaluated as being an outstanding employee, was “virtually at the partner level,” and had brought in significant revenue for the firm. Nonetheless, there was a lot criticism surrounding her personality traits and being too “macho.” One coworker stated that in order to improve her chances for partnership, Ann should “walk more femininely, talk more femininely, dress more femininely, wear make-up, have her hair styled, and wear jewelry.”

It seems that in her case there was a mismatch between her expected gender role and her leadership approach. Yet, stereotypical female traits are not viewed as leadership qualities in our society.

What do you make of this? People feel uncomfortable when societal norms are breached, so would you agree that women who aspire to climb the ladder should find a happy medium between being assertive and aggressive (leadership qualities) and being traditionally feminine?

Julia R

Link to the case:
http://supct.law.cornell.edu/supct/search/display.html?terms=Price%20Waterhouse&url=/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0490_0228_ZO.html

One example I’ve experienced is at one job, I used to leave work ‘on time’ every day. A guy in my department used to stay late pretty much everyday. Our boss would sort of make passive aggressive comments about the difference… insinuating that I didn’t work as hard.

However in reality, I was getting more done and accomplishing more in my 40 hour work week than he was in his maybe 60 hour week. I measured my results meticulously and achieved and often exceeded all goals/objectives put at me. To me that should be recognized, and in my mind that’s more valuable to a company than someone working round the clock and not achieving/exceeding goals. I’d say that he or she is inefficient.

My personal lesson learned is just to not work for companies that think that way and I’ve been much better off since. However, I think it’s quite common and women (particularly with families) will likely always be at a disadvantage in that environment.
.-= Kelly´s last blog ..Foursquare: Is it really a game changer? =-.

An interesting question I heard once was, “Does this person really have ten years’ experience, or one years’ experience ten times?”
.-= Bill´s last blog ..The “Horse” Caption =-.

I especially appreciate this line :

“I get the point about women who’ve been out of the workforce lacking equal experience to men. It has a logic about it, but it’s a smelly kind of logic, in my mind masking some more emotive stuff.”

That captures well the issue I want to raise, (but perhaps in a way that folks like Bruce might find more palatable).

Almost every explanation/excuse remaining has some validity to it– sure, time does matter, in some ways. But each of these explanations/excuses hides a small bit of rotten. At this point, we’ve knocked out so many of the big obvious “explanations”, we have to interrogate the ones that look logical on their face but that hide the dynamics that keep sexism (racism, classism etc.) alive.

In statistics we love a variable that has a high Rsquared– it explains ‘a lot’ of variance. But sometimes variables have a low R2 — they only explain 2% of whats going on, but you can tell from their significance level that they are real. The time argument hides real explanations for gender diffs in promotions.

Thanks for engaging the argument and establishing the clear takeaway.
cvh

First, I think organisations find it easier to promote men into the very senior positions. Let’s face it, it’s primarily men who “live” there and there’s a safety about hiring another man.

I also think there’s a lot of “keeping men sweet” that goes on. You can just hear, when the EVP vacancy comes up and the candidates are a couple of men who, in their opinion have sweated it out for years, and a woman who has been on several rounds of maternity leave, at least one of the guys feel he deserves the job ahead of his female counterpart simply because in his opinion he has been more “loyal”. And which of his seniors is going to dissuade him of that?

Thirdly, appointing women into very senior roles means big change for a lot of businesses. The dynamics of having more of a male/female mix are different for a start, let alone anything else. And, as far as I can see, although a lot of big businesses say they want change, really they don’t. It means a loss of control.

Thanks for the provocative post!

I think one argument that you neglect to address is the ‘Commitment’ argument. Basically, companies want executives who are going to live, breathe, eat everything to do with the company. They want executive who will sacrifice everything for the sake of the company. They want executives who think about nothing besides the company. If this is truly what they want, then fearing that women wo ar willing to take extended time off to raise a family are likely demonstrate less ‘company devotion’ than men who don’t is a reasonable conjecture. Whether it makes business sense for them to want this die-hard devotion is another matter and perhaps the weakness to this argument.

Unfortunately, you ruin a sound argument with bitter snide tone of the first half. Name calling (‘lazy’ , ‘crap’) is not a way to assert authority. Maybe it is more amusing to those readers who agree with you, but tends to put off the ‘swing’ vote undecideds. The ‘swing’ vote is the critical constituency in any political issue. No point in winning over the people who agree with you…they are already there. No point in arguing with the stalwarts who disagree…they are not even listening. The focus of good thinking is to get more undecideds on your side.
.-= Bruce Lynn´s last blog ..Darwin and Adaptability (Mullins Part 2) =-.