Playing to strength: leveraging gender at work

Playing to Strength Leveraging Gender at Work

ALICE ADAMS

PRAEGER

An Imprint of ABC-CLIO, LLC

Copyright 2010 by Alice Adams All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Adams, Alice E. (Alice Elaine), 1957– Playing to strength: leveraging gender at work/ Alice Adams. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978–0–313–36641–3 (hbk. : alk. paper) — ISBN 978–0–313–36642–0 (ebook) 1.Sex role. 2. Equality. I. Title. HQ1075.A293 2010 305.43—dc22 2009042098 14 13 12 11 10

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This book is also available on the World Wide Web as an eBook. Visit www.abc-clio.com for details. ABC-CLIO, LLC 130 Cremona Drive, P.O. Box 1911 Santa Barbara, California 93116-1911 This book is printed on acid-free paper Manufactured in the United States of America

Contents Chapter 1

One Species, Indivisible

1

Chapter 2

Undoing Gender Segregation

25

Chapter 3

Outside Looking In

45

Chapter 4

Don’t Do It

71

Chapter 5

Tools, Part One: Foundations of the Game

101

Chapter 6

Tools, Part Two: Game Plan

127

Appendix 1

Corporate Gender

147

Appendix 2

Voices of Experience

155

Appendix 3

Gender Inclusion in a Male-Majority Workplace Sample Project Plan

163

Index

183

CHAPTER 1

One Species, Indivisible Why not take all of me? —Seymour Simons, ‘‘All of Me’’ Over a century ago, a respected scientist named W. L. Distant met with colleagues to describe how sex left its indelible, unavoidable mark on humanity, especially on the brain. In short order, Distant reviewed the work of 15 well-respected scientists who, all told, had measured thousands of brains in one way or another.1 Distant spoke with such confident authority that it’s tempting, even now, to believe that he and so many other thoughtful men had to be at least partly right. At the time, their collective conclusion seemed compelling and unavoidable: men were smarter than women. But what, his audience wanted to know, did men being smarter suggest about education and employment for women? In particular, they wanted to know why women weren’t using their leisure time to educate themselves. Distant replied with a rather gallant defense of the ladies: although he believed that women had no reason to pursue an education that would prepare them for employment, he also believed that evolution would eventually make the cranial capacities of men and women more similar, so women’s intelligence and ability to do useful work would eventually increase. Flashing forward to today, we find that not only experts, but also the general public, are far more ready to acknowledge that women and men both benefit from women’s access to a good education, and that the sexes can work well together in many fields. So why should we look backward to a less enlightened age? Actually, there are good reasons to

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glance over our shoulders from time to time. The old ideas don’t really die; they come up again and again, reframed for a new age. Most recently, they have been resurrected in a host of popular self-help books, with John Gray’s Mars-and-Venus series leading the way. These books are marketed as courageous and revolutionary, but the basic premise—that men and women are so different as to constitute nearly separate species—goes back well beyond the Victorians to (at least) Aristotle. Aristotle was quite clear in proposing to his unastonished audience that men provide the form of the living being and the spark that brings it to life, while the raw building materials come from the woman. Genetically speaking, Aristotle was wrong, but the underlying proposition that nature created profound differences between the sexes has been bought into—hook, line, and sinker—ever since. In Dr. Distant’s day, the fact that he thought evolution could explain the differences between men and women would have ruffled far more feathers than the ancient idea that women lack men’s ‘‘mental strength.’’ And that, oddly enough, is one of the important and enduring ways in which men and women resemble one another: we all tend to hang on to old ideas about gender difference, whether or not they reflect our own reality. This is why Gray has been so successful. He repackaged old, familiar, and exceedingly comfortable—but flawed—ideas, making them palatable for modern civilization. Gray and others like him tell us that as long as you remember the simple fact that men come from the planet of independent doers while women come from the planet of communication and relationships, then you’ll know what to expect from people, and you’ll be able to get the best from everyone working in your organization. If Gray’s work were based on reliable evidence, those who have gathered in the ‘‘separate species’’ camp would have made it possible to make not only the workplace a better place but also, in fact, the whole world a far better place for all. Consider what it would mean for organizations: we would know how to resolve conflicts between men and women as well as among members of the same sex. We could leverage gender differences so that the special skills and specific qualities of the sexes could be put to the best use. We would know which sex is better with numbers and technical applications, which sex could be depended on to nurture good customer relations, and which sex could work hardest or most efficiently. We would know who would put in the most hours, remain loyal to the company through lean times, step easily into leadership roles, take the long view while being

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able to resolve short-term problems, make difficult decisions speedily and correctly, see projects through to completion, come to work when sick, take and offer good advice, delegate effectively, find vulnerabilities in the organization (and fix them), strike that delicate balance between firmness and flexibility with subordinates, respond to the latest trends, keep an eye out for new markets, and recruit the best new employees. Gender doesn’t determine who can actually do any of these things, but it does have a powerful impact on who we think can do these things. That gap between reality and discernment leads to serious errors in judgment that affect the well-being and financial health of organizations. History tells us that we can expect that more women than men will be underrated, and a mountain of current research supports that realization. I’ll delve into what that means for organizations more fully in Chapter Two. For now, however, it’s important to recognize that just as the sexes are well matched in terms of skills and qualities that can make the workplace hum, they also share a number of human flaws that can work against them. Women and men are, for instance, about equally likely to make inaccurate judgments about how gender affects a person’s abilities and commitment. When it comes down to making practical decisions, people of both sexes— including those who consciously support the ideal of gender equity— still tend to revert to old ideas about men being big-time doers and women being small-time helpers. When people are ‘‘misfiled’’ into gender boxes that don’t reflect all that they are, the result is that only a narrow range of their capabilities can be tapped. This weakens any business, and yet many organizations allow such judgments to affect every aspect of the business. Often, the key decision makers aren’t fully aware that misconceptions about gender are permeating organizational culture or that such misconceptions can undermine the operation.

WORKING GENDER How to find out what’s really happening, and deciding what can be done about it, is the point of this book. Some of our fondest ideas about gender differences don’t translate well into the workplace, and they are seriously damaging to productivity, morale, and retention. Stereotypes about men and women undermine organizations in every way, including the bottom line. Because the sexes are far more alike

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than different, it is possible to build highly productive organizational cultures based on the positive qualities and capabilities that men and women are equally likely to have. The Mars-and-Venus story is compelling not because of its wellworn ideas about men and women, but because of what it seems to promise: an orderly and stable world, a world in which everyone knows his or her place. The story about men and women that prevailed in Distant’s day worked the same way. It allowed him—or any other member of his culture—to know the instant he walked into a room how he should behave, with whom he could expect to have interesting conversations, and whom he could expect to pour his tea. There would have been little chance of confusing the one with the other. But what if he found himself transported far forward in time and space, thrust into in an apparently unthinkable society in which a person’s sex revealed nothing significant about his or her abilities? Here, men and women would have about equal capacities to do math, listen and empathize, explain complex ideas and processes, solve problems, and nurture children. In this radically new world, women and men, together and separately, would have all the qualities necessary for a successful life at home and at work. Wouldn’t Mr. Distant, Victorian gentleman, have simply melted in the face of such a sudden, absolute, and profound contradiction of the basic principles of the differences between the genders? Wouldn’t he have gone down shouting ‘‘Vive la diffe´rence!’’? I don’t think so. Given enough information and some time, I think he would have adapted to the new order well, and I think that he also would have been satisfied that the science in which he placed so much faith had progressed far enough to explain why and how men and women so often work well together. One thing is for sure: it’s not because men and women are so different. Oddly enough, John Gray showed us this when he offered specific do’s and don’ts for how to deal with the opposite sex in the workplace. One of Gray’s specific suggestions for men was, ‘‘Don’t presume that she is wanting your advice.’’ It’s a good tip. A man who holds back advice until a woman asks for it is showing that he respects her autonomy and competence. But good working relationships require give-and-take, so a few pages later Gray addressed women: ‘‘Give [a man] advice only when it is welcome or solicited.’’2 Ironic duplications like this are common among ‘‘separate species’’ advocates. It happens because men’s and women’s emotions,

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expectations, and abilities are much more alike than they are different. That realization haunts much of what we hear about how gender differences affect the working world. What exactly are we supposed to make of the common observation that it’s natural for men to have a few feminine characteristics and women to have a few masculine characteristics? Is a man who can listen to and empathize with his coworkers or subordinates acting like a woman, or is he acting like a man who has those particular—and particularly valuable—skills? Is a woman who easily takes command acting like a man, or is she acting like a woman able to take command? Remarkably, these are not abstract philosophical questions. How we answer them has a powerful impact on performance in the workplace. As long as we keep empathy and listening skills in the ‘‘feminine’’ box and assertive leadership in the ‘‘masculine’’ box, we’re going to have a hard time using all the tools evolution has given us.

STEREOTYPE THREAT: THE TOOL BOX AND SEWING KIT Putting basic human qualities and skills into a particular gender category makes it harder for members of the ‘‘other’’ sex to access them when they need them. When men get the message that empathy and listening are feminine skills, their performance as listeners and empathizers declines measurably. They are suffering from ‘‘stereotype threat,’’ a psychological force that does damage not only to communication but also to analytical problem solving and math performance. Stereotype threat is a malady that affects both sexes, and realizing that helps put to rest another myth. One of our most enduring conceptions of gender difference is that women are more impressionable and more vulnerable to social expectations than men are. The idea is that men are socialized to be rugged individualists, whereas women depend on relationships for their well-being. Women, therefore, are particularly sensitive to judgments about their abilities and attractiveness. In fact, we are all responsive to social cues about behavior—it’s just that we’re given different cues depending on our sex. There’s more to know about how stereotype threat affects people’s performance, so we come back to it later in Appendix Three: Gender Inclusion in a MaleMajority Workplace Sample Project Plan.

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Playing to Strength

SPLITTING HARES Social stereotypes do a spectacular amount of damage when they’re put to work, but they’re also about as mundane as a messed-up filing system. Check the drawer marked ‘‘female.’’ When you look through the folder marked ‘‘basic reproductive functions,’’ you’ll find all sorts of things men can do quite well. The same happens with the ‘‘male’’ drawer; it’s full of abilities and characteristics that a sharp administrative assistant would have cross-filed with ‘‘female.’’ Why is our gender filing system so fouled up? Once again, W. L. Distant shows us how it happens. Distant said that the intellectual differences between men and women could be understood by observing wild hares and domesticated rabbits. Coddled and confined, domesticated rabbits had little opportunity to exercise their brains. Wild hares, however, had to work hard for a living. A dim-witted hare was unlikely to survive long enough to reproduce, but a dumb bunny could breed unchecked. Hares and Bunnies were the Mars and Venus of Distant’s Victorian world. Women, he explained, lived like hand-fed rabbits that were protected from outside threats and so had evolved to be mentally soft. Men, however, lived like hares, facing all sorts of intellectual challenges. Nature picked off mental (and presumably physical) weaklings among men, leaving the smartest and strongest of the lot to pass their manly traits on to their sons. Distant’s colleagues were satisfied with that reasoning. And yet, like Mars and Venus, Bunnies and Hares only worked for those who didn’t notice the fatal flaw. The problem is that hares and bunnies, like human beings, come in both sexes. A smart female hare has the same survival advantage as her similarly smart brother; they’re equally likely to live long enough to reproduce successfully. On the other hand, a male bunny pampered in captivity can get by just fine on no more intelligence than his sister. Female and male bunnies’ IQs are equally low, but in their protected environment, they can breed like rabbits. Distant simply misfiled a desirable quality (high intelligence) in the drawer marked ‘‘male’’ and the less desirable quality (weakmindedness) in the drawer marked ‘‘female.’’ Distant wasn’t confused about the basic principles of Darwinian evolutionary theory; he certainly knew that characteristics can be passed along in a breeding populations. It seems more likely that the idea that women aren’t as smart as men just seemed so right that it prevented him and his colleagues from noticing the problem with the

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Hares and Bunnies idea. If men and women reproduced separately from one another, as hares and rabbits do, they could, in fact, develop profound intellectual differences. Fortunately for our survival as a species, we breed together and consequently share most of what it takes to make it through life as a human being.

THE MORE THINGS CHANGE It’s a rare twenty-first century expert on gender difference who announces that women shouldn’t try to handle a demanding, intellectually challenging, high-paying job because they just aren’t as smart as men. It is, however, routine to say that nature has made women to value their careers less and their families more, while nature made men to put their careers first. Similarly, it’s common to say that women are not ‘‘hard-wired’’ for demanding, math-heavy careers like engineering, but their brains do allow them to excel in peopleoriented, nurturing jobs in personnel departments and elementary classrooms. One supporter of a strict division of labor based on gender is Simon Baron-Cohen, a professor of developmental psychopathology who has done groundbreaking work on autism. He considers the normal male brain better able to systemize—and therefore closer to autistic—than the normal female brain.3 And it is commonplace to admit that men and women have different ways of communicating and vastly uneven levels of sexual desires, as neuropsychiatrist Louann Brizendine did when she promoted the nowoften reprinted factoids that a) men speak only 7,000 words daily in comparison with women’s 20,000, and b) men think about sex about once every 52 seconds, whereas women think about sex once or twice a day.4 The two sets of statistics taken together might explain why men don’t have much to say, but they are not anywhere near accurate. We’ll come back to what the research on communication shows, but a brief glance here suggests the problem: if the figures were accurate, men’s thoughts about sex would outnumber women’s at a daily ratio of 500 to one (if we grant men some hours for sleeping). If the ratio were true, it would make men useless on the job. The male brain space available for doing work would be nil. And yet, as with Hares and Bunnies, it feels so right— Don’t men think about sex all the time? And don’t women talk all the time?—that it hardly matters whether the evidence passes the test of common sense.

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If the ratio were true, it would mean, as one woman put it, that ‘‘Y-chromosomers’’ are so different from ‘‘double-Xers’’ that we may as well be separate species. The specific ideas about how we differ, and the way we talk about gender differences, have evolved in response to changing social standards and scientific progress, but the core idea traveled unchanged through the long years between W. L. Distant and John Gray. Hares and Bunnies and Venus and Mars are attractive ways of sorting out who’s who. They promise serenity and happiness as long as you can accept that men are men and women are women. Even if it doesn’t make us any happier, at least we can enjoy having a sense of control over our world. And if we can believe that conflicts between men and women, in our personal lives and at work, are the result of intrinsic gender differences that are simply ‘‘the way things are and have always been,’’ then at least we’re off the hook. Why take responsibility for creating inclusive workplaces when evolution says men relish an aggressive, dog-eat-dog business game, while women just want to make sure that the workplace environment is harmonious and emotionally supportive?

IT’S ALL IN THE SPIN Although it sounds counterintuitive, the idea that men and women are really different has been used to defend women’s right to equity in education and the workplace. A couple of years before Gray’s books started arriving on bookshelves everywhere, Sally Helgesen wrote a book called The Female Advantage, which proposed that women in fact have specific qualities that make them good leaders—in some ways, better than men.5 Helgesen avoided the Hares and Bunnies claim that evolution made men and women different species. However, she relied on the ‘‘gender difference’’ theme Gray and others have made so much hay with. For Helgesen, the qualities that would give women an advantage in the business world were virtually the same things that, in Distant’s world, had made them fit for not much more than pouring tea. Women, Helgesen asserted, understand the importance of fostering good relationships, being collaborative, and what she calls ‘‘organizing ambience,’’ or the ability to organize and redecorate an office so that people feel good and work well there. Helgesen wanted to open doors for women by revealing the good things being female enabled them to do, but the ‘‘gender difference’’ approach works against that goal.

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Here’s why: if I hear someone say that women have a ‘‘female advantage’’ such as the ability to collaborate well, I’m automatically tempted to balance the score by imagining a similarly stereotypical ‘‘male advantage.’’ Sure, I might admit, women are great collaborators, but men can handle working solo better than women. Then, because this is a game, I won’t be satisfied with an even score; I’ll up the ante by remarking that not only can men get the job done alone, but they are also better at coming up with original ideas and solving problems. Now the ‘‘female advantage’’ side has to come up with a response. That might be a defense of women’s abilities to be original and work on their own, or it might come in the form of something else women are supposed to be especially good at—multitasking, for instance. We could toss positive stereotypes back and forth forever. At least it’s nicer than attacking each other with negative stereotypes. But no matter how it’s played, this is not a game that anyone can win on the merits. The person who occupies the more powerful position in the organization has an advantage in the game. Later in this chapter, we’ll see how using one’s power to play the gender-difference game can backfire, but the really smart thing to do is stop playing the game altogether because it undermines the organization as a whole. Anything considered a male advantage will be understood—often unconsciously—as harder for a woman to pull off, so everyone involved (those in charge of hiring and supervising, co-workers, and sometimes the women in question) is less likely to recognize those qualities in a woman. Helgesen herself wrote that people in general (not just women) entering the job market were tending to place less importance on salary and more on their own enjoyment of the work. A careful look at the statistics would turn up differences in how men and women value their jobs, but the central fact remains: people of both sexes are prepared to balance the benefit of a higher salary against the less tangible rewards of a job that makes us happy. Employers, along with the rest of us, need to know that there’s nothing especially feminine about wanting good workplace relationships and a satisfying job along with an adequate salary.

OLD FAMILIAR SONG, STILL THE WRONG NOTES The biggest problem with the ‘‘gender difference’’ theme, however, is that male/female comparisons so often fail for the individual. If a

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man is expected to demonstrate his ‘‘male advantage’’ by working long hours by himself in ugly surroundings, but he much prefers to work collaboratively in a pleasant setting and go home to his family at a reasonable hour, is he betraying his gender? Is he, or is he not, man enough to claim his place in the working world? If I took the gender difference theory as gospel, these are questions I would have to ask about my father, whose willingness to share his formidable writing skills made him a valued collaborator at work. He loved working with people, and he was willing to consult with his co-workers on anything from simple questions about grammar or phrasing to major problems with the coherence or organization of a report. He did his own job efficiently and then helped others meet their deadlines. It wasn’t a role that would ever get him a major promotion, but he didn’t care about that. Instead of spending his time jockeying for a power position, he served happily as the all-purpose office communicator. If I had to apply the gender-differences model to my father, I would have to say that he behaved more like women are supposed to behave —collaborating rather than taking center stage, helping others look good, and caring more about relationships than about climbing the organizational ladder. And yet, no one ever seemed to think he was anything other than fully male. Quite a while before I began to consider such subtle occurrences, a corporate consultant, Kim, told me about an experience that demonstrated how unreliable the genderdifference perspective is when people actually try to use it. Looking for tips on how to help corporate groups deal with gender conflicts, Kim read Deborah Tannen’s Talking From 9 to 5.6 She liked the book and tried to incorporate it into some of her programs. In fact, it had helped her understand some of her own communication problems better. The only problem was that she often found herself identifying more with the man than the woman in Tannen’s examples; then again, sometimes she could see herself in both roles, and sometimes in neither. Reading Tannen made her feel uneasy, as if there might be something wrong with her, because her communication patterns didn’t line up on either side of the gender divide. In the end, Kim compared her own communication style to those of her clients and concluded that the gender-based communication differences she was supposed to be seeing were too unreliable to be useful. She realized that the problem wasn’t that she was not feminine enough; the problem was that the ‘‘big gender-difference’’ model didn’t hold up against the complexities of real-world interactions.

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FOOT IN MOUTH: YES, WORDS DO MATTER A few years ago, Lawrence Summers, then president of Harvard University and as this book goes to press, Senior Financial Advisor to the President of the United States, spoke at a conference titled ‘‘Diversifying the Science & Engineering Workforce.’’7 What he said boiled down to the proposition that women lack sufficient commitment and ability to compete with men for top positions in science and engineering. The aftermath of his speech was, predictably, a debate about whether nature has endowed women with the right stuff. At the beginning of his speech, Summers announced that he was speaking ‘‘unofficially’’—that is to say, he was speaking not as the president of Harvard, but as a private individual. It was an odd claim for such a public person to make, especially because what he had to say concerned his own organization so directly. Summers had the attention of the general public, but he was also the chief officer of his own organization. What did the members of that organization hear their top leader say? What was his ‘‘hidden’’ message? • Men: You’re in a neutral category. As individuals, you may or may not win the race to the top—your personal merit will decide that —but there’s nothing about your gender that will hold you back. • Women: It would surprise me greatly if you or anyone of your sex turned out to have what it takes to win the race to the top. It’s regrettable, but you are being held back by your own lack of ability and commitment. • Hiring committees: Women belong to a suspect class. Because the organization lacks confidence in women, think twice about hiring and promoting them. • Students: Women naturally tend to want to run nurseries and become nurses, while men want to fix tractors and build bridges. Why—his observations imply—should we waste our resources teaching women higher skills they don’t need? Summers said he was only being provocative, but no matter what his intentions were, what he actually did was alter the organization’s climate, making it considerably chillier for women who might want to pursue math and science, while leaving men in a more comfortable situation. In an open letter, Summers later said that he did not believe that ‘‘girls are intellectually less able than boys, or that women lack

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the ability to succeed at the highest levels of science,’’ but that contradiction of his earlier statements didn’t do much to relieve anyone’s mind. What he’d already said couldn’t be unsaid. Even so, the damage might have been minimal, but his opinions about gender differences corresponded to the university’s personnel practices. The number of women offered tenure at Harvard had plunged in the years Summers served as president. In the most recent year, women had received only four of thirty-two tenure offers. What should we make of all this? Where there’s a conflict between the stated policies of the organization and what its leadership actually believes, savvy members of the organization know what do to. They make sure their own practical decisions align with their leaders’ real opinions. The most obvious reason is that their own jobs may depend on their knowing what ideas and which people are really valued. But much less irrational imperatives come into play as well. Given a choice, just about everyone—of whatever sex—wants very much to go where he or she will be valued, not only for their individual contributions but also as a member of the workplace community. I’ll have more to say about what this desire to belong means for the success or failure of diversity policies. A core point of this book is how to resuscitate an environment dictated by ‘‘insiders’’ at the expense of ‘‘outsiders’’ within the organization. For now, because gender influences our ideas about how people belong, we’ll start there.

EVERYONE IN HIS PLACE First of all, the need for what some social psychologists call ‘‘belongingness’’—a state of feeling like an accepted member of the group—is basic to being human. However, as psychologists Baumeister and Sommer put it, men and women pursue belongingness in ‘‘different spheres and (hence) with difference strategies.’’ 8 Back in Distant’s day, when men and women were more segregated, this claim was a lot more valid than it is now. When Summers spoke about women being nurturers and men being builders and fixers, he was telling all the people who worked for him that women and men still belong in different spheres. That’s no problem at all for those who feel at home (so to speak) in their assigned category, but it’s a major problem for everyone else. ‘‘Everyone else’’ includes not only women who want to do work that used to be off limits to them but also men who,

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as fathers, life partners, and sons, want to be involved with their families. Summers equated job commitment with working eighty hours a week and thinking of nothing but one’s work the rest of the time. No room for romance or family life; no room for caring for a sick child. So much for the male advantage. What Summers did, probably without even realizing what a negative effect he was having, was tell a whole lot of people they did not belong in the organization. Feeling like a freewheeling, rugged individualist is one thing; feeling like a designated outsider is quite another. It is deeply uncomfortable, so much so that people are likely to take pay cuts and accept less interesting jobs if there’s a good chance they will be happier—that is to say, able to achieve a sense of belonging—in a new situation. It turns out that men, like women, need that sense of belonging. One of the implications of the human need to belong is that diversity initiatives fail when they require the kind of lonely heroism where you are the only one of your kind—the token woman and/or African American, the odd person out. Similarly, if as a supervisor you are among those who give more than lip service to the stated goals of the company policy on diversity—if, in other words, you act on your own principles, without the real support of organizational leaders— then you are going to be fighting a battle as lonely in its way as that of the token minority. And yet, I’ve known people who have fought against deep resistance from people both above and below them in the organizational hierarchy in order to create a fair deal for people with whom they themselves may have little in common. Men in positions of power put themselves on the line to hire women; white people try to open the doors to people of color. They share the principle of fairness, but most importantly they share a vision of organizational success that recognizes the benefits of diversity. As much as I admire the lone heroes, organizations have to accommodate the large majority who prefer to blend in, belong, and avoid conflict. Organizations also have to find better ways to deal with leaders like Lawrence Summers, whose personal agenda is in conflict with the organization’s policies. The right question to ask about Summers is this: should someone who has serious doubts about women’s intrinsic ability to be great mathematicians and scientists head up a university that is in the business of educating both men and women in those fields?

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WHAT WE REALLY NEED TO ASK If we generalize that question, we can ask of any organization and its leaders, ‘‘Is your heart where your policy is? Do you tolerate an insider/outsider mentality, so that differences based on sex, race, sexuality, religion (or whatever) determine who can work for you successfully? Or are you actually fostering an inclusive environment in which anyone with the right qualifications can succeed?’’ Most organizations today have policies that promote inclusiveness. But it is absolutely essential to know whether the organizational leadership actually supports those policies. When the official answers to the questions are at odds with what the leadership really believes, gender equity and inclusion are going to be impossible to attain. That was the case with Summers; he professed his commitment to the policies, but then said he didn’t believe in them. It’s fairly rare now to have biases like his out on the table, so in a way, Summers did everyone a favor. A problem that can be discussed openly has a much better chance of resolution. More often, the only way to know what’s really going on is to see inside the organization and get to know its culture. However, it’s still important to observe how organizations respond to the question, ‘‘What are you doing to promote diversity?’’ If they come back with no more than a legalistic answer (for instance, they point to their policies or say they are in compliance with Title VII), that is a sign of trouble. Focusing on the letter of law means they haven’t yet succeeded in building equity into the organizational culture. In human terms, that lack can translate into a whole lot of unnecessary pain and suffering.

LEAD, FOLLOW, OR . . . FEEL LOST? What’s most important about the Summers fiasco is not what he said about women, however. The most important thing is that he lost sight of who and where he was. When we were kids playing tag, we had the option of calling a ‘‘safe’’—a temporary exit from the game, a designated spot next to a tree where we could take refuge. When you’re on a safe, no one can tag you. You get to catch your breath, tease other players, or shout out encouragement. It’s a good place to rethink your strategy. Summers tried to designate the economics conference where he had

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been invited to speak as a ‘‘safe,’’ a place where he could take a timeout from his role as the leader of his organization and say ‘‘provocative’’ things about how women stack up against men. The problem is that there are no such ‘‘safes’’ in the working world, not even for—or perhaps especially for—someone of Summers’ rank in the organization. Among some conservative factions, his leaving the Harvard presidency was considered the fault of man-hating feminists who managed in one fell swoop to arrange the ejection of an innocent man from his job and shut down a lively intellectual debate about gender difference. That’s a lot of fire power from a movement that’s supposed to be dead. What really happened was that Summers seriously miscalculated the nature of the game he was in. The problem, in fact, was his behaving as if he were in a game, as if nothing he said about gender differences in ability and commitment would have real consequences for the men and women of Harvard. What are those consequences—not for Lawrence Summers, whose future seems secure in the political and high-finance position he holds in the first Obama administration—but for those whose ability he called into doubt? One female economics professor went so far as to describe herself as ‘‘elated’’ when she heard Summers’s opinions, presuming that he was bravely introducing the world to brand new ideas. Nancy Hopkins, the MIT biologist, was offended enough to walk out on Summers’s speech because she was ‘‘nauseated’’ by what he said about women. Thereafter, the Internet buzzed with sarcastic references to her feminine frailties. This is the point where the differences in how we think about race and gender are decisive and revealing. In the months before Summers’s entrance into the sex wars, a young, black Harvard economist, Roland Fryer, remarked in an interview, ‘‘As soon as you say something like, ‘Well, could the black-white test-score gap be genetics?’ everybody gets tensed up. But why shouldn’t that be on the table?’’ In his own research, Fryer found no evidence to support the genetic explanation.9 But what if Summers, a white man and the president of the university where Fryer was employed, had expressed the same doubts about black men that he did about all women? What if he had said that not discrimination but intrinsic lack of ability was the likeliest explanation for the relative dearth of black men among the great achievers in economics? What if he suggested that black men should not expect to climb high in that field? It is just possible that someone in Fryer’s position would have

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brushed it off or even (although this verges on the bizarre) expressed ‘‘elation,’’ but few would have been surprised if he had been insulted to the point of nausea. What Summers said about women was just as baseless as similar remarks about race would have been, but we are so used to hearing women’s abilities and commitment called into question that it rarely registers as seriously offensive. Anyone who is promoting gender equity in the workplace is likely to encounter people who think like Lawrence Summers, and their views can have a decisive effect, even when those holding the views are not organizational leaders. Such encounters can be demoralizing, especially when they’re unexpected. A friend (I’ll call him ‘‘Tim’’), who was employed at a high tech company, was working with his team to broaden the range of offerings in royalty-free classical music. It was a group that, almost by definition, had eclectic interests and was open to some experimentation within musical genres. He proposed adopting some women composers into the currently all-male repertoire. Tim was surprised by the aggressively dismissive response from some of the younger men, who didn’t want to be introduced to the work of any woman composer, period. They just couldn’t believe that a woman could write music worthy of being performed in public. It was such a hostile response that Tim was taken aback. Although he wanted to keep trying, he was at a loss for how to get the group to give a woman a chance.

TRYING TO KEEP IT SIMPLE COMPLICATES EVERYTHING Tim’s intentions were the polar opposite of Lawrence Summers’s. Whereas Summers denigrated women’s abilities, Tim emphasized women’s differences as an argument for their distinctive worth. He tried to persuade the group that women could write a different, but equally worthy, kind of music. Yet Tim, like Summers, met up with unexpected heated resistance. Looking past the differences in their valuations of women’s talents, both men made similar mistakes: they highlighted how different women and men are from each other. Telling people that women should be included because they have special qualities gives permission to exclude women for the same reason. The blunt claim, ‘‘Women obviously don’t have what it takes, so

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we don’t want to hire them’’ doesn’t have the social finesse of a message like, ‘‘Certainly, women have special qualities—and they’re wonderful!—but those aren’t the qualities we need.’’ What the statements share is a misunderstanding of how gender works. Dividing up men and women and assigning them different human qualities is like trying to use the rules of checkers to play a game of chess. A few moves into the game, anyone playing by those rules will be lost—but they might not know it. Questions about the nature and causes of the differences and similarities between men and women are so complex that they are impossible to resolve to everyone’s satisfaction. The effort to seek answers to those questions can’t be reduced to a game—even one as nuanced as chess. But mostly, people get lost because the whole issue of gender difference is so closely tied to their sense of self and their relationships, including intimate relationships, that they can’t see the forest for the trees (or the chessboard for the pieces). Our opinions come first of all from the gut; they are honed by barely acknowledged childhood memories, later experiences of love and heartbreak, and by the pressing needs of our egos. Then we dress them up as rational argument. Added to that is the complication that most people, despite their best intentions, are genuinely intimidated by social differences, especially if those differences appear to threaten their own sense of belonging and self-worth. The natural first reaction to having social differences highlighted is to reinforce defenses and shore up confidence in the merits of one’s own identity, even when that means rejecting the suspect group. In previously male-dominated environments like science, engineering, and classical music, women are a suspect group. It’s not possible to simply short-circuit that reaction, but it is definitely possible to lower levels of hostility and fear and by doing so enable the ‘‘suspect’’ group to survive and even thrive. At some point, they will be suspect no longer, and the goal of an inclusive workplace is within reach.

WHEN DO I GET OFF PROBATION? One of the main obstacles to achieving real and meaningful inclusiveness in your workforce is when the dominant group’s first, often negative, reaction is allowed to endure until it becomes ingrained as part of the workplace culture. The subtle hazing or outright rejection of ‘‘outsiders’’ is often confused with what happens to any new

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organizational member who goes through a formal or informal probation until they are accepted and assimilated as an insider. The problem is that people who are members of suspect groups may never be allowed to complete their social probation; they are always having to prove themselves both personally and professionally. They aren’t being tested just as individuals, but as representatives of their group. The hardest part of perpetually having to audition for inclusion is not, however, always having one’s skills in doubt. It’s the social isolation, and that—apart from more obvious factors such as salary, benefits, and working conditions—is the most powerful force affecting retention. Social isolation can be very hard to detect from the outside, but it’s usually obvious to the person who is experiencing it. Even where there’s very little schmoozing possible on the job, co-workers can isolate someone just by refusing to smile or say ‘‘hello,’’ or by turning away or stopping a conversation when the designated outsider enters a room. The techniques for excluding someone from a social group are many and varied, and we learned most of them in middle school or before. Men and women are unable to shrug off this kind of treatment, and all of us tend to respond to being rejected defensively, becoming less empathetic and helpful toward those who’ve rejected us, as psychologist Jean Twenge and her collaborators reported.10 Among the few who don’t respond in the usual way to being treated like an outsider is a woman named Molly, who after twenty years on her job as an industrial quality inspector with the same company is still in a workplace heavily dominated by men. Molly is down to earth, friendly, and confident; a minute’s conversation is enough to reveal that she’s as smart as they come but is not trying to stand out. Her verbal delivery is low key and she dresses in the clothes that suit her job. In other words, she has cultivated an appropriate workplace persona that, had she been a man, would have bought her insider status long ago. Yet when men—even those she’s worked with for years—notice that Molly is within earshot, they start apologizing to her for using ‘‘bad language,’’ as if she were a disapproving schoolmarm. She believes they mean well, but this treatment makes her working life quite a bit harder than it has to be. Molly has tried everything she can think of to reassure ‘‘the guys’’ that swearing doesn’t offend her. She jokes about it, occasionally lets loose with some profanity of her own, and tells them directly that if she were picky about profanity she would have gone into a different line of work. But in twenty years, she’s never been able to persuade them to stop apologizing for using what is, in her workplace culture, normal language.

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Why is this happening, and why has it gone on for so long? Partly it’s numbers; there are just so few women in Molly’s workplace that she is the perpetual exception, a likeable outsider. A more equitable distribution of men and women would go a long way to solving the problem, but only if it brought about a corresponding extension of ‘‘insider’’ status to women. The difficulty where Molly works is that the established culture seems to meet the basic human need to belong to the group, at least for most of those who work there. (Often, however, when women are being excluded, some men are also working in social isolation.) The supervisors in Molly’s organization model the very behavior that makes her life difficult. Supervisors, and in fact anyone who has both respect and seniority, have considerable power to set cultural norms. That was the power Lawrence Summers, president of Harvard, refused to acknowledge he possessed. However, Molly is right when she says that the men she works with aren’t trying to make it hard for her to stay on the job. In fact, they are much like Molly herself, seeking to gain and maintain a sense of belonging. The difference is that the door is open for them. If they behave like insiders, if they conform to the models that already make up the workplace culture, they can eventually be recognized as full members. That’s what Molly’s male co-workers are doing when they apologize to her. They are demonstrating that they know how to behave like people who belong. What they don’t recognize is that their sense of belonging comes at her expense. Just about everyone will do what they can to gain acceptance, but individuals have their limits. If the person is malleable and the prospective membership benefits seem high, that limit can be pretty far out there. Consider the lengths fraternity pledges and high school girls aspiring to join the popular crowd will go to win a place. In some groups, the behaviors that maintain group identity and establish membership can be foolish and cruel, including overt hostility to designated ‘‘others,’’ repeated affirmations of the superiority and exclusive identity of the in-group, and dangerous or violent behavior.

CONCLUSION: IT’S ABOUT ORGANIZATIONAL EFFECTIVENESS There is no point trying to persuade men to be more like women, or women to be more like men. That’s fine, because what differences

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there are between us are not obstacles as long as we don’t exaggerate their importance. It is well within our power to stop undermining our organizations by making important decisions about hiring, duties, promotions, salaries, etc. based on exaggerated or downright false information about the so-called ‘‘natural’’ differences between men and women. We are currently on the downswing of a repeating historical cycle in which we make gains in employment equity, and then go through a period of ‘‘backlash,’’ or attempts to go back to a time when the belief that men and women were radically different determined who could put their talents to use in the workplace. The consequences of that belief for individuals are many and varied, but there is one easily available indicator: the wage gap. Evelyn Murphy, who among other accomplishments was the first woman to hold a statewide elected office in Massachusetts, collaborated with E. J. Graff on a book about the discrepancies between women’s and men’s earnings.11 Among their most remarkable findings was that the fulltime wage gap between men and women actually increased for the generation coming of age in the early 1990s, when the economy was expanding rapidly and women and men were, for the first time, equally prepared to compete in the workplace. The widening of that gap began around the time that titles like the Mars-and-Venus series started to hit the self-help book market. John Gray is not, of course, responsible for young women of the 1990s doing worse than they should have; he and others like him exploited biases that were already well established and were being newly reinforced in the wake of reinvigorated scientific efforts to prove that the gender differences we observe in people’s lives were driven by natural forces and immune to social change. The consequences of exaggerating the significance of gender differences are more destructive than most people are ready to acknowledge. When we think about indicators like the wage gap, it’s easy to see how women and their children lose out, but the effects on men are serious as well. As one man commented during a workshop on gender issues, ‘‘So my wife can’t earn as much as I do just because she’s a woman—and that’s not just her problem. It’s our whole family’s problem.’’ Having her wages artificially reduced meant to him, of course, that they were less economically stable than they should be. The point is that just as families are better off if both parents can handle the daily care of children, they fare better if both partners are equally able to make a living wage—or are able to go all the way to the top, for that matter.

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The impact of ‘‘gender difference’’ thinking on organizations is just as serious in its way as it is for individuals, but it is more difficult to recognize. This is partly because the people who are most directly affected by the wage gap, outsider status, and their supervisors’ underestimations of their abilities and value to the organization, often try to protect themselves and their jobs by not complaining. Even when they do complain, the grievance may be written off as inconsequential. Take Emily, for instance, who was brought in to take charge of a small department; higher-ups ignored her repeated requests to hire an administrative support staff similar to that of her male peers. The result was that about a third of her time was spent on routine, lowlevel (but absolutely essential) clerical duties. Emily’s unofficial—but time consuming—responsibilities were similar to those she’d had in the temp jobs she had once taken to work her way through college. She couldn’t be sure that her current situation had anything to do with her sex, but she certainly knew she was in a bad spot. She struggled to keep the department above water, but she couldn’t carry out new initiatives. Her low status and lack of support from above had the effect of isolating her from her peers. She could hardly wait to leave. But how did the organization suffer? Instead of the administrator the organization needed, it got a very high-priced and unwilling office assistant. This was a problem with an obvious and cheap solution. Her supervisors’ refusal to address her concerns was far more expensive for the organization than hiring sufficient administrative staff. That much is clear, but the fact that she couldn’t prove, even to herself, that she was treated differently because she was a woman turns us toward another crucial point. As we’ll see the in the next chapter, the effects of gender bias are subtle; they often look like something quite different. I can’t count how many times I have heard someone remark, a` la Lawrence Summers, that women just don’t seem as committed as men do. I rarely hear people ask whether the organization in question is creating a workplace that encourages commitment among all its members. That inattention would be understandable if we had been raised in the Victorian age. Mr. Distant can’t be blamed for buying into Hares and Rabbits. Yet it’s still a rare leader who can accurately assess how her or his subordinates are faring in the gendered workplace, or who understands the material benefits that accrue to organizations when everyone, regardless of sex, has sufficient support to perform at their peak level.

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In the absence of reasonable efforts to improve equity and inclusiveness, problems like those I’ve outlined inevitably mount, but they tend to go unacknowledged unless they get so bad that someone files a gender discrimination lawsuit. By that point, it’s no longer a matter of ordinary problems with ordinary solutions. It’s a disaster. Avoiding such a disaster—and better yet preventing the hardships, reduced effectiveness, and loss of profitability that sticking by old ideas leads to—is what this book is about. In the next chapter, we’ll embark on a selective tour of the best current research about gender similarities and differences. Twenty-first century knowledge about the significance of biological sex is not as sophisticated as it will be one day, but it has come a very long way over the last century. Because we respect scientific authority at least as much as the Victorians did, we deserve to know what science has to say about gender. Prepare to be surprised. Chapter Three is devoted to how that new knowledge can be—and is being—used to build better work environments. Finally, in the last section of the book, I present a set of specific tools and strategies that organizations can use to take advantage of their members’ full range of abilities. Striving to succeed is not just a guy thing. Caring about others is not just a girl thing. Caring about success and making it happen is our thing.

NOTES 1. W. L. Distant (1875). ‘‘On the Mental Differences between the Sexes.’’ Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 4. 78–87. 2. John Gray (2002). Mars and Venus in the Workplace: A Practical Guide for Improving Communication and Getting Results at Work. New York: HarperCollins. 3. Simon Baron-Cohen (2003). The Essential Difference: The Truth about the Male and Female Brain. New York: Perseus. 4. Louann Brizendine (2006). The Female Brain. New York: Broadway. 5. Sally Helgesen (1990). The Female Advantage: Women’s Ways of Leadership. New York: Doubleday. 6. Deborah Tannen (1994). Talking from 9 to 5: Women and Men at Work. New York: Avon.

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7. Lawrence Summers (January 14, 2005). Remarks at the National Bureau of Economic Research Conference on Diversifying the Science & Engineering Workforce. Cambridge, Mass. 8. Roy Baumeister and Kristin Sommer (July 1997). ‘‘What do men want? Gender differences and two spheres of belongingness: comment on Cross and Madson (1997).’’ Psychological Bulletin 122:1. 38–44. 9. Roland Fryer and Steven Levitt (March 2006). ‘‘Testing for Racial Differences in the Mental Ability of Young Children.’’ National Bureau of Economic Research Working Papers No. W12066. 10. Jean Twenge, Natalie Ciarocco, Roy Baumeister, C. Nathan DeWall, and J. Michael Bartels (2007). ‘‘Social Exclusion Decreases Prosocial Behavior.’’ Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 92:1. 56–66. 11. Evelyn Murphy and E. J. Graff (2005). Getting Even: Why Women Don’t Get Paid Like Men—and What to Do About It. New York: Touchstone.

CHAPTER 2

Undoing Gender Segregation How did we get this far apart? We used to be so close together. —The Cure, ‘‘Apart’’ A blueprint of our working world would show a floor plan divided up not only by industry, market sector, and region, but also by gender. As the workplace plan is currently drawn, half of women or men would have to change jobs and shuffle off to work in another wing of the building to bring about a nearly equal distribution. While the workforce is becoming generally more diverse, and the proportion of women with the education and experience necessary to succeed in a wide range of occupations has increased exponentially, women and men are still stunningly separated at work. In 2007, there were not enough women employed in over 75 occupations for Department of Labor statisticians to justify listing their numbers or median salaries. Across the board, men’s full-time salaries exceed women’s by an ample margin. We have made progress, however—especially in some professions. In 1970, less than five percent of architects, lawyers, and veterinarians were women; today, those numbers have increased more than fourfold. What recent employment history shows is that wherever a door opens—even if only a crack—women rush through. We’ve made progress not because women suddenly decided they should go to work, and not because everyone got together and decided that women would feel more fulfilled if they could have jobs, but for a much

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simpler reason: neither the economy as a whole nor individual companies can make do with half a workforce. The numbers are clear, and they should also be easy to explain. They’re not. For one thing, the data drown in speculations about whether women really want careers as opposed to occasional jobs. Can women be breadwinners and caregivers? Can they be happy or effective when they’re juggling a high-demand job along with their commitments at home? Are they making less than men because they’re not aggressive and committed, or is it because they go into ‘‘helping’’ professions that simply don’t pay well? The problem is not that questions like these are asked, it’s that they are asked obsessively, no matter what’s happening. Whenever the number of women entering the workforce rises, we wonder if they’re really up to it; when the number of women entering the work force slows even slightly, we call it an ‘‘opt-out revolution’’ and wonder whether women really want to work. The obsessive questioning of women’s commitment and ability demonstrates that gender stereotypes are still alive and powerful enough to help perpetuate workplace gender segregation and the pay gap. We know that because the best attempts to tease apart personal choice from gender bias find that about a quarter of the pay gap can’t be accounted for ‘‘even after controlling for hours, occupation, parenthood, and other factors known to affect earnings.’’1 Worse, the gap grows over the course of a person’s career, so as women require more to meet the needs of family, health care, and retirement, they earn proportionately less. Women right out of college make 20 percent less than men, and 10 years later they make 30 percent less.2 Counting up all the concrete factors that affect employment decisions and then ascribing whatever is left to ‘‘gender bias’’ seems a questionable strategy. There are well-designed, ingenious studies that lend some credence to it, but they typically show that gender stereotypes have only a small influence on any individual employment decision, not enough to account for the big pay gap.3 Psychologist Mark Agars looked more deeply into the data and came up with the solution to the mystery.4 Here’s how it works: if a company has 100 job openings and an equal number of similarly qualified men and women apply, 48 women and 52 men will be hired. The difference is due to the influence of gender stereotypes. It’s not a good deal for the two qualified women who weren’t hired, but if that were the end of it, it wouldn’t be enough of a problem to need fixing.

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Discrimination isn’t a small, one-time penalty, however; it works like compound interest. So Agars argued that careers aren’t made or lost on single decisions. He used the most conservative measure of the effect of gender stereotyping on single employment decisions (−.07) to figure out the cumulative impact of gender stereotypes on people’s careers. Therefore, when the next round of personnel decisions comes along—when it’s time for layoffs, promotions, raises, mentoring, giving out plum assignments, or offering further training —the negligible influence of gender stereotyping has its effect again, but now it applies to a slightly smaller group of women and a larger group of men. Over the course of multiple rounds of decision making, more women are sifted out, and more men make it through. Along the way, some of those decisions give men more challenges and opportunities to broaden their abilities, and eventually a tipping point is reached where more of the men have amassed more human capital than their female colleagues. A participant in one of my workshops remarked that the world is much easier on women because they aren’t judged on how much money they make, and they can blame sexism if they fail to climb to the top. He’s right about the first point, but as we’ll see, he’s off the mark on the second point. However, his comments reveal much about what the working world looks like to him as a man. Everything he does —fail or succeed, make or lose money, negotiate family responsibilities, deal with stress and conflict, and manage (or not) five things at once—will be a measure of his manhood. And who but himself would he blame if things went wrong? And yet, it doesn’t quite work like that. Men’s level of selfconfidence is higher than women’s from the beginning, and they tend to attribute their successes to native ability.5 Men move on from failures more easily, and they are more likely to blame something other than themselves when things go wrong. My workshop participant thought that women would have the same tendency, but that’s not the case. Women are more likely than men to believe they’re performing poorly, even when they’re doing well by objective measures. Their first impulse is to blame themselves when things are going wrong. Sexism is far down the list of culprits women are prepared to consider. The popular media are quick to belittle women who do blame gender bias, and most women will go to great lengths to avoid being stigmatized as ‘‘feminists.’’ They’re not just trying to avoid being unpopular, however. They need to believe that they’re in control of the result. The sense of

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having control is crucial to anyone’s psychological well-being, but working women are more likely than men to believe they lack power and decision-making authority—and that’s understandable, because they really are more likely to occupy low-control, low-power positions. Because of the way jobs are segregated by sex, and because of the cumulative effects of discrimination, men have more opportunities to move into positions that give them a higher level of control.6 The easiest way for any human being to deal with uncertainty and lack of control is not to deal with it. I’ve met many women who believe that life is much harder on men than on women, and that men aren’t strong enough to handle their own troubles or manage their own lives. I’ve met other women who believe that the vast majority of women fail to measure up at work and deserve to be paid less or fired. The payoff in seeing men as disadvantaged and other women as undeserving is a heightened sense of personal worthiness—and, again, control. There are social advantages to voicing the opinion that women aren’t subject to bias. What no woman can avoid, however, no matter how she arranges her beliefs, is the practical fallout of having fewer opportunities and less money. Here’s one example: a widely quoted news article reported that in a study of 5,000 women, 84 percent would just as soon not work, assuming they didn’t have to worry about finances.7 Those lazy bums! Barbara and Allan Pease cite the survey in their book Why Men Don’t Listen and Women Can’t Read Maps as support for their assertion that ‘‘Women are still a minority in big business and the political arena’’ because they’re just ‘‘not interested in those things’’ (247). It is a silly thing to say, but it has to be taken seriously anyway. Why Men Don’t Listen was an international best seller, heavily marketed to women. Many similar books, like those in John Gray’s epic Marsand-Venus series, have sold as well or better than the Peases’s book. Literally millions of people, most of them women seeking advice on how to improve their personal relationships with men, are being urged to believe that men aren’t their equals when it comes to feeling or communicating emotions. It’s false and insulting to men, but some women find the idea flattering. And while they’re basking in the glow of feminine superiority, they’re also swallowing messages about how women are just not interested in high-power jobs, lead more satisfying lives when they earn less, and at best, would really rather get out of the workforce altogether.

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CALL YOUR MOTHER The last 40 years of research on the children of working mothers shows they do fine emotionally and academically, yet we continue to debate whether women—mothers especially—should have high ambitions outside the home.8 Why does the conflict drag on, long after it has been objectively settled? The answer is that it’s not driven by entirely rational motives. When it comes to gendered expectations, we have a bit of the young child left in us, and that part is highly resistant to change. Young children ‘‘know’’ that women are nurses and men are truck drivers, and girls especially set their own earliest ambitions to harmonize with the stereotypes.9 Children do this because they are motivated to create an inner world that is orderly and simple enough for them to understand. They willingly adapt their own expectations to that vision of a safe and predictable world. The child’s desire to have everything make sense doesn’t go away when we grow up, but as adults we’ve had uncountable opportunities to build a more nuanced and realistic understanding of how the world works. Yet we’re not quite ready to be rational adults about our mothers. One of the modern consequences of the chasm between the ideal mommy of fantasy and real women’s lives is the ‘‘super mom’’ syndrome: the enormous pressure mothers feel to be and do it all perfectly at any cost. The enormous pressure on mothers to fulfill the child’s vision of a safe and orderly world means that many women spend their lives wrestling with guilt because they’re not ‘‘putting the children first,’’ even though they’re spending much more time with their children than their mothers spent with them.10 It’s that atavistic part of us that is comfortable with gender segregation in the workplace, and it continues to influence not just attitudes but action. By all rational measures, businesses and the economy suffer because we continue to distribute workers by their gender rather than by their abilities. We are drawn to ways of seeing gender that suit the small child’s desires and worldview. The Mars-and-Venus metaphor is one way of expressing that childish perspective. It feels right; it makes a good story, and it explains why we’re comfortable with women who, whether or not they are mothers or plan to become mothers, show their maternal credentials at work by accepting supportive, background roles; putting family (or the team) first; taking the mommy track; and settling for making less and achieving less. The result is that we downgrade mothers on their competence.11

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ASK YOUR FATHER Why did the researchers in the survey I mentioned previously go to the trouble of asking 5,000 working women if they’d rather not work —and not ask a single man the same question? One assumption is that it’s only women who have major responsibilities outside the workplace, and as we’ll see, that assumption is wrong. Another assumption is that it’s only appropriate for women to consider giving up paid employment; men should always work, no matter what their financial circumstances. What the survey showed was that women’s complaints were the same as men’s. Half of the women surveyed work 50 hours a week or more, and they cited heavy workload, lack of both sleep and free time, money worries, and ‘‘troublesome work colleagues’’ as the main reasons they would quit if they were wealthy enough to do so. Not surprisingly, men in similar circumstances are as unhappy as women. Men also get sick as often as women, but they are much less likely than women to take care of themselves when they do. A man is supposed to be proud of toughing it out, but men’s disinclination to seek help for major diseases hurts their survival rates. Their death rate is higher than women’s for every leading cause of death except Alzheimer’s. Men are also twice as likely as women to die from accidents, suicide, and cirrhosis of the liver.12 Being in a bad situation at work raises all the risks; when men have a troubled relationship with a boss, their rates of absenteeism, alcoholism, smoking, and obesity rise. Most chilling, working for a bad boss pushes men’s cardiac risk up by 25 percent.13 The demands masculinity places on men are as tricky and two faced as the demands femininity places on women. The expectation that men will be strong, aggressive, analytical, and ambitious—and earn a high income as the reward for meeting that expectation—is also what cuts men down before their time. It’s troubling that no one takes these problems seriously, and it’s telling that researchers don’t ask men if they would like to avert problems by leaving the paid workforce. When men are unhappy at work, we think they should improve their work situation—by working harder to move up the ladder, resolving their complaints with management, or looking for a better job. We certainly don’t think they should give up and go away. And yet, many men have quietly made the choice to try for a better work/life balance than their fathers had. It is still risky for men to be vocal at work about their major domestic responsibilities, especially if there’s any chance those responsibilities might

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interfere with the job. But the reality is that men’s care-giving roles have expanded enormously. As late as 1996, only about 19 percent of those providing major care for children or an elder were men; now it’s nearly 40 percent.14 Although modern women do hold up somewhat more than half of the ‘‘life’’ half of the work/life balance, housework is doled out far more equitably than most people believe.15 For the most part, studies show that men do their part at home with good grace, and that includes men who are high in organizational hierarchies and serious about their careers. However, it’s important to note that men are more likely to have charge of high-control tasks that have an obvious end point, so they get the psychological boost and decreased stress that accrues to those who have more control over the selection and timing of the tasks they perform.16

AND THE ANSWER IS . . . Janet Shibley Hyde, a psychologist at the University of Wisconsin, performed a Herculean service by pulling together 128 of the best meta-analyses of gender differences and doing a meta-meta-analysis of them.17 She was trying to answer the question, ‘‘What does the best of the current science say about how different women and men are?’’ The list of possible differences covered in Hyde’s analysis is encyclopedic: performance in science and math, spatial relations, language, mechanical reasoning, communication styles, personality variables, aggression, altruism, leadership, sexuality, anxiety, impulsiveness, self-esteem, coping, ethical reasoning, and professional goals. I’ve only mentioned a few; the actual list of studies Hyde analyzed went on for four pages. Hyde’s review proves two things. First, scientists seem to be obsessed with testing for possible gender differences. Secondly, that science reveals that men’s and women’s traits and abilities overlap far more than they differ, especially when it comes to the attributes that we need to succeed in the workplace. Hyde’s analysis showed that 22 percent of measurable gender differences are in the moderate-to-large effect range—meaning that they represent a significant difference in how men and women function. The two percent of large, reliable differences includes physical differences like throwing velocity and distance after puberty. Differences in physical and verbal aggression are more toward the moderate range, with men significantly more aggressive than women. Everything else—

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78 percent of attributes—showed little to no gender difference. Except for jobs where physical strength and aggression are important, nothing in the science of gender difference says that one gender or the other is a better choice, and even there, the numbers don’t translate into absolute differences. What Hyde’s analysis tells us is that we can’t hold differences in brain structure or hormones responsible for gender segregation or differences in pay. The real difference between women and men isn’t that one sex is more robust or deserving than the other, nor is it that one sex works harder and better than the other. It’s that women pay a steep ‘‘femininity’’ price in terms of fewer opportunities and less money, while men pay a steep ‘‘masculinity’’ price in terms of poorer health and well-being. It seems unlikely that men dying younger and women living poorer represent wins for the other sex. Men living longer, healthier lives and women earning a better living is good for everyone.

. . . WHAT THE DOG KNOWS A survey of HR professionals and employees showed a difference of opinion about what influences job satisfaction most. Employers and HR professionals believed that relationships with higher-ups were more important to employees than their pay. Employees disagreed; they rated pay higher. Although relationships with supervisors are undeniably crucial, the managerial blind spot about the relationship between pay satisfaction and performance is worth noting. Not being well rewarded leads to ‘‘absenteeism, lack of commitment, lowered productivity, and increased turnover.’’18 In other words, it makes a person wish they didn’t have to come to work. The reasons for this are straightforward: being paid less than the work is worth not only makes it harder to live well; it’s also unfair. After I applied for a teaching job at a college, I discovered that men at my level at that college were making $30,000 more per year than similarly senior, similarly accomplished women. My interest in the position evaporated, not only because I would never personally accept a pay penalty for being female, but also because I couldn’t stand to work for an organization that imposed such a penalty on any group. I couldn’t tolerate that degree of unfairness. The simplest way to understand the effects of unfairness is to consider dogs. A study found that dogs, a far more forgiving species than ours, stop shaking hands with people who give them nothing while rewarding another dog for doing

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the same task. The unrewarded dog stops offering her paw and turns away. Another study, this one analyzing the relationship between pay rates and performance among human beings, focused on almost 200 executive directors. The men made more than the women. That fact will astonish no one, but what makes it interesting is that men are rewarded with pay raises when they perform well. Women aren’t.19 The female executive directors are in the same situation as the unrewarded dogs and the female professors at the college I applied to. The paw study doesn’t mention whether the rewarded dogs care that the other dogs are being cheated, but in that way, humans are more empathetic than we often give them credit for. Unfair pay can be easy to conceal or rationalize, as we’ll see when we consider the run up to the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009. However, blatant unfairness—bullying, harassment, significant differences in workload or expectations—has a more immediate effect. Both men and women are less satisfied when they work in an environment unfriendly to women, even when they are not themselves targets and don’t expect to be.20 That may seem counterintuitive, but it’s a far more intelligent reflection of human psychology than the assumption that seeing your equals lose because they are treated badly is a satisfying substitute for winning a fair competition. Some people avoid feeling bad about the fate of targeted co-workers by rationalizing that they deserved it, but for most people, observing unfairness has a negative effect on their own well-being. How much more profound an effect does differential treatment have on those who are directly affected—those who realize they’re not being fairly rewarded or that they’re dealing with a higher level of hostility or contempt than their peers? Unlike dogs, people have responsibilities to meet that keep them working even when they know they’re getting a bad deal. They leave when they can, however, and when they go, the essential problem stays behind. Unfair treatment of any employee group, in the form of poor pay or a hostile environment, drives down performance and productivity for the whole organization.

SPECIAL TRAP Some companies who get behind the effort to create equity in promotion and/or compensation start with the idea that women have special value; their perspectives or abilities are so different from men’s

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that they make up for something that men lack. The ‘‘special value’’ idea can be persuasive, and in some situations (for instance, when a company’s marketing or product design is failing to appeal to female consumers, when good talent is scarce, or when the business environment demands leadership diversity), the argument that women have something special to offer is truly compelling. Once women’s value to the organizations is recognized, the next step is evaluating whether the current systems for hiring, retention, development, and promotion work as well for women as they do for men. A raft of new programs and employment arrangements can follow; some are highly effective, while others are well meant but don’t pay off. (I discuss specific strategies in Chapters Four through Six.) For now, it’s vital to acknowledge that the ‘‘special value’’ idea contains a nasty trap. It’s easiest to spot in diversity statements that assert the company has special programs to help women ‘‘develop’’ their skills and ‘‘grow’’ professionally. What are almost always missing are the reasons for offering women such particular attention, and that’s the trap. Why do women need extra help? Is it because they don’t have the ability to succeed on their own? Are they less educated and experienced than men? Is the business world just too harsh for a woman to handle without extra support and hand holding? Unless it’s clear that special programs are designed to take down external obstacles rather than make up for women’s own deficits, they run the risk of replicating the dilemmas that led to the dismantling of affirmative action. The risks in not making clear statements about what problems genderinclusion programs are designed to address include the following: women employees are perceived as less capable; women’s outsider status is reinforced; women avoid involvement in the programs, believing they’re a waste of time or a crutch for women whose skills and drive are less than first rate; women who do sign on can lose sight of what the programs are supposed to accomplish—and that’s a significant risk for the leadership as well. The irony is that what makes the ‘‘women are special’’ argument risky is also what makes gender-inclusion programs necessary in the first place. Any group that has a real edge—more affluence, education, security, autonomy, control, power, and respect—will outperform others. No one has to tell people who have that edge that they’re special, and the people with the edge don’t need programs specially designed to meet their needs. However, people who are in the minority—such as women who work in companies with few women, and/or those who are segregated into lower-paid, low-power jobs—do have

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to work harder to make it. That burden can’t be lightened by smarmy praise about women’s extraordinary ability to nurture others selflessly, do multiple tasks at once, or maintain friendly relationships. A welldesigned gender-inclusion plan can do much to level the field, but only if it’s very clear that it’s the field that needs leveling, and not the women who need hoisting.

SPOT THE ALLY Virginia Schein’s history of attitudes about managers’ gender over the last 30 years shows that what she describes as the ‘‘think manager —think male’’ attitude flourishes in organizations unless there is considerable encouragement from the top leadership to think differently.21 In 1973, both men and women agreed that managers had to be ambitious, analytical, competitive, and able to handle responsibility; they also agreed that men, but not women, had the right stuff. From the perspective of the twenty-first century, 1973 is ancient history, but it was a utopian day in one way at least: women and men were in perfect agreement about who should be in the lead and why. Sixteen years later, women had moved on. They hadn’t changed their minds about which qualities a good manager needs, but they had started to think that women had those qualities too. Men’s opinions hadn’t budged. Another study in the mid-1990s had similar results. Everyone still agreed on the qualities of a good manager, and everyone agreed that men had those qualities, but women were far more convinced that they were up to the job, too. With men’s and women’s opinions out of sync and laws in place to discourage discrimination, it’s not surprising that the 1980s and 1990s were a time of turmoil and lawsuits. What Schein’s studies showed was that as long as men were the unchallenged gatekeepers to the business world, they could be depended on to recreate gender segregation. It wasn’t that they wanted to be unfair to women. As far as men could see, they were the organization, and a woman in a position of real power was too rare to make an impact on their beliefs. In workplaces where men still have a sizable majority, the gender dynamics haven’t budged since the early 1970s, and it’s in reference to those dynamics that clients sometimes tell me that change will happen only when the ‘‘old guys’’ retire and young men and women with a twenty-first-century mindset replace

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them. That perception is one of a set of unconstructive generalizations made about men: • Men grow more conservative, less able to change, and less tolerant as they mature. • Men only want to see younger versions of themselves make it to the top. • Men just don’t understand what it’s like for women to juggle work and home life. • Men talk about equality, but they don’t really want it. People who think like this can list men in their own workplaces who don’t fit the generalization, but those men are considered exceptions, prized ‘‘good guys’’ who ‘‘walk the talk.’’ The consequence is that potential allies are written off before they’re even considered. That especially applies to men who aren’t offering to help because they’re not sure there’s anything for them to do or because they suspect that the main players, such as diversity officers or women’s employee groups, will see them as intruders. The most common mistake is to assume that women dominate the first category (passionately committed, knowledgeable, and trustworthy allies) and men, especially older men and conservatives, are obstructionists. Actually, in many instances, it’s mature men, often those with working wives and daughters, who understand the scope of the problem better than anyone because they have an insider’s knowledge of the organizational culture, an acute understanding of what it takes to be accepted as an insider. They recognize that the culture presents women with real obstacles to overcome. In a comprehensive study, psychologist and author Emily Duehr showed that male managers’ attitudes about women have changed over time; they have let go of stereotypes that mark women as unable to lead.22 A man who retired in the 1970s had had few opportunities to observe women as managers, but women now occupy almost half of middle-management positions. Depending on his field, a middleaged man today has many more opportunities to encounter women as managers and as peers than his father or grandfather had. Many such men are prepared to base personnel decisions on their own observations and experience rather than on out-of-the-box gender stereotypes. Research bears this out. Mature men today have a higher opinion of working women’s ability to lead than male college students do. Young

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men tend to rely on stereotypes because their work and life experience is limited; they haven’t had the chance to build a realistic understanding of gender.23 The ‘‘experience’’ advantage is clear in a story a chief diversity officer (CDO) for a major insurance company told me about an executive—a white, self-described ‘‘good old boy’’ who, seemingly out of the blue, offered to sponsor the black women’s employee network. The CDO asked him what had made him decide to step forward. He said he’d been watching as his daughter, following in his own footsteps, tried to make her way into the business world. For the first time he had fully confronted the fact that his own path had been easier because he was a man. Now he thought that it was time for him to contribute to someone else’s success. He wasn’t motivated by selfless niceness, but by the recognition that the women he was offering to mentor were valuable to the company. He wanted them to have the same opportunities to succeed that he’d had. It was nice, but more important, it was smart.

POWER PLAYS That brings us to another practical reality: most power positions are still occupied by middle-aged white men. An inclusion initiative that has their support is likely to succeed—and the obverse is just as true. To understand how powerful that truth is, consider the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act recently signed into law. The Ledbetter saga began because the male majority at the Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. decided to pay their only female middle manager considerably less than her male peers over her entire 19-year tenure with the company —at which point she discovered the difference and decided to sue. There’s no way to escape the fact that men’s downgrading of women’s worth had everything to do with what happened to Ledbetter. But by the same token, men’s refusal to stereotype and downgrade women had a great deal to do with the resolution of this fair-pay battle. Men were overwhelmingly influential at every phase of the decisionmaking about Ledbetter’s job and pay, her lawsuit, and the legislation that followed. I am pointing out the obvious to reinforce three points: 1) Women can’t do this alone; men are always deeply involved in finding and implementing successful solutions to the problems of gender bias and discrimination; 2) The problems that women face at work are not special ‘‘women’s problems’’—everyone wants to be rewarded fairly for their work, and there’s a great deal at risk, including the

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company’s bottom line, when discrimination is permitted; and 3) Workplace gender segregation creates the most fertile ground for the kind of trouble the Lilly Ledbetter case represents. Many put the blame squarely on Ledbetter: if she wasn’t smart enough to figure out she wasn’t earning nearly as much as her male counterparts, then she deserved what happened to her. Company policy forbade her asking other managers about their salaries, but somehow (through intuition or by breaking the rules), she should have found out within 180 days of the first instance of discrimination. Behind the debate about how much Ledbetter should have to pay for what she did not know is the assumption that Ledbetter had the same access to insider knowledge that her male colleagues did. That’s a bad assumption. In a male-majority workplace like the Goodyear plant, women are outsiders, including those who’ve spent 20 years on the job. Being accepted by one’s co-workers means much more than just being comfortable; it gives one access to crucial information and alliances. Asked what she had learned that she could pass on, Ledbetter recommended finding a willing mentor who knows about the company’s operations. The same advice applies to men, of course. The difference between the sexes is that women are far more likely to believe that their only route to success—and acceptance—is to demonstrate sheer merit. That is not nearly as effective as demonstrating merit and doing what Ledbetter now realizes is so crucial—finding powerful allies and building solid relationships with them. According to the stereotypes, women are supposed to be champions at listening and building collaborative relationships. They’re not ruled by the need to prove themselves, and they don’t mind seeking advice. What happened to Ledbetter, then? Was she not woman enough to do what women are supposed to be so good at, and not man enough to break the rules to find out what she needed to know? The answer is much simpler than the twisted stereotypes: women are as able as men to build relationships with co-workers, find mentors, gain competence, and promote their own interests. As Agars’s revelations about the cumulative effects of negligible discrimination showed, workplaces overall offer women fewer opportunities to accomplish all of that, but where gender segregation is pronounced, the likelihood of discrimination rises. As organizations move toward inclusion, the various threats (not just of litigation, but of hostile environments and lowered productivity) subside.

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When upper management at the Goodyear plant decided not to keep Ledbetter’s pay at roughly the same level as her male peers, it hoisted itself well above the ‘‘negligible’’ type of discrimination that interested Agars. Ledbetter’s employers made a big and easily avoidable mistake in paying her less, and it made the same mistake over and over, for 19 years. Goodyear won the Supreme Court case, but it wasn’t really a victory. The company could have avoided all the expenses of litigation, the risk to its reputation, and the costly new compliance issues that resulted from the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act (and that will now affect HR priorities across the nation). All that could have been sidestepped just by correcting obvious management errors before they mutated into a monster.

KEEP IT SIMPLE Mistakes like Goodyear’s are easy to catch if management is doing its job, but they are more likely to go uncorrected in highly gendersegregated environments where women seem like outsiders. It was a similar environment that produced what is probably the most famous sexual discrimination case, Price Waterhouse vs. Hopkins. Ann Hopkins, a top earner, was not offered a partnership while her less lucrative male colleagues were passed up the hierarchy. Her lack of feminine charm was cited as a reason to hold her back. At the time of the lawsuit in the late 1980s, women in positions of power were scarce at the partner level that Hopkins sought. Hopkins’s case succeeded only because the discrimination against her was obvious and conducted openly. (Now, PricewaterhouseCoopers is a Catalyst Award winner, and it hires women at the same rate as men, although it’s still rare for women to make it to the partner level.) The Ledbetter and Hopkins cases were avoidable catastrophes, and smart managers spot the danger signs long before an employee or associate even thinks about filing suit. However, the high-profile cases are useful because they simultaneously dramatize the problem and point to the solution. For the organization, the first step toward a full solution is to question whether the default workplace floor plan, the one that segregates men and women into different roles, is really optimal. For the individual manager, the solution is to be ruthlessly fair. Don’t dole out special treatment to women. Don’t speculate on the relative competence of men and women, expect less of working mothers and more of working fathers, wonder if the woman really needs or

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wants the job as much as the man does, or imagine that men are more likely to shine in leadership roles and women will do their best work out of the limelight. Imagine instead that you are in the position of a judge assessing the merits of musicians auditioning for major orchestras. When orchestras introduced blind auditions, allowing judges to hear but not see performers, the chance that women musicians would be chosen increased by 50 percent. ‘‘Think musician—think male’’ is as much a part of the music world as ‘‘think manager—think male’’ has been a part of the business world. Women usually can’t hide their sex in order to increase their chances of receiving a fair performance review, but managers can align personnel decisions with the answers to simple questions like, ‘‘If Lilly were a man, what would her salary be right now?’’ or ‘‘If Ann were a man, would I be voting to make her a partner?’’ It really is that simple.

NOTES 1. American Association of University Women Educational Foundation. ‘‘AAUW’s Position on Pay Equity.’’ AAUW Breaking through Barriers for Women and Girls. http://www.aauw.org/advocacy/ issue_advocacy//actionpages/payequity.cfm (accessed June 2009). 2. There was some hoopla in 2007 about demographic changes that showed full-time women in their twenties out-earning men in some big U.S. cities, such as New York, where the median salary of young women was 117 percent of young men’s; the differences leveled out for people in their thirties. But the most interesting part of those findings was that only young women of color were earning more than young men of color. Young black women, for instance, earned 107 percent of what young black men made. For young Hispanic women, the figure was 108 percent. Their white female counterparts made only 89 percent of what young white men made—but the white women were still making more than people of color. The racial differences speak to the lack of earning power among young black and Hispanic men in comparison with white men, whose salaries outpaced those of young men of color by 17 percent. 3. Charmine Hurtel, Shane Douthitt, Gunter Hartel, and Sarah Douthitt (1999). ‘‘Equally Qualified But Unequally Perceived: Openness to Perceived Dissimilarity as a Predictor of Race and Sex Discrimination in Performance Judgments.’’ Human Resources

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Development Quarterly 10:1. 79–89; Madeline Heilman, Aaron Wallen, Daniella Fuchs, and Melinda Tamkins (2004). ‘‘Penalties for Success: Reactions to Women Who Succeed at Male Gender-Typed Tasks.’’ Journal of Applied Psychology 89:3. 416–427; R. F. Martell (1991). ‘‘Sex Bias at Work: The Effects of Attentional and Memory Demands on Performance Ratings of Men and Women.’’ Journal of Applied Social Psychology 21. 1939–1960; Chieh-Chen Bowen, Janet Swim, and Rick Jacobs (2000). ‘‘Evaluating Gender Biases on Actual Job Performance of Real People: A Meta-Analysis.’’ Journal of Applied Social Psychology 30. 2194–2215; Heather Davison and Michael Burke (2000). ‘‘Sex Discrimination in Simulated Employment Contexts: A Meta-analytic Investigation.’’ Journal of Vocational Behavior 56. 225–248. 4. Mark D. Agars (2004). ‘‘Reconsidering the Impact of Gender Stereotypes on the Advancement of Women in Organizations.’’ Psychology of Women Quarterly 28. 103–111. 5. See Valian, Virginia (1999). Why so Slow? The Advancement of Women. Cambridge: The MIT Press. Men who were scoring poorly in exams still rated themselves high on ability; women who scored poorly on exams rated themselves low (p. 158). Also, in experiments, ‘‘women are much more likely to insist on an equal distribution of resources and will go even farther and reward themselves less, even when they are given a high rating’’ (p. 160). As Linda Sax put it, ‘‘When asked to rate their intellectual self-confidence compared to that of their peers, . . . nearly two-thirds of male first-year college students put themselves in the top two categories—‘above average’ or ‘highest 10 percent’—compared to less than half of the women.’’ Women in college also have lower family incomes and are more likely than men to have to work while they earn their degrees. Linda Sax (September 28, 2007). ‘‘College Women Still Face Many Obstacles in Reaching Their Full Potential.’’ Chronicle of Higher Education 54. 1. 6. In spite of that boost, men aren’t off the hook psychologically. They are more likely than women to suffer from sheer job strain. Emma Robertson Blackmore, Stephen Stansfield, Iris Weller, Sarah Munce, Brandon Zagorski, Donna Stewart (November 2007). ‘‘Major Depressive Episodes and Work Stress: Results from a National Population Survey.’’ American Journal of Public Health 97:11. 2088–2093. 7. Lindsey Hilsum (March 9, 1999). ‘‘Women keen to quit rat race: Asked why they go to work, the majority of women say: ‘To pay the bills.’ ’’ BBC News Online Network. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/ uk_news/293250.stm.

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8. Wendy A. Goldberg, JoAnn Prause, Rachel Lucas-Thompson, and Amy Himsel (2008). ‘‘Maternal Employment and Children’s Achievement in Context: A Meta-Analysis of Four Decades of Research.’’ Psychological Bulletin 134:1. 77–108. For an account of the bitter debates among women about working and motherhood, see Leslie Morgan Steiner’s Mommy Wars. 9. Despite children’s devotion to stereotypes, they can be encouraged to see the working world and their own future options more realistically. Erik J. Porfeli, Paul J. Hartung, Fred W. Vondracek (September 2008). ‘‘Children’s Vocational Development: A Research Rationale.’’ Career Development Quarterly 57. 25–37; Stacey Teig and Joshua Susskind (March 2008). ‘‘Truck driver or Nurse? The Impact of Gender Roles and Occupational Status on Children’s Occupational Preferences.’’ Sex Roles 58:11–12. 848–863. 10. John Sandberg and Sandra Hofferth’s study showed that by 1997, mothers were spending six more hours per week with their children and fathers were spending four more hours per week than parents did in 1981. 11. Madeline E. Heilman and Tyler G. Okimoto (January 2008). ‘‘Motherhood: A Potential Source of Bias in Employment Decisions.’’ Journal of Applied Psychology 93:1. 189–198. 12. David Williams (September 2008). ‘‘The Health of Men: Structured Inequalities and Opportunities.’’ American Journal of Public Health Supplement 98. S150–S157. 13. Ana Nyberg, L. Afredsson, T. Theorell, H. Westerlund, J. Vahtera, and M. Kivima¨ki (November 2008). ‘‘Managerial Leadership and Ischaemic Heart Disease among Employees: The Swedish WOLF Study.’’ Occupational and Environmental Medicine 66. 51–55; Katherine McCalister, Christyn Dolbier, Judith Webster, Mark Mallon, and Mary Steinhardt (January 2006). ‘‘Hardiness and Support at Work as Predictors of Work Stress and Job Satisfaction.’’ American Journal of Health Promotion 20:3 183–191; See also Tomoyuki Kawada (September 2005). ‘‘Workload andtt Health Complaints in Overtime Workers: A Survey.’’ Archives of Medical Research 36:5. 594–597, which found that men working overtime were more likely to suffer health problems. 14. Alzheimer’s Association and the National Alliance for Caregiving (September 2004). ‘‘Caring for Persons with Alzheimer’s 2004 National Survey.’’ Families Care: Alzheimer’s Caregiving in the United States 2004. http://www.caregiving.org/data/alzcaregivers04 .pdf (accessed August 2009); National Alliance for Caregiving

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and American Association of Retired Persons (April 2004). ‘‘Caregiving In The U.S.’’ http://www.caregiving.org/data/04finalreport.pdf (accessed August 2009). 15. A study of 442 working couples done by the National Institute of Mental Health showed that today’s dual-income households actually aren’t replicating a 1950s-style in which women do all the housework and child care. The prevailing idea used to be that while women have moved ahead in the workplace, men hadn’t budged at home. Men were supposedly spending just 17 minutes a day on housework and 12 minutes caring for children (176). That’s considerably less than their great-grandfathers did. Psychologist Joseph Pleck took a second look at the data from the 1960s and found that, due to several errors in calculation, the original researchers had missed the fact that married men were doing about 34 percent of the housework—not equitable, but respectable (176). Rosalind Barnett and Caryl Rivers (1996). She Works/He Works: How Two-Income Families Are Happier, Healthier, and Better Off. San Francisco: Harper Collins. 16. Barnett and Rivers found that women have more responsibility for low-control tasks, things that have to be done on demand and frequently, like cooking and daily child-care tasks. ‘‘High-control tasks, jobs you can put off until another time, have little or no impact on your health,’’ while low-control jobs add stress and contribute to health problems (180). Women fare better with their health in spite of the difference because they are more likely to address health problems before they get out of hand. 17. Janet Shibley Hyde (2005). ‘‘The Gender Similarities Hypothesis.’’ American Psychologist 60:6. 581–592. 18. Millicent Nelson, Thomas Stone, Crissie Frye, and David Chown (March/April 2008). ‘‘Pay Me More: What Companies Need to Know About Employee Pay Satisfaction.’’ Compensation & Benefits Review 40:2. 35–42. 19. C. Kulich, G. Trojanowski, M. K. Ryan, S. A .Haslam, and L. Renneboog (in prep). ‘‘Putting the gender pay gap in context— Evidence that only men receive carrots and (sticks).’’ Manuscript in preparation: University of Exeter. 20. Kathi Miner-Rubino and Lilia M. Cortina (2004). ‘‘Working in a Context of Hostility Toward Women: Implications for Employees’ Well-Being.’’ Journal of Occupational Health Psychology 9:2. 107–122. 21. Virginia Schein (2001). ‘‘A Global Look at Psychological Barriers to Women’s Progress in Management.’’ Journal of Social Issues 57:4. 675–688.

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22. Emily Duehr and Joyce Bono (2006). ‘‘Men, Women, and Managers: Are Stereotypes Finally Changing?’’ Personnel Psychology 59. 815–846. 23. Ibid.; Virginia Schein and R. Mueller (1992). ‘‘Sex Role Stereotypes and Requisite Management Characteristics: A Cross Cultural Look.’’ Journal of Organizational Behavior 13:5. 439–447.

CHAPTER 3

Outside Looking In Now here I stand at the edge of my embattled illusions, looking into you. —Jackson Browne, ‘‘Looking into You’’ The people I am calling gender outliers include men and women in nontraditional roles (such as ‘‘male nurses’’), gays and lesbians, transgendered people, and those who appear to stray beyond the limits of conventional masculinity and femininity in their career choices, behavior, and ambitions. They stand out, appearing to be very different from their colleagues. That difference can make them seem threatening, if not to others’ physical safety, then to the well-being and comfort of the . . . normal . . . members and to the cohesiveness of the organization as a whole. In statistics, outliers are bits of information that lie far outside the normal distribution of data. If my credit card has shown only small, local purchases and suddenly a trip to a luxury spa and wide-screen television acquired four states away appear on the list of purchases, those outliers signal that something fishy might be going on. An identity thief may be posing as me and, to add insult to injury, seems to be having a much better time with my money than I am. In an unhealthy organizational environment, that’s how gender outliers are perceived: as violators of accepted norms who don’t deserve to be rewarded with continued employment, let alone advancement. Am I going to send my identity thief a card congratulating her for her enterprising ways—and enclose a few more dollars

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to show there are no hard feelings? Or am I going to try to rid my life of her? Taking a look at what happens to gender outliers on the job is one of the best, and most overlooked, ways to gauge the health of an organization. An organization that can take outliers on board without difficulty is more robust than an organization that tolerates alienating or harassing them. Intelligent diversity programming, cultural shifts internal to individual organizations, and broad social changes have made it a few degrees easier for outliers to get along at work. Still, outliers often have a rough time. Lilly Ledbetter was an outlier in two senses: she was the only woman among male middle managers at her Goodyear Tire plant, and she was the only middle manager working for a salary well under the average. Another example is a friend I have who works at a financial services firm—I’ll call him ‘‘Gavin.’’ Gavin was told that the company needed to make cutbacks and was eliminating his job, but he wondered if that was the real reason. He had a new boss who criticized him for not being aggressive enough, and according to rumor passed on to him by others on his team, the new boss had complained to others that Gavin ‘‘acted too gay.’’ Gavin is heterosexual, married, and has two children. He can’t be sure that he was singled out for not being manly enough, but in his working environment, being perceived as gay—meaning soft spoken, emotionally available, and kind—would certainly be enough to mark a man as an outlier. Gavin had not realized that others saw his behavior as outside masculine norms. Ben Barres, professor of neurobiology at Stanford, told an interviewer about being accused of cheating in college when he solved a test problem everyone else had failed. The incident occurred when he was a female student at MIT where women were very much in the minority. In that environment, being female made Barres an outlier: ‘‘If I had been a guy who had been the only one in the class to solve that problem, I am sure I would have been pointed out and given a pat on the back. I was not only not given positive feedback, I was given negative feedback.’’ 1 As a transgendered man, Barres’s perspective is unusually broad. Not many people live part of their lives as male and part as female. As a woman, Barres appeared to at least one of his professors as a literal cheat—as someone who was pretending to be competent, but who couldn’t do the work and didn’t belong.

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STEREOTYPES ARE MONOTONOUS What Ledbetter, Gavin, and Barres have in common is that, in the eyes of their superiors, they appeared to be in their situations under false pretenses, taking the rightful place of the kind of person the superior expected to see. To statisticians, outlier data represent a problem that needs to be resolved, while in workplaces, gender outliers represent a potential threat to organizational norms, meaning that their behavior, accomplishments, or appearance don’t align with gender stereotypes. To see how stereotypes can be used to identify and exclude outliers, go back to that fancy spa where the identity thief took a little vacation. When she shows up for her facial or to have her hair done, in place of the person she expects to see, she finds ‘‘Mr. Paleolithic,’’ someone who seems to epitomize some of the most negative stereotypes of heterosexual men (thick headed, clumsy, self involved, careless of basic hygiene, and incapable of listening). Those masculine stereotypes are so far outside professional norms in the beauty business that the idea of putting Mr. Paleolithic to work in the spa sounds like the plot line for a new reality show. In other words, it wouldn’t happen in real life because Mr. Paleolithic doesn’t appear to have the right gender credentials for the job. Ledbetter, Gavin, and Barres were marginalized for the same reason. Ledbetter needed to be male to be fully qualified for her middle-management job. Gavin’s experience suggests that it’s not enough just to be male; one also has to be sure to abide by positive masculine norms. According to Barres, being male made a difference to his career. If the elegant, fussy, detail-oriented beauty professional we expect to see turns out to be Mr. Paleolithic, we find ourselves caught between dueling stereotypes, and that is an uncomfortable place to be. We often try to ease the discomfort by deciding in favor of one characteristic or the other and then acting accordingly. To Gavin’s new boss, the clash between how he expected a heterosexual man to behave and Gavin’s inherent gentleness was resolved when he decided that Gavin was gay—and therefore, not wanted. In his case, Barres recalled, ‘‘Shortly after I changed sex, a faculty member was heard to say ‘Ben Barres gave a great seminar today, but then, his work is much better than his sister’s.’ ’’2 Barres’s ‘‘female’’ accomplishments looked small, but his ‘‘male’’ accomplishments were impressive. The faculty member’s mistake was due to gender bias. He had a hard time accepting the idea that a woman could perform as well as a man. There’s

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more to it than that, however: he was also trying to get out of the way of dueling stereotypes by giving credit to the man for work that was done, one might say, on both sides of the gender divide.

GIVE CREDIT WHERE IT’S DUE One of the dangers of talking about outliers is that, naturally enough, their situations seem complicated and, well, unusual. What could their extraordinary situations have to say about those who fall well within the normal distribution of gendered characteristics? The extra boost that Barres received by being male gives a clear picture of what happens when men and women work together on a successful joint project. Unless it’s made very clear that the woman’s contribution made the difference, people tend to give more credit to the man. In experimental studies designed to tease out who gets more credit for joint work, the male partners were given higher ratings, and women were ‘‘rated as being less competent, less influential, and less likely to have played a leadership role in work on the task,’’ although they contributed equally.3 Women in that situation are not only being downgraded, but they are also being nudged out. No one wants the less competent person to find her way into the middle of the organization, let alone to the top. If she’s judged less competent, she’s an outlier whether she’s actually less competent or not. Because outliers tend to receive less credit for their contributions, their credentials have to be reaffirmed frequently to the group as a reminder that they are qualified. That’s better done by an authoritative superior than by the outlier her- or himself, and yes, it can be annoying, as much for the person whose status is being defended as for the group. With time and growing team acceptance, however, those affirmations become less necessary. Recounting the adventures of women in construction trades, author and master electrician Susan Eisenberg describes what happened to Diane Maurer when she was made foreman for the first time. It was the company’s first big job, a multimillion dollar project; they were over budget and struggling to keep up. As foreman, Maurer found she had to ‘‘exert a lot of extra energy in trying to make such an inefficient system run somewhat smoothly.’’ That is the typical situation of middle managers in organizations when top management hasn’t worked out the kinks in the supply chain. At every point where Maurer, as the most senior foreman, could have been moved up to

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general foreman, she was passed over. A less-experienced man from outside, unfamiliar with the jobs or the crew, was brought in instead. Maurer could see the mistakes adding up, the wasted materials and the duplication of effort, but she could only act within the scope of her position—giving advice to the general foreman when asked and trying to keep her part of the project on target. The finished project came in at double the original budget. As general foreman, would Maurer have done a better job, reducing spending and delivering a high-quality project on time? There’s no way to know, but that’s not the most important point. It’s how decisions are made at top management levels that makes the difference. Here’s how that decision looked to the men who were running the company: it wouldn’t have been smart to put an outlier in charge. There was far too much at stake to take such an unnecessary risk on their first major project. They were right about that much at least; they did need to go with the safer choice, which would have been a capable insider rather than an unproven outsider. They used the wrong criteria, however, to determine who that person was. To top management, Maurer was an outlier in the organization—a risky outsider—because she was a woman. The outside man who was hired to be the general foreman looked like the safer choice. The decision would have gone the other way if top management had been using business-centered criteria: Who has the most experience? Who has already shown leadership and technical competence? Who knows the project, the workers, and the system? That’s the person most likely to succeed. Because top management didn’t use those criteria, it made personnel decisions that worked out about as well as its handling of planning and supply.

JUDGE NOT, LEST . . . ? As I write this, a debate rages about whether Sonia Sotomayor will be confirmed to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court. The question at the center of the debate is whether her being a Latina will influence her decisions. It’s a question of basic competence because a judge whose decisions aren’t objective does a literal injustice to everyone who comes before her. The New York Times ran an article titled ‘‘Debate on Whether Female Judges Decide Differently Arises Anew,’’ questioning whether women have what it takes to make

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judicial decisions that fall within normal limits of objectivity. If they don’t have what it takes, they’re outliers, making maverick decisions on the basis of their own marginal, subjective experience. That’s not what we want in a justice of the Supreme Court. Robert Morgenthau, a district attorney who hired Sotomayor early in her career, rose up to defend her, saying she was not a ‘‘lonesome radical’’ and offering evidence that even her more controversial decisions lined up with the majority.4 About a quarter of federal judges are women. By the numbers, they are outliers, in company with Lilly Ledbetter, Ben Barres, and Diane Maurer. Judith Kaye, a judge for 16 years, had to agree that ‘‘women [judges] come out different on some cases.’’ Her reason for believing that women decide differently? ‘‘I feel it to the depths of my soul.’’ Sotomayor’s competence can still be held in suspicion for the same reason; the deep feeling that women’s judgments fall somewhere outside the norm is the source of gender-biased decisions about their careers. That’s why women have had a hard time getting ahead in law—and in construction, science, and manufacturing. It is possible to refocus judgment away from an individual’s gender and toward his or her substantive contributions, however. Here are some positive steps: 1. Establish norms openly, so that everyone can see and understand them. People who are outliers because of their gender identity need to know the limits of their safe zone. Gavin’s new boss had narrower limits in place for men’s behavior than Gavin had previously known, but Gavin didn’t find out what the new norms were until he was out of a job. It isn’t that Gavin could have, or should have, attempted to operate within such restrictive masculine behavioral norms. He will probably be better off in a new situation with a more reasonable boss. But not knowing where the limits were meant that he couldn’t defend himself or negotiate a new safe zone. For Gavin’s colleagues, seeing a valued, high-performing colleague get the boot not only creates a hole in the team, but it also rattles the people who remain. They will be grateful for still having their jobs, but no matter what the official word is, they will feel that something about the decision was off. There is nothing rational, and nothing cost saving, about tossing out a talented employee because he’s more soft spoken than conventional masculinity says he should be, and the most effective leaders wouldn’t

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tolerate using a set of masculine stereotypes—rather than individual performance—to make personnel decisions. Talking about group norms is important in any organization, but how that happens depends on the situation. In an open, healthy environment, group norms will be worked out informally. For instance, Susan Eisenberg’s book about the experiences of women in the construction trades describes how a woman construction apprentice made a mistake and, even after she’d made plans to correct it, how her mentor continued to badger her about it. The apprentice said, ‘‘You know, Herb, if a man would have done this same exact mistake you wouldn’t have said [anything].’’ And he answered, ‘‘Well, I expect more of you.’’5 In just one casual exchange, they established the limits of her safe zone—how much latitude she has to make and correct on-the-job errors. Her zone was considerably smaller than the men’s—in this case, perhaps because Herb was trying to prove to himself or others that a woman could excel. His admission reveals a double standard, and most supervisors would stop far short of realizing or acknowledging that they hold women to a higher standard. However, Herb’s openness leads to better outcomes than silence and covert judgments. It also creates an opportunity to renegotiate norms so that the woman apprentice can be treated less like a suspect outlier, and more like just another beginner who needs training. 2. Don’t expect outliers to be lonely heroes. Sotomayor has been defended on the ground that in making judicial decisions, she went with the pack. Morgenthau stepped up to defend her not because he believed deep in his soul that Sotomayor’s gender and ethnic background skewed her decisions, but because he believed just the opposite. He used objective criteria, comparing her decisions with those of her peers, to show the kind of judge Sotomayor is: not an outlier, but someone in the mainstream. People who are outliers because of their gender are more at risk if their manners and job performance are also far outside the norm. Gender outliers who underperform have a much lower chance of being retained than people who underperform while obeying conventional gender expectations. Outliers who survive often walk a difficult line, piling up achievements while seeking to gain acceptance by establishing a reputation for moderation and modesty.

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If they can manage to walk that line, they may avoid the penalty outliers usually pay in terms of being liked by colleagues. Men who cross over into ‘‘female’’ jobs, and women who cross into ‘‘male’’ jobs, are generally liked less than people who stick with a profession that fits conventional ideas about gender. 6 It is important to note, however, that men who become nurses or elementary school teachers do have an advantage over women who go into construction or want to become partners in a big law firm: maleness is associated with competence even when the man is a gender outlier in his field.7 Women in ‘‘male-type’’ jobs have to meet higher performance standards than men to avoid being downgraded on competence. How do we get beyond those automatic assumptions? A good leader doesn’t expect a gender outlier to succeed or fail all alone, and she or he makes it obvious that work norms aren’t set by gender but by competence. A carpenter named Lorraine gave high marks to Bob, a general foreman, because he treated everyone who worked for him ‘‘like a professional.’’ Bob expected the best, and he created a work environment where it felt good to meet high expectations. He was also the only general foreman Lorraine worked for who would let women and black men take leadership roles. And when a man on his crew complained that Lorraine was talking too long to put porches on the houses they were building, Bob had that man install porches so that he could find out through experience that men take just as long to install porches as women take. At a minimum, organizational leaders have to be capable of intervening when people on their team try to make gender a leading measure of competence. It’s better not to consider such an intervention a favor to the gender outlier. However generous a person Bob might have been, he had his eye on the business outcomes he wanted to produce, and that’s where he wanted everyone else’s attention focused as well. Keeping the focus on the work and setting norms based on professional competence rather than gender is the biggest ‘‘favor’’ an organizational leader can do for gender outliers. It can’t be bad for business either. 3. Don’t confuse gender identity with professional competence. While gender outliers may benefit if their superiors emphasize their team spirit and talk about their accomplishments, the goal isn’t to give anyone an unfair boost over his or her

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colleagues. The goal is to bring outliers into the mainstream. Depending on the organizational environment, that might happen readily, or it might require conscious effort. Gender outliers start out with less credibility, so they have to acquire more along the way if they are going to survive in their profession or advance in it. Sotomayor’s male colleagues start with more credit; most people still feel that being a man confers a higher degree of competence than being a woman, even if they don’t consciously subscribe to that belief. That’s why questions about Sotomayor’s ability to judge objectively have centered on the issue of gender. A male judge’s decisions may fall well outside the norm; he may be widely criticized for being a maverick or an ‘‘activist judge,’’ but his renegade ways won’t spark a debate about whether his gender makes him fundamentally incapable of rendering objective decisions. 8 His latitude for acting independently is wider than that of his female colleagues. For instance, Ian M. O’Flaherty, a Virginia judge, came under fire for dismissing drunk driving cases out of his belief that current laws presumed guilt and were therefore unconstitutional. He was accused of making decisions that ‘‘none of his peers have seen fit to agree with.’’ 9 Others considered him courageous, a hero for defending the constitution. One question that never came up in the debate about O’Flaherty, however, was whether ‘‘male judges decide differently.’’ On the other hand, the buzz about women judges’ capacity to make ‘‘caring’’ rather than objective decisions started long before Sotomayor was nominated for the Supreme Court. According to Suzanna Sherry, who analyzed Sandra Day O’Connor’s decisions, women judges are more compassionate and merciful than male judges.10 O’Connor took exception to the idea that women are more compassionate than men, and she warned that misinterpretations like that would set women back. Subsequently, a better study came out in the New York University Law Review, analyzing the responses of not just one Supreme Court justice but hundreds of judges to new sentencing guidelines that made it much harder to ‘‘show mercy’’ to defendants. If women are more compassionate than men, they should be more likely to object, but that’s not what happened. Judges who had formerly been defense attorneys were most likely to resist stricter sentencing guidelines. Gender didn’t make any difference. Former defense attorneys were particularly sensitive to having their decision-making latitude cut;

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they wanted the power to make decisions based on the circumstances of particular cases. The same is true in medicine. A study of attitudes about ethics compared medical students with registered nurses. The authors wanted to know whether female physicians-in-training thought more like female nurses or male doctors, and as it turned out, female physicians think like their male colleagues. Once again, it was professional background— not gender—that established norms. 4. Educate people on how men and women measure up according to the professional norms and qualifications in your industry. People who have accurate information are less likely to harp on the difference that gender might make, and they are more willing to leave their ‘‘deep feelings’’ about gender difference at the door. In Gavin’s financial services firm, where covert judgments are being made and information on group norms is passed along in rumors, a formal workshop or other educational event would be necessary. The object is to give the team a chance to recognize and perhaps rethink group norms around gender, arriving at a consensus about where limits are. Given a chance to gain perspective, most people find that they can expand their sense of what’s normal far enough to include Gavin—and many others. (See Chapter Six for more on how to construct an education program.)

OFF THE PLAYING FIELD: INVISIBLE GENDER OUTLIERS Gender outliers can become invisible in a number of ways: they may hide their difference or, if they’re committed to owning their identity publicly or the difference is too obvious to hide, they may try to blend in as far as possible by adhering with special care to other group norms and not stepping into leadership roles where they may become the object of heightened scrutiny. An individual who is deliberately ‘‘passing’’ avoids situations and eludes questions that might reveal his or her difference, in part to avoid a direct confrontation with intolerance, but also to escape the more subtle social effects a revelation might produce. Like racial and religious minorities, people with disabilities, and older people, gender outliers have a lot to lose. They may experience limited opportunities for advancement, lower salaries, lessdesirable work assignments, and trouble finding a mentor or in

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establishing a workplace social network. No wonder, then, that if it’s possible to pass, many people opt for concealment rather than risk exclusion. Why be concerned if people are passing? Isn’t that their business, their choice—and wouldn’t the organization be overstepping if it tried to get invisible outliers to reveal their identities? Certainly, outing people who are passing, or harping on the gender identity of those who are trying to blend in, is cruel and unjustifiable. In an interview about what it’s like to be gay and play football, an anonymous professional football player said, ‘‘I’m not brave. I’m gutless really . . . I do feel alone.’’11 He remained anonymous because he feared reprisals and wanted to remain in the sport. Not being able to manage one’s own identity only makes the stigma a heavier burden. That’s why the football player thinks his hostile workplace is his problem and that he’s ‘‘gutless’’ for not confronting the stigma. As psychologists Laura Smart and Daniel Wegner put it, ‘‘concealing a stigma leads to an inner turmoil that is remarkable for its intensity and its capacity for absorbing an individual’s mental life.’’12 The fact that many people choose the stress of invisibility suggests just how serious the consequences of revelation can be. Furthermore, passing is rarely totally successful; word gets out, and rumors start. As difficult as it can be for gender outliers to manage their working life if they’re in hiding, the problem for the organization is larger than the effects on the individual. Wherever being ‘‘out’’ is a serious liability and people police their behaviors to fit an overly narrow norm, the environment is chilly—but not just for those who are most immediately affected. Men whose workplace climate is hostile to women develop negative perceptions of the organization; in the same way, ‘‘bystanders’’ to intolerance are adversely affected when they see minority co-workers being disadvantaged or know that someone is trying to hide a stigmatized identity to avoid negative sanctions.

IT HAPPENS TO STRAIGHT WHITE MEN, TOO Who counts as an outlier is a matter of context, but prejudicial ingroup/out-group dynamics are a particular problem in organizations that exaggerate the differences between groups of people. Where men and women occupy different job categories, or where one sex or the other is a consolidated majority, the ‘‘identity politics’’ tend to be hostile.

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The group least likely to end up in the outlier category are heterosexual, white men. However, when it does happen, the scenarios are familiar. Albert, having recently been discharged from the army, found himself in the outlier’s box when he went to work in a medical records office. Every other person in the office was a woman, including his supervisor. His desk was close to two other employees, both women, who regularly talked to each other about their sex lives. They used some inventive code words, but the topic was obvious, and it made Albert uncomfortable. He wasn’t put off by the idea of talking about sex (he had, after all, been in the military). It was the way they did it that made it offensive. ‘‘What got to me,’’ he said, ‘‘was that they treated me like I wasn’t even there.’’ Albert’s problem was like the problem of women in previously all-male environments: he was in the room but ignored. His coworkers used their sexual dialogue to make him an outsider. The women were creating their own little insider’s world, and they drew on exactly the same kind of communication strategies that men in male-majority settings sometimes do to sideline women: using inappropriate language and lingering over alienating topics of conversation that the other person—the other sex—can’t participate in without yielding some self respect, or can’t object to without drawing unwanted attention or seeming prudish. Managers who tolerate behaviors like that are risking more than the well-being of one employee. Being exposed to rudeness, research shows, disrupts cognitive processes to such an extent that performance even on routine tasks decreases.13 Albert’s co-workers weren’t trying for subtlety; their rudeness was obvious, but people who can employ exclusionary tactics with the nuance of an expert aren’t any less destructive, and Albert’s co-workers were no less effective because they were clumsy. As for the outlier, being on the wrong side of the in-group/out-group divide makes getting up to go to work in the morning a much less inviting prospect than staying home . . . and looking for another job. When faced with this kind of problem, what is a supervisor supposed to do?

DOING NOTHING COSTS MORE Albert’s supervisor did nothing. Albert took the matter into his own hands and confronted the women. He told them their behavior was offensive. They stopped the talk, but he quit as soon as he could find

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another job. What Albert did—and why—is similar to what most women do when faced with similarly exclusionary behaviors on the part of their colleagues. They usually end up dealing with a bad situation alone, with no help from management. As a management strategy, ignoring the problem (or even helping perpetuate it) is the most destructive option. Again, as bad as it is for the individual being targeted, the larger implications are most troubling: even mild ingroup/out-group dynamics affect absenteeism, retention, performance, and productivity, and if management tolerates these dynamics, it’s undercutting its own credibility. Detours from good judgment are rarely isolated exceptions. When management allows bad behavior to continue without consequences, employees are right to question management’s overall legitimacy.

ONLY HUMAN When women are the aggressors, as Albert’s female co-workers were, it’s tempting to see their conduct as an adult version of what has come to be known as the ‘‘mean girls’’ phenomenon. Girls sometimes make a team sport of social exclusion, targeting unlucky outliers with the goal of ‘‘damaging their social status in the peer group.’’14 In the presence of the target, girls hide their intentions under a veneer of niceness, but when they’re once again alone with their friends, they ‘‘behave in a manner consistent with features of their ongoing relationship by engaging in social aggression behind the target’s back.’’ They reinforce group solidarity by targeting another little girl for exclusion—behind her back. As is so often the case, however, what is supposed to be a tidy gender difference turns out to be mere human weakness. Christopher Flett, trying to do women a favor by explaining how ‘‘Alpha Males’’ like him treat women in the working world, describes what he calls the ‘‘Deep Six’’ this way: ‘‘This is the process we use to sabotage your credibility and your career. It comes from underwater (you rarely see it coming), and it has a devastating effect on your position in business.’’15 Flett goes into some detail about how alpha male buddies attempt to ruin women’s careers; it’s a precise replication of what little girls do to other little girls in order to solidify their in-group and establish their own status, except that the men are trying to destroy the target’s livelihood rather than exclude her from the lunch table.

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GET A NEW SCHEMA To people who are devoted to maintaining an insider’s club, gender outliers are identity thieves, taking the place of someone who really belongs. That’s another thing Flett’s alpha males have in common with mean girls: the targeted outlier seems like an impostor, someone who’s not doing a very good job of pretending she deserves to play with the big boys (or the popular girls). Letting an outlier participate would make the in-group less exclusive, and therefore less special. Judgments about who will be assigned the role of outlier and how they will be treated aren’t made rationally. Judgments are made automatically, and then rationales can be invented to validate them. For mean girls, the outlier doesn’t belong because she has too many freckles or doesn’t wear the right clothes. For Flett, women don’t belong because they take things too personally or can’t keep a secret. Whatever the rationales are, the real message is ‘‘Don’t expect me to think this through.’’ Although judgments about who belongs and who should be excluded are automatic, they aren’t groundless. Diane Maurer, the carpenter I mentioned earlier, was shut out of advancement opportunities because her bosses relied on conventional gender schemas to decide who would make an effective general foreman. Schemas are mental sketches of how people and situations should work out. In the gender schema Maurer’s bosses used, a general foreman would arrive at the job site with a cartload of technical, management, and leadership skills. That cart is marked ‘‘Stuff Men Have.’’ Among the many factors that might go into constructing the general foreman schema, the most powerful is that the vast majority of general foremen Maurer’s bosses have encountered are men. Maurer can’t fit that schema. If she had the right stuff, she must have stolen the cart. And if she were only pretending to have the right stuff, she would be an imposter. Either way, when her bosses had to decide who to promote, they couldn’t see their way through to giving the job to someone who didn’t fit the schema. All of us use schemas all the time, but primarily when: • complete and accurate information is isn’t available. • there’s no time to reflect. • the problem or task is routine. Because so many work situations fit that list, we run schemas to make decisions far more often than we employ conscious, original

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thought. Schemas are easy to access and require little energy to use. Even when confronting a novel problem, we’re tempted to use familiar schemas that don’t fit the situation rather than take the trouble to think the problem through. Consider an old riddle about a man and his son who have a car accident. The man dies, but his son survives and is rushed to the hospital for surgery. ‘‘I can’t operate on this boy!’’ says the surgeon. ‘‘He’s my son!’’ At one time, this was a stumper. The father died; how on earth could he then show up in the operating room? Pushed by changing demographics in medicine, gender schemas have evolved far enough that now it’s easy to imagine a woman surgeon in this scene. The riddle rarely works any longer because we’ve let go of the schema that says surgeons have to be male. But the father who died in the accident, the one who was taking care of their son while his female partner was practicing medicine—he’s still a bit of a riddle, because there is as of yet, no convenient gender schema for men who are primary care parents.

TEST THE SCHEMA The main problem with gender schemas is that they give you only a sketchy outline of what men and women are like. It’s not that schemas are all wrong, it’s that they are just wrong enough to be dangerous when applied to real-life decision making. When it comes to the workplace, falling back on a gender schema creates more problems than it solves. Kim, the corporate team-building facilitator I mentioned in Chapter One, noticed that when some of her mixed-gender teams faced physical challenges, men stepped forward first and started planning and executing, often in a spirit of playful competition with one another (they were supposed to be having fun, after all). The women—including those who outranked the men—as if falling in with some prearranged plan, stayed on the sidelines, waiting to be told what to do. On self-segregating teams, women would often talk among themselves while waiting for the men to make decisions, and they usually worked out a viable plan of their own. They didn’t bring it forward, however, unless the men explicitly asked for advice. Even when the men concluded that their plan was flawed, the women waited politely to be asked about alternatives. All-female teams had no more trouble solving problems than allmale groups, so there was no gender-based difference in peoples’ competence to solve problems. Mixed-gender groups that didn’t segregate

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dealt with the challenges faster and with less effort, which is what one would expect from a well-integrated team. Strangest of all, teams that split along gender lines were often unaware that they had done so, although they could recognize it when Kim pointed it out. Rather than questioning the gender schema that says men should be in the lead when it comes to solving spatial problems, leading groups, and performing physically challenging tasks, the team members’ unconscious decision was to abide by the most conventional gender norms. Kim’s all-female teams didn’t experience special problems, but women’s problematic workplace relationships with one another have been the subject of numerous self-help books. Books that reveal ‘‘Women’s Inhumanity to Women’’ (an actual title) follow along with the assumption that women are their own worst enemies. The idea is that when women don’t get along in the workplace, it’s because there’s something about being female that makes women especially dangerous, especially to each other. There has been no corresponding upsurge of advice books for men about how to deal with on-the-job conflicts with other men, and I believe the reason for that can be summed up by a comment from one of my colleagues: ‘‘Sure, men can be mean, but women are absolutely vicious.’’ In other words, men have ordinary faults, but women are in a class by themselves, beyond the pale. Outliers. And yet, going too far afield from a standard, accepted, gender schema—even when that schema is false and works to the team’s disadvantage—means becoming an outlier. The schema that says, ‘‘Women are vicious to one another’’ has a flip side: ‘‘Women are nurturing and care about developing good relationships.’’ They’re both false, but failing to agree with one or the other can put one’s group membership at risk. Let’s look at a demonstration of the right (and wrong) ways to deal with gender schemas that go awry in the workplace.

BRINGING THE OUTLIERS IN: A DEMONSTRATION Lord knows you got to change, Baby. —Carlos Santana, ‘‘Evil Ways’’

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Julia and the Insubordinate Interns ‘‘Julia’’ worked for a well-established midwestern nonprofit with over 700 employees distributed across several cities. She held a middle-management position in the firm’s headquarters, a few rungs below the executive level. The organization was still 75 percent male, and only one woman had advanced beyond Julia’s level. A rising turnover rate among recent hires was bringing more women on board, though for relatively short tenures. Julia, as one of the few women who had stayed on, was an outlier. Her performance evaluations were positive, but she felt trapped by an organizational hierarchy that shut women out of advancement opportunities. One of Julia’s ambitions was to take over the company’s longstanding internship program, and when the program was orphaned following HR budget cuts, Julia asked to be put in charge. Interns typically spend most of their hours in the field, coming together with the internship supervisor for a meeting once a week. Julia thought the program had deteriorated to the point of neglecting the educational needs of interns and exploiting them as ‘‘cheap labor.’’ She was especially delighted when her first ‘‘crop’’ of interns were all women. Women, Julia thought, needed to stick together and help each other. She looked forward to being their mentor and leading a cohesive group. And yet, within a couple of weeks of their arrival, the interns were in full rebellion. Several individuals volunteered to represent them all, and they went to members of the executive board to ask that someone else, anyone else, be put in charge of coordinating the intern program. Julia, deeply humiliated, was sure she was about to be pulled off the assignment.

Evil Women? To give Julia her due, she had handled the administrative side of the internship program very well. In particular, she had taken care to place the interns in work situations that aligned as closely as possible with their future career plans. However, she made major mistakes in leadership. Julia had convinced herself that

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all women were essentially in the same boat—that is to say, that women are emotionally similar, value the same things, face similar challenges in the workplace, and have the same needs. In her view, women were more nurturing than men, and they liked to share power. That’s what she planned to do with the interns— share power. She used the term ‘‘sisterhood’’ to describe what she considered the underlying unity among women. The interns, however, saw Julia as very different from them. They were a racially mixed group, but they did have a number of things in common: they were young and very well educated. Most were far from home and anxious about the immediate future and their careers down the road. Their intern stipend wasn’t nearly enough to cover their expenses, so those who didn’t have another substantial source of income were in a tight spot. They also saw Julia more realistically than she saw herself: she was white, older than they, and much more financially secure. She held a far superior position in the organizational hierarchy. To the interns, Julia didn’t look like an outlier in any way, and when she addressed them as if they were all courageous pioneers bucking an exploitative system, she hit the wrong note. Julia’s approach was doomed from the start. But the final straw, the thing that the interns found unforgivable, came when she complained to them that she didn’t make as much money as her male peers. For the financially strapped interns in Julia’s group, the salary complaint was downright offensive. Her assumption that all women face the same workplace challenges didn’t sit well with anyone but alienated African American and Latina interns in particular. . Furthermore, the interns had clear ideas about what they wanted to gain from the internship, and learning how to be a marginal player in the working world wasn’t anywhere on their list of objectives. They wanted to learn how to become valuable and valued members of organizations—insiders. In fact, they were already prepared to see themselves in that light, which was why they felt justified in taking their complaints so far over Julia’s head. Julia might have avoided the debacle if she had realized that the internship program was not the right venue for her to work out her own difficulties in the organization. Lonely in her job,

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she wanted to see the interns as her compatriots. She didn’t maintain the professional boundaries that her position required. Julia was neither the supervisor she was supposed to be nor the mentor she wanted to be. As for the interns, they were right about Julia in one way; she didn’t understand the differences between her and them. As a result, Julia had come up short as a leader, but she had taken more care to organize and oversee interns’ assignments than any other internship supervisor ever had. Faced with a conflict with their supervisor, the interns took the most drastic action first, a choice that reflected their youth and lack of experience. They wanted the executive board to remove Julia. Their choice to go over Julia’s head and her supervisor’s head was considerably less productive than doing nothing at all, because it put the complaining interns at risk of being perceived as troublemakers —outliers in a very negative sense—before they had managed to prove themselves even as interns. Their strategy showed how much they needed the experience and the professionalism the internship could give them.

Solve the Case Prompt, moderate action would keep the program on track and Julia in place. Here are four short steps to resolution: 1. The executive board members should decline to hear the interns’ complaint, sending them instead to talk to Julia’s immediate supervisor, Sid. 2. Sid, having met briefly with the interns and determined the nature of the conflict, should respond with a noncommittal message, such as ‘‘Okay, I hear you; now go back to your assignment.’’ 3. Sid should have a private talk with Julia. She has breached a clear professional boundary by complaining to interns about her salary, and she needs to know that’s unacceptable. Sid should coach her on how to maintain a more professional distance. He could also recommend that she hire a professional leadership coach for a few sessions. In the longer term, he could recommend to the executive board that his

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management team receive some further diversity education around race and gender. 4. Julia should hold the next interns’ meeting as scheduled. She could begin by saying, ‘‘I’ve heard you’ve made a complaint. I can see that I started out on the wrong foot, and I’d like to start over with renewed concentration on our shared objective—making your internship experience the best it can be.’’ She shouldn’t try to delve more deeply into the issue with the group, because that’s likely to feed the conflict and become a further distraction. Unfortunately, that’s not what happened. Several members of the executive board agreed to listen to the interns’ complaint, and they all discussed it at some length. Neither Julia nor Sid was asked to participate. As an informal, ad hoc subcommittee, the executive board members then met with Sid and expressed their opinion that Julia was poorly suited for a leadership position. From now on, she could handle the administrative side of the program, but she shouldn’t have direct contact with the interns; that responsibility should go immediately to someone else, preferably Sid himself. That seemed to Sid like an overreaction; he hoped to find a way to salvage the situation for Julia— and keep her responsibilities off his plate. After some further negotiation with the executive board, they worked out a plan that had Sid supervising Julia more closely, attending some meetings with the interns, and giving Julia guidance based on what he observed. It was a compromise. It was also a mistake. The result for Julia was that her authority, which she had already undermined through her own gaffes, was further eroded. In the eyes of her interns—the team she was supposed to be leading—Julia was now a virtual nonentity. The outcome wasn’t what Sid had hoped for, either. Although people management was part of Sid’s job responsibilities, the intern fiasco consumed an outsized portion of his time and energy and left him with a subordinate whose confidence—and perhaps her ability to perform—was severely reduced.

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Conclusion: How to Play This Game to Win The ground rules for managing gender-based conflicts call for defusing stereotypes and gender schemas, mainstreaming outliers, and reducing the disruptions that insider/outsider politicking provokes. Here they are: 1. Underreact. Outliers like Julia are typically granted less latitude to make (and then recover from) mistakes. The outsized response Julia received made it less likely that she would learn from her missteps; marginalizing her further had no benefit for the organization. Outliers are often ‘‘overobserved,’’ monitored to a degree beyond that of other organizational members. Heightened monitoring of an individual is a sensible response to serious underperformance, but misapplied, it raises stress levels and wastes time. A moderate but immediate response like the four steps outlined previously—the same level of response that a promising organizational ‘‘insider’’ should receive—creates a tighter and less reactionary organization. 2. Follow the chain of command and accountability. Respecting the hierarchy promotes efficiency, prevents confusion, and distributes authority and responsibility sensibly. Julia didn’t trust the organizational hierarchy, and she wanted the internship program to become the one site in the organization where hierarchy was not the rule. Even if she had succeeded, it was not a promising strategy. Concentrating on building relationships at the bottom of organizational hierarchies can create a support system, but it has the downside of encouraging people to stay at the low level where they feel safe.16 (Networking at the top is a much more promising activity; Sonia Sotomayor, for instance, only resigned from the Belizean Grove, a network of high-powered women, after her Supreme Court nomination.) For their part, the executive board members disregarded normal processes and organizational structures when they bypassed both Julia and Sid and agreed to hear and act on the interns’ complaint directly. Their procedural detour expressed disrespect for Julia and reinforced her status as an outlier. In doing so, they also destabilized the structures that enable the top leadership team to delegate responsibility and focus on their own priorities.

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3. Educate people on gender inclusion. Julia’s assumptions about women’s innate characteristics were unrealistic, and she compounded the problem by demonstrating insensitivity to differences of race and economic class. When she acted on her erroneous assumptions, inviting her interns to join her on the margins, she was reinforcing gender stereotypes that could not benefit her or the women she wanted to lead. Julia, as an individual, would benefit from being challenged on her assumptions about the nature of gender and race, but in that regard, she’s not alone. Individual coaching for Julia, along with gender-inclusion diversity training for Sid’s management team or, better, the organization as a whole, could avert similar mistakes in the future, improve the retention of women, and bring people like Julia in from the margins. 4. Calculate worth accurately. Julia should have expressed her salary concerns upward rather than burdening her interns with her complaint, but she does have good reason to be dissatisfied. The chief demotivator for people in middle management is an unfair distribution of rewards, including salary. Up to now, Julia’s performance evaluations haven’t lagged behind those of her male peers, but she is being paid a second-class salary. That’s a common problem in merit-based reward systems in which it is usual that ‘‘women and minorities receive less compensation than white men with equal scores on performance evaluations.’’17 The executive board must recognize that lower salaries and reduced advancement expectations have been driving women out of the organization. Bringing Julia’s salary up to the average middlemanagement level is an essential step toward gender inclusion. Taking steps to equalize salaries, however, isn’t enough to correct the ‘‘outlier’’ problem in many merit-based systems. Organizations also need to be clear about how they’re determining merit. For instance, Flett mentions a lawyer who was having trouble understanding why she hadn’t made partner even though she was making money for the firm. It turned out that she didn’t know the formula the firm was using to compute her value relative to the value of her colleagues. Her ignorance of something so simple makes her look at best naı¨ ve. Flett treats this as a woman problem, saying that men always know what they are worth to the company. What mysterious gender difference keeps women in the dark about their real value? None. This is an

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organizational problem, not a woman problem. The lawyer lacked access to basic and crucial information that an insider would get early on (and without having to hire a consultant). Her ignorance points to much bigger problems. It’s expensive to keep basic and crucial knowledge from employees who can’t do their jobs without it. If the lawyer had had the right formula, she could have changed her strategies in ways that would have made her more profitable. But the problem is even bigger than that. She’s been shut out of the insider’s circle, so what else doesn’t she know that is costing the business money? And how many other women lawyers were experiencing the same shutout? When women are marked as outsiders in workplaces dominated by men, crucial planning resources are unavailable to them. When organizational leaders realize that business as usual reduces profits and makes the firm less agile in response to new opportunities, they want to know what innovations actually make a difference. Many companies have implemented a ‘‘women’s initiative’’ to help women work up to their full potential, and I talk about one of the best, the Deloitte & Touche initiative, in Chapter Five. These are positive and responsible steps toward full gender integration, and with the right goals and sufficient resources to realize them, such programs can be extraordinarily successful. But too often measures intended to be progressive end up serving the old culture; the women’s Employee Resource Group (ERG) that begins so hopefully degenerates into a place where women can go to work on their special problems so they don’t drag the whole organization down. At worst, special programs devolve into default mechanisms for keeping women and racial minorities in their own special, problematic category. Any program designed to facilitate mainstreaming should serve men and women equally well. The next two chapters show how to build that plan.

NOTES 1. Cornelia Dean (July 18, 2006). ‘‘A Conversation with Ben A. Barres: Dismissing ‘Sexist Opinions’ About Women’s Place in Science.’’ The New York Times. 2. Ben A. Barres (July 13, 2006). ‘‘Does Gender Matter?’’ Nature 442:13. 133–136.

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3. Madeline E. Heilman and Michelle C. Haynes (2005). ‘‘No Credit Where Credit Is Due: Attributional Rationalization of Women’s Success in Male-Female Teams.’’ Journal of Applied Psychology 90:5. 905–916. 4. Letter to the Editor (June 19, 2009). ‘‘Sotomayor’s Justice.’’ The New York Times. 5. Susan Eisenberg (1998). We’ll Call You If We Need You. Ithaca, New York: ILR Press. 6. Madeline Heilman, Aaron Wallen, Daniella Fuchs, and Melinda Tamkins (2004). ‘‘Penalties for Success: Reactions to Women Who Succeed at Male Gender-Typed Tasks.’’ Journal of Applied Psychology 89:3. 416–427. 7. Annette Jinks and Eleanor Bradley (2004). ‘‘Angel, Handmaiden, Battleaxe or Whore? A Study which Examines Changes in Newly Recruited Student Nurses’ Attitudes to Gender and Nursing Stereotypes.’’ Nurse Education Today 24:2. 121–127. 8. Michelle Budig (2002). ‘‘Male Advantage and the Gender Composition of Jobs: Who Rides the Glass Escalator?’’ Social Problems 49:2. 258–277. 9. Tom Jackman (October 27, 2005). ‘‘Maverick N.Va. Judge Tosses Out DWI Cases That Presume Guilt.’’The Washington Post. The quote is attributed to Pat O’Connor, president of the Northern Virginia Chapter of Mothers Against Drunk Driving. 10. Rosalind Barnett and Caryl Rivers (2005). Same Difference: How Gender Myths Are Hurting Our Relationships, Our Children, and Our Jobs. New York, NY: Basic Books. 27. 11. Eric Anderson (2005). ‘‘The Center of Masculine Production: Gay Athletes in Professional Sports.’’ Reconstructing Gender: A Multicultural Anthology. Estelle Disch (ed.) fifth edition. McGraw Hill. 469–474 (470). 12. Laura Smart and Daniel Wegner (2000). ‘‘The Hidden Costs of Hidden Stigma.’’ The Social Psychology of Stigma. T. F. Heatherton, R. E. Kleck, M. R. Hebl, & J. G. Hull (eds.). New York: Guilford Press. 220–241.. 13. Christine Porath and Amir Erez (2007). ‘‘Does Rudeness Really Matter?: The Effects of Rudeness on Task Performance and Helpfulness.’’ Academy of Management Journal. 14. Marion K. Underwood and Duane Buhrmester (2007). ‘‘Friendship Features and Social Exclusion: An Observational Study Examining Gender and Social Context.’’ Merrill-Palmer Quarterly 53:3. 412–438.

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15. Christopher V. Flett (2008). What Men Don’t Tell Women about Business. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons. 19. 16. Laura Bierema (2005). ‘‘Women’s Networks: A Career Development Intervention or Impediment?’’ Human Resource Development International 8:2. 207–224. 17. Emilio Castilla (2008). ‘‘Gender, Race, and Meritocracy in Organizational Careers.’’ American Journal of Sociology 113:6. 1479–1526.

CHAPTER 4

Don’t Do It It doesn’t really matter what is gained or what is lost ’Cause when it comes to love, you don’t count the cost. —Billy Dean, ‘‘You Don’t Count the Cost’’ Twenty-six studies have shown that giving beta blockers to patients in the hours immediately following a heart attack doesn’t save lives. Yet administering beta blockers is still standard practice. Beta blockers slow the heart, which doctors believe should give the damaged muscle a better chance to recover. Their ingrained beliefs are winning out over plentiful objective evidence that demonstrates quite the opposite; in fact, giving beta blockers can even bring on heart failure, yet ‘‘the medical community has continued to strongly recommend immediate beta-blocker treatment. Why? Because according to the theory of the straining heart, the treatment makes sense. It should work, even though it doesn’t.’’1 The problem is that much of what has been tried in the name of promoting gender equality is out of line with the evidence and, like the post-heart-attack dose of beta blockers, doesn’t work. Even smart, dedicated changemakers can miss their goals if they choose the wrong tools. When great intentions and hard work fizzle into apathy, and when programs implemented in the name of gender equality end up with little to show, leaders rarely wonder whether they’ve been using ineffective tools. They’re more likely to conclude that the changes they were seeking are possible now—and maybe, in the big scheme of things, those changes aren’t that important. Lack of progress can

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create a general impression that the whole effort is futile, and that makes it harder to effect real change later. But that’s not the worst case. The worst case is a halfhearted effort and tools chosen thoughtlessly (or, more often, just because their initial cost is low). These choices can do serious damage. For heart-attack patients of the future, the prospects aren’t bad. Change will come. The question is: how long do we want to wait, and what will tip the balance toward change? No one has anything to gain by sitting back and hoping for a quiet, gradual evolution in the right direction. The same is true for gender inclusion. We need positive change right now, and achieving it means giving up on what doesn’t work and shifting attention and resources to developing tools that do work. The rest of this chapter is about how to throw out all the things that organizations do to promote gender equity that don’t work, and the next chapter describes what to do once the decks are clear.

HOW TO FAIL I will take my cue from the carpenter who came in to fix a collapsing floor in my 150-year-old farmhouse. He recommended ripping everything out and starting over, literally from the ground up. ‘‘How about just replacing the most damaged support beams and laying a new subfloor over that?’’ I suggested. ‘‘Well,’’ he replied, ‘‘if what you’re looking for is to have this floor collapse all over again, that’s the way to go.’’ He was right, and the end result is a nice, solid, level floor that will last. When gender inclusion initiatives fail, it’s usually due to the same mistakes and omissions that put any other organizational change initiatives at risk. Failure isn’t an unforeseeable accident. It’s achieved by taking specific steps. If, in the spirit of the ironic carpenter, I were advising managers on the best ways to derail gender inclusion, I would suggest that they: 1. Decide not to do an assessment, build a plan, set goals, or establish benchmarks. 2. Assign a small group of committed, passionate people to design and implement a change initiative—and expect them to succeed without a clear mandate, significant resources, intelligent guidance, or visible support from above.

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3. Start implementation without the support of key people. 4. Not assign supervisors specific responsibilities, or fail to reward those who follow through. 5. Keep quiet about the initiative, allowing it to be perceived as low priority or to go virtually unnoticed. 6. Fail to address negative talk or obstructive behaviors. 7. Assume that efforts that are well received in one part of the organization (a mentorship program, employee resource group, or set of educational workshops) will translate well to other parts of the organization. 8. Do the same things again and again, although they haven’t resulted in the hoped-for outcomes. Along with these general steps to failure, there are others that are particularly likely to undermine diversity management and gender inclusion. We’ve already lost a great deal—talent, productivity, morale, and money—by allowing gender segregation to structure our organizations. If I were asked to advise on how to build an ineffective plan, I would recommend that managers try the following doomedto-fail maneuvers: 1. Ignore the business case and focus on issues of fairness. Fairness shouldn’t rise to top place among the rationales for gender inclusion mostly because we still tend to think that being fair means going soft. Fairness isn’t associated with the rigorous and universal application of performance expectations regarding productivity. It isn’t associated with ensuring that everyone has equal access to opportunity and adequate support as they build their careers. Fairness is associated with accommodating weak performance and setting low expectations for special groups—for instance, women who aren’t really interested in having committed careers, but who like the idea of having something to do outside the home. That’s not a fair explanation of why women work (in fact, it’s ridiculous), but those underlying negative assumptions make arguing for gender inclusion on the basis of fairness a weak place to begin. The best way to outcompete negativity is to make business goals the foundation of the inclusion initiative. 2. Ignore people’s nonconscious responses to changes in gender roles. Gender bias can be conveyed so subtly that it escapes the conscious notice of everyone but the person on the receiving

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end, to whom it eventually becomes glaringly obvious. Bias comes out in small ways, often via nonverbal tactics (for example, using height or a booming voice to dominate an interaction) and patterns of verbal communication (for example, who interrupts whom and how often; whose ideas gain traction during meetings). However disruptive interpersonal gender bias is, it’s difficult and counterproductive to ‘‘police’’ individuals for these mostly nonconscious behaviors. Many men are already concerned that ordinary work interactions will be misinterpreted as actionable sexual harassment, and although those fears are largely unfounded, ignoring them only widens the divide between men and women. One way to narrow that divide is to recognize that women are just as prone to gender bias against women as men are. Both men and women tend to grant more authority, emotional latitude, and respect to men than to women. I will come back to the issue of how to manage nonconscious responses and behaviors in the next chapter; here, I want to emphasize that no matter how universal, subtle, or innocent, bias left unaddressed plays havoc with morale and undermines productivity. 3. Hire token females. Positioning individual women as tokens fails every time. Tokens are installed to show that the organization is willing to hire and promote an outsider. A token woman stands out, but not in a way that enhances her value: she seems to have her job in spite of (or just because) she’s a woman. Hiring tokens is usually the first step companies take, and it does more to delay progress than promote it. Even if a woman’s co-workers treat her like ‘‘one of the boys,’’ the fact that she’s singular puts her in a suspect category. She has to outpace her male counterparts by a wide margin in order to demonstrate that she adds value, and even if she accomplishes this, the value may not be enough to overcome the token dynamic. An experimental study of the performance of mixed groups versus male-majority groups found that ‘‘groups comprising men only or all-male groups with a token woman may be among the poorest performers.’’2 I know women who have adapted to the token situation so well that their solo status has become crucial to their selfesteem. While that’s a happy outcome for the individual, the triumph of one woman doesn’t benefit the organization. If she attempts to shut out other talented women whose presence threatens her status, she can do significant damage. The tactic

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of hiring token women (or ‘‘test cases’’) to see if they’ll do well in a male-majority environment always impedes progress toward inclusion. Gender tokenism has a long history in the professions and in technical and construction industries. A hundred years before large numbers of women became doctors, for instance, the occasional token women physician found her way into private practice or public service. Tokens don’t do anything to pave the way for women in general, because their success appears to be unique; it doesn’t say anything about the abilities of women in general. For that reason, the success of a solo woman doesn’t become a reason to hire more women. If, however, a solo woman fails, it looks like a failure representative of women in general. That’s true even if she fails for the same reasons men sometimes fail. It is irrational, but it’s the inevitable effect of employing the tokenism strategy. If there are doubts about whether women can do a particular job well enough to make the risk of hiring them worthwhile—or if it seems possible that the organizational culture, the bottom line, or men’s morale could suffer if too many women are promoted—then it will seem perfectly rational to tolerate a solo woman but resist gender inclusion. 4. Expect men not to feel that gender inclusion means a loss of status for men. Michael Buerk, a former BBC journalist, drew a great deal of media attention in 2005 when he complained that women had taken over broadcasting and just about everything else. The result, he said, was that men and male values were disappearing from the working world, and in their place, ‘‘What we have now are lots of jobs that require people skills and multitasking—which women are a lot better at.’’3 What’s unusual about Buerk is that he puts into words perceptions that many men have thought but wouldn’t dream of saying loudly in public. Buerk’s female former colleagues dismissed his complaints, but his underlying fear that men lose status as women advance is sound and should be taken seriously. Historically, men really did have far better access than women to jobs and advancement. That loss, I believe, is what motivated my dentist to ask, when he heard I was writing this book, whether I had been attending secret women’s meetings to overthrow men. ‘‘How many men will be left when you’re done? Maybe two percent?’’ It’s always

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better to humor the person who wields the dental equipment, so I shrugged. ‘‘But you’ll keep me around because I’m a dentist,’’ he said. ‘‘I’m useful. On the other hand, a lot more women are becoming dentists these days. I guess you won’t need me after all.’’ My dentist is wrong about male dentists not being needed: if all the male dentists in the United States decided to take a vacation at the same time, the number of available dentists would drop by 78 percent. In 1970, only about 2 percent of dentists were women; now the figure is 22 percent—an exponential rise, but hardly enough to make male dentists redundant. Statistics, however, were not at the root of my dentist’s teasing. Although men’s employment prospects and wealth didn’t fall when women entered the workforce, being a man has lost some of its powerful symbolic value. Ignoring that loss, expecting men not to feel it, and failing to acknowledge that the world really is changing for men sets up a pretense that gender inclusion is only about women, and that men’s needs don’t have to be taken into consideration. 5. Expect people to line up behind their assigned masculine and feminine stereotypes. Buerk may not like sharing his working world with women who are his peers or superiors, but he does feel that women have certain feminine advantages. In his view, people skills and multitasking are easier for women, while men are more single minded and stoic and talk less. Joan Bakewell, also with the BBC, said that Buerk had benefited from working with women because ‘‘women are more conciliatory and conscientious’’ than men.4 However, the ‘‘niceness’’ stereotype doesn’t apply to another BBC journalist, Anna Ford, who had just described Buerk as ‘‘bonkers’’ and called him a ‘‘poor, miserable old bat.’’ So much for the conciliatory female. 5 And while Michael Buerk’s female colleagues were failing to obey the dictates of the feminine stereotype, Buerk succeeded no better with the male counterpart. Buerk celebrates reticence and the stoicism as essential male traits, but his own style is verbose and petulant (however, because one of Buerk’s complaints is that men are too much like women, he may be using himself to illustrate the problem). There’s a lot going on here, but it all boils down to this: although the BBC sex battle was good entertainment, all these

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assumptions about gender difference are wrong, and the antagonism they generate is real. Groups ‘‘self-stereotype’’ in order to solidify their mutual bond, and they slap negative stereotypes on other groups in order to give themselves a psychological boost. Human nature is flexible enough that we can stop doing it, but not when we’re on the defensive. When Bakewell brands women as nice and peaceable and men as confrontational and aggressive, she is doing what comes naturally to all human beings—cheering for her team and knocking the opposition. She might even admit that competitiveness and aggression are fine in their place, but the effect of her comments is to make opponents out of people whose traits are fairly similar and who should be, at least according to the organizational chart, on the same team. 6. Tout the ‘‘female advantage.’’ Two women who made it to the top in industries where few women succeed were asked to give advice to other women with similar ambitions. One replied, ‘‘I see a lot of women who try to be one of the guys, but they usually end up nowhere. . . . It’s best to take a softer approach by listening and observing.’’ Another woman echoed the sentiment: ‘‘I encourage more women to become technologists because I think we bring a softer style of management.’’6 That’s the female advantage. Everyone wants to feel that their team is going to win, and that their winning will be no random fluke. Women bring something special that men can’t contribute, and the business world needs women’s unique abilities. Diversity programming that touts ‘‘the female advantage’’’ promises to satisfy the desire to be considered special and valuable. The intentions are good, and the sentiment is sincere, but men and women aren’t on opposite teams. The idea of a female advantage will never be a good enough reason for men to want women on the team. Telling men that women should be allowed on the team or to take leadership positions because women are so very different and special will promote group cohesion about as well as telling women that men make better leaders because they have special masculine leadership qualities that women lack. Tactics like this fail because they build artificial divisions between people who could otherwise work well together. There is no point in pursuing a gender-equity initiative that requires people to set aside the basic human need to identify with others in their group.

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People can, however, develop a more expansive idea of who is similar enough to belong on the team. For that reason it’s important for people to know that women aren’t nicer than men; they are also no more ‘‘vicious.’’ And men aren’t more competitive than women. Men and women are equally able to concentrate on tasks, and no one is especially good at multitasking; human beings are lucky if they can keep more than two routine tasks in mind at the same time.7 Multitasking is typically expected of those in low to mid-level positions, in which people are responsible for implementing their superiors’ agendas. The reason we think that women are better at multitasking is that they are less likely than men to have jobs and home lives that allow them substantial stretches of time for planning and carrying out single, complex tasks. The myth of women’s super multitasking abilities has been used to justify assigning women to more subordinate positions, and while continually switching from one half-completed task to another does raise the individual’s stress level, it won’t heighten productivity.8 Laboring the ‘‘female advantage’’ is like giving beta blockers to heart-attack patients; it sounds good in theory, but it isn’t backed by evidence, and it doesn’t work. Worse, women’s credibility suffers if they live up to feminine expectations. If women say ‘‘yes’’ to the stereotype, they undermine their own prospects and that of their female colleagues. It’s a fine thing to have ‘‘people skills’’; the damage comes from assigning women to a special feminine sphere. As for the many women whose abilities and behavior don’t fit an accepted stereotype, they are outsiders. People who believe in the feminine ‘‘niceness’’ stereotype don’t care much for women who assert their authority.9 When diversity programming is dominated by the belief that everyone has something special to contribute because of his or her gender, it sets up a contradiction that goes like this: don’t stereotype, but when making job assignments, keep in mind that men do their best if they can accomplish one complex task at a time, while women can juggle five simple tasks at once. When planning for the most productive work environment, remember that men need structure, while women need emotional support. ‘‘Everyone has something special to contribute’’ is a counterproductive tactic because it undermines cohesiveness on teams, promotes the segregation of men and women in different kinds of

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jobs, and sets up a set of stereotypical expectations that real people will not meet. 7. Have fun with the contradictions. Michele Miller’s and Holly Buchanan’s The Soccer Mom Myth is based on a very smart premise: women are individuals. The authors intended to help marketers overcome various stereotypes about women so that they can stop driving women consumers away and instead persuade them to buy. The authors ask, ‘‘Why do so many marketers lump all women into one category? Why do they believe all women act, think, and buy the same way?’’10 (They go on to say that it’s a mistake to think of women as a niche. Women constitute over 50 percent of the population and make the majority of purchasing decisions; you can’t just tinker with advertising, using feminine pastel colors or showing a woman in an advertisement, and expect women to get on board.) When Miller and Buchanan get down to talking about how to gain insight into customers’ needs and goals and how to use those insights, their expertise is impressive. But first, they set up the same contradiction that blights diversity programming on gender. Miller and Buchanan launch into a long explanation about how different men and women are, and at this point, their primary message (‘‘Don’t see women as all the same.’’) gives way to conventional gender stereotypes. They recount the evolutionary hunter-gatherer gender scenario. With apologies in advance for sarcasm, I’ll recount how that goes: What’s special about women is that they never felt any evolutionary pressure to use aggression. They survived just fine even though hunting was beyond their abilities, and their best defense against predators was to wait for a man to come home from the hunt and protect them. They were too busy developing ‘‘tend and befriend’’ relationship strategies. Meanwhile, men were fully occupied with hunting and duking it out with one other for alpha-male status —there was no time for sissy stuff like taking care of their children. To free them from responsibility for caretaking, evolution hardwired our forefathers and their male descendents to ignore children’s ‘‘most blatant signs of distress,’’ according to Miller and Buchanan’s approving quotation from Marianne Legato’s Why Men Never Remember and Women Never Forget. If our forefathers couldn’t take care of others and our foremothers couldn’t take care of themselves, how did we get here?

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According to The Soccer Mom Myth, women’s brains are ‘‘hardwired’’ for multitasking and emotion, while men’s brains are ‘‘hardwired’’ for linear thinking. Nature has endowed women with the need and ability to ‘‘connect,’’ while men go off into their Stone Age caves to brood and watch football—that is, if they can scrape together enough gray matter to do that much multitasking. Gender bias is powered by ideas like these, and for that reason, calling up positive feminine stereotypes and negative masculine stereotypes may be an effective tool for marketing to some women. It might work because marketing needs to excite people’s emotional reflexes, not urge them to do some critical thinking on social bias. Diversity programming that relies on marketing tactics invites distorted decision making. On one hand, it says, ‘‘Women have a lot to offer in the business world,’’ and on the other hand, ‘‘But widespread gender stereotypes are true.’’ If women are better at connecting with people on a personal level, and those skills are considered desirable in a management position, then women will have an opportunity to move up. But the same stereotype can be used to shut women out: if a welldeveloped ability to foster supportive personal connections seems less relevant, then men will get most of the leadership opportunities. We have a powerful tendency to actively create what we expect to see, whether or not it puts the available talent to the best use. When highly intelligent people like Miller and Buchanan think it’s a terrible idea to lump all women into one category and yet turn around and do exactly what they’re discouraging, they are under the influence of a very seductive force. That’s how bias works. 8. Expect women to be supportive of one another. Partly because of the assumption that women ought to be nice, the popular media overdramatize instances of bullying and betrayal among women. The very nice girl’s other face is that of a demon manipulator. The dueling myths (female advantage against feminine fascism) make it difficult to get a balanced view of relations among women at work. However, it is clear that gender-inclusion initiatives can shake up women’s working relationships with one another. Because women have been pooled at the middle and low levels of organizational hierarchies, in many organizations they have developed

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practices of mutual support that are effective only as long as women are grouped together on the same low level. In gendersegregated organizations, relationships among female peers tend to dwindle and sour as individual women advance. Ambitious women often perceive one another (fairly accurately) as zerosum competitors for the few advancement opportunities open to women. So women in gender-segregated organizations tend to dissociate from other women as they seek to identify with higher ups, and that means shifting their alliances from one gender to the other. Gender inclusion transforms relationships among women, and if that transformation is managed successfully, there are new openings for collaboration and mentoring up and down the ladder. Until that happens, smart women who want to rise look for mentors among senior men who are in a good position to help them, and who won’t feel personally threatened by an ambitious woman. 9. Promote unseasoned women into risky positions where failure is likely, and reserve secure, low-risk, promising positions for seasoned men. The question of what to do with ambitious women is sometimes resolved by giving them a chance to prove themselves under conditions of high visibility and risk, but with less preparation and support than their male peers receive.11 It has been called it the ‘‘glass cliff’’ phenomenon, and —like so much else about gender dynamics in the workplace—it has generated a contentious debate. One of the central voices in the debate, social psychologist Alex Haslam, attributes ‘‘glass cliff’’ appointments to managers’ tendency to appoint people they identify with to desirable positions, and to give riskier, less advantageous jobs to people they see as outsiders. Because most senior managers are still male, and because they haven’t had any compelling reason to question why they promote men into the more secure, desirable jobs, the ‘‘glass cliff’’ is one of the most stubborn obstacles to gender inclusion. It’s not too surprising, then that Haslam told an interviewer that men tend to ‘‘refuse to believe this exists, despite the overwhelming evidence we have already collected.’’12 10. Present work/life programs as lightweight, feminized alternatives to a serious career. ‘‘Women need choices,’’ announced one diversity executive during the roll out of her company’s generous package of work/life options. True enough—women

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certainly do need choices. So do men. The family-friendly options are officially available to everyone, but what was intended to be a gender-neutral program is now destined to be perceived as a ‘‘mommy track.’’ Coloring work/life programs pink entails some brutal consequences. An audit of employers showed that simply identifying job candidates as mothers caused employers to downgrade candidate’s competence and offer a lower salary.13 To put it baldly, an organization that misrepresents parental leave and flex time as special options for mothers risks associating those programs with incompetency. Meanwhile, men at higher levels in organizational hierarchies are in a better position to negotiate individualized solutions, allowing them to maintain a safe distance from stigmatized programs while enjoying some of the same flexibility. Why be downgraded to the status of a dabbler—a mother!—if you can avoid it? 11. Hold mothers to a higher standard. One upshot of thinking that mothers are less competent is that they are expected to perform better than everyone else.14 Numerous studies show that fathers are ‘‘held to more lenient performance standards’’ than men without children or mothers. Mothers are expected to meet the highest standards. This is why talking up ‘‘mommy track’’ options has such serious consequences for women’s careers— the perception that mothers opt out is already powerful, and creating a separate career track for mothers only exaggerates that perception. What most of these sure-to-fail strategies share is that they make a big issue of gender difference. They won’t work because they reinforce the perception that members of the ‘‘minority’’ gender are so different that they don’t really qualify for membership on the team. Being marked as the odd person (or minority group) for any reason means more stress and less support from others, and the failure rate—measured by absenteeism, poor performance, and/or short tenure—rises the more the ‘‘marked’’ person or group is excluded. It’s an organizational failure, and considering what it costs to hire, train, and pay employees, implementing a strategy that intensifies insider/outsider dynamics is remarkably expensive. However, organizational insiders avoid responsibility and maintain a positive sense of identity by ignoring or even blaming the excluded person. The desire to feel safe and preserve self-esteem can be far more powerful than the influence of the principle of fairness to others

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or concern for the economic health of the organization. Fortunately, appealing to the desire to feel good about oneself and one’s company is also part of the solution, as we’ll see in the next chapter. For now, it’s important to recognize that the overriding desire for group affirmation and a positive personal sense of identity explain why the solutions most organizations reach for first are also the ones that don’t work. To sum up, we keep trying strategies that fail because we do the following: • Tend to have confidence in the theory that best fits our world view. It feels right, so it should work. • Pick the strategies that require the least commitment or seem to entail the least risk to our status quo. • Find ourselves attracted to strategies that we believe will receive the most popular support (or at least produce the least resistance).

EASY DOES IT Back in the nineteenth century, one of the most influential arguments against giving women the vote was this: if the United States gave women the right to vote, chaos would ensue. Why? Because women weren’t ready to handle the responsibility and stress of voting, and when women fell apart under the strain, marriage and family life would go under. Not only women but also the nation itself couldn’t withstand the seismic jolt of women leaving their homes and going to the polls. We would regress to a primitive state.15 Women would take over, and men would be ground under their heels. It’s hard to believe anyone ever bought into this argument, but for many decades, this had considerable traction as a rationale for denying women the vote. ‘‘Everything will fall apart’’ sounded like a reasonable fear, and ‘‘women are happy with the way things are’’ sounded like a good reason not to worry about the ethics of denying half the population the vote. Many people who thought that women should get to vote someday weren’t sure that women (or the nation) were ready for it yet. Sooner or later, they thought, when women were better educated, or had fewer children, or when men were more accepting, or when the nation or the economy was more stable, the right time would come. A few of these ideas have been recycled as twenty-first century arguments

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against workplace inclusion. In particular, the idea that gender inclusion means men will lose out; the suspicion that women can’t handle the combined stresses of children, marriage, and a real career; and fears about the effect of inclusion on organizational stability still sound like persuasive reasons to take it slow and easy. It took well over a century of constant argument and activism, by men and women both, to wade through the nonsense and win ‘‘female suffrage’’ in the United States. And yet, as soon as the change came, votes for women fell right off the list of national threats. No one today says, ‘‘Good thing that women didn’t get the vote until 1920! Why, the nation would have collapsed if women had won the vote a hundred years earlier!’’ Now that we know the anticipated disaster didn’t happen, we can see how unlikely it was. So what was that all about? I think the best answer is in neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux’s story of the snake and the stick. The emotional part of the human brain, the amygdala, is capable of responding to a potential threat long before our conscious mind recognizes it. When our eyes spot what might be a snake in our path, the amygdala gets the news at virtually the same moment, and we react automatically, before the higher cortex can analyze the information and make a reasoned decision about what we’re really seeing and what we should do about it. When it’s particularly hard to sort out the evidence (if the sighting happens at dusk, for instance), the brain errs on the side of alarm, because that error is a lot less risky than the alternative. Reaching for a snake as if it’s a nice piece of firewood can lead to unhappy results. ‘‘The cost of treating a stick as a snake is less, in the long run, than the cost of treating a snake as a stick.’’16 The way our brains are set up to respond to a threat is good for our survival, but it has a downside: we react to a lot of sticks as if they’re snakes, and go on doing so, sometimes long after the higher parts of our brains have had plenty of time to sort out all the evidence. That’s what happened with women’s suffrage: there was a long-winded debate about whether the nation was confronting a python or a rattlesnake, and then, after 1920, it was hard to remember what all the fuss had been about. Resistance to change—even panic—is a natural response, especially when people are doubtful about how change will affect them. But in organizations, it’s just a waste of time to put off changes that management knows have to occur. Delaying under those conditions is like deciding to let the amygdala make the major decisions; there will be a lot of action, a lot of fighting and fleeing, but productivity will suffer.

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That is the effect of arguing for slow change. It’s is a way of acknowledging the potential value of diversity and gender inclusion while taking little or no action. There are certain phrases people invoke when they are announcing that nothing will happen now: ‘‘Cultural change takes time’’ is one of the most frequently repeated mantras, but in this case at least, it puts the cart before the horse. Gender inclusion leads cultural change; it isn’t pulled along by it. For instance, a colleague of mine (I’ll call her ‘‘Kendra’’) used to describe what her husband (‘‘Dennis’’) did with their three children while she was at work ‘‘babysitting,’’ although to a nonpartisan observer what he did—making meals, taking the kids to activities, giving them baths, etc.—looked like normal, competent parenting. Kendra had every reason to realize that Dennis was as capable as she was, but she couldn’t see him in that light. To Kendra, the prospect of Dennis having equal status might as well have been a snake; she didn’t want to go anywhere near it. Dennis, assuming he would like to advance from the rank of babysitter to full parent, was in a very different kind of quandary. Journalist Edward Keenan explained that quandary in his blog ‘‘Act Like a Man,’’ writing that social changes have ‘‘meant that in the nuclear family—the most significant organization most straight men will ever belong to—males are reduced to an optional frill, desirable but not essential to the unit’s success.’’ If that sounds like it has something in common with Michael Buerk’s sense of the fate of men in every part of modern life, indeed it does. Both Buerk and Keenan are worried that men are being pushed out—that they are now considered optional. That is what many still believe about women in the workplace: they are decorative (one hopes, at least), but inessential to the organization’s success. Applied to men or women, ‘‘nice to have but not necessary’’ is equally a lie. As for Dennis, he could wait around hoping that eventually Kendra would wake up to the fact that he is playing a major role in their ‘‘unit’s’’ success. If so, he’d wait a long time because, after all, cultural change takes time, and in our culture, mothers are still the main parents. Dennis’s best bet is to initiate change right now. How he would do that would be unique to his own family situation, so Dennis’s ‘‘gender-inclusion plan’’ can’t provide a good practical model for organizational change. But in both cases, the solution can’t be found in slow, cultural change. The best thing to do is to forge ahead with the changes that have to happen, realizing that the culture will adapt.

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Assuming ideal conditions, three years is supposed to be the magic time span for a major change to be accepted throughout an organization. That may seem like a long time to wait for people to stop mistaking a stick for a snake, but considering the ‘‘slow change’’ alternative— a century for suffrage, a lifetime for Dennis—three years is a brief period. If, however, slow change is the goal, here’s how to achieve it: 1. Accept the idea that significant change will have to wait until older male supervisors leave or retire. Older men are the group most often blamed for slow change, but that’s not the real story. A good many older men are not only able to tolerate changes in gender dynamics but also can become major changemakers, a phenomenon I discussed at the end of Chapter Two. As for those supervisors (of either sex) who have proved that they’re not going to implement gender inclusion, it’s hard to see the benefit to the organization of retaining them. Why keep a supervisor who won’t implement organizational policies and can’t handle the responsibility of fair hiring, management, supervision, and evaluation of everyone under his or her authority? Waiting until the ‘‘sexists’’ retire is another slow-change strategy that does a good deal more damage than confronting the problem now. 2. Expect gender inclusion to happen from the bottom up. I had a boss once who, whenever one of his subordinates proposed some change he didn’t want to bother with, said, ‘‘Well, if you want people to accept it, you don’t want it to seem like it’s coming from me. That’s the kiss of death.’’ And, in fact, that was the kiss of death, because his subordinates didn’t have the authority to effect change without his support. I don’t know if he had in fact convinced himself that change comes from the bottom up, but saying so allowed him to make decisions without having to admit he’d made them. It was convenient, but as a long-term strategy it was a loser, because it came at the cost of the morale of the people who worked for him. ‘‘Change comes from the top’’ is a good general rule that is often ignored when it comes to gender. Gender inclusion can’t happen from the ground up in any hierarchical organization. Rank-and-file men and women are unlikely to demand it for many reasons, but in a sense that’s a side issue, because it’s not their decision to make. Gender inclusion has to happen from the

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top, preferably starting at the highest levels, with responsibilities delegated down through the ranks. Only leaders with a bird’s eye view of the organization and the power to make change can initiate gender inclusion. 3. Plan to pay more attention to gender inclusion as soon as successes in other areas of diversity have been achieved. Overworked diversity executives have to set priorities, and only a true Master of the Universe could approach every aspect of diversity with equal expertise and attention. That said, delaying gender inclusion for a better day has no upside. An anonymous poster to an online discussion group at Government Executive wrote, ‘‘Unfortunately, when Diversity initiatives are implemented poorly, we strengthen perceptions that one group is benefiting while another suffers.’’17 There are many ways to implement a diversity initiative poorly, but inventing rationales for delay says that there’s a hierarchy of minorities. As one HR executive in a heavily male-dominated organization told me, ‘‘We’ve been putting most of our energy into multicultural hires, so recruiting women hasn’t been a priority.’’ And, in fact, they’d had good success recruiting men of color. But he was also saying that women of color weren’t considered members of the target population. Giving one group priority over another puts women into competition with people of color and other historically marginalized groups, implying the truly incoherent notion that ‘‘women’’ means ‘‘white women’’ and ‘‘people of color’’ doesn’t include women of color. It’s hard to take diversity efforts in general seriously if, through words and actions, leaders convey that they’re planning to leave a particular group of people waiting at the curb. In other words, the culture will only evolve when management evolves it.

BE EXTRA NICE TO WOMEN Just wanna do something special for all the Ladies in the World. —Flight of the Conchords, ‘‘Ladies of the World.’’

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Sociologist Manolo Guzman, taking a swipe at privileged white people who think that comprehensive racial desegregation is always good for minorities, criticized their ‘‘failure to even imagine the possibility that there may be joys associated with an alternative space of one’s own.’’18 Although I’m about to disagree with Guzman, he is right about the joy and affirmation people often feel when they can celebrate a shared identity. The problem is that segregation, including segregation by choice, is a destructive impulse to encourage in an organizational setting. That encouragement can happen in subtle and unintentional ways. For instance, in an article about the business advantages of cultivating diversity, Simon Caulkin wrote, ‘‘Making diversity pay involves real and difficult choices. For instance, to attract more women, City and consultancy organisations are having to tone down testosterone- and long-hours’- dominated cultures and pay attention to unfamiliar concepts such as mentoring and work-life balance.’’19 Spotlighting women is common when discussions about work/life balance and flexible scheduling are underway. The automatic assumption is that mostly women will benefit, even when the intention is to level the playing field.20 Among the most effective ways to undermine gender inclusion is to advertise gender-diversity initiatives as if they’re just for women. 1. Remember the ladies! Talk up women’s special qualities or point out the special problems they face. 2. Forget the men. Don’t seek out or integrate men’s concerns and needs. 3. Use gender to predict leadership ability and to overestimate the performance effect of a person’s gender, family responsibilities, or physical condition (such as muscle strength or pregnancy). 1. Remember the Ladies! What could possibly be wrong with using woman-friendly programs (and even changing the work culture) to attract women? It’s true that organizing diversity programming around women or what are perceived to be women’s issues, and advertising them as such, can have positive effects. Thinking of women as a special population can be helpful in organizations that have

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historically failed to hire, retain and advance, or pay women fairly. Similarly, if the workplace culture discourages women from entering existing channels for networking and mentoring, or if relations among women are marked by bullying and hostile competition, women-centered programming actually can facilitate gender inclusion. Although special programs can make a company more attractive to women, there is a big price to pay for making women feel special and giving them privileges not extended to men—and women end up paying more than their share of the cost of those privileges. Special women’s programs can solidify a divide between men and women, mark the path of the ‘‘mommy track’’ discussed previously, become an excuse for paying women less than their work is worth, and persuade them that they should lower their sights and be content with finishing their careers at a mid-level position. If special programs are marginal to the workplace culture and the real business of the organization, they lead right out the door, and women who want to rise have to avoid them or lose credibility. Even with better starting conditions, however, emphasizing ‘‘women’s issues’’ and promoting female solidarity loses its power to create change over time. That’s partly because women don’t need to bond with each other nearly as much as they need to become organizational insiders who can network with both women and men. And yet, even when progress toward gender inclusion has stalled, most organizations go on recreating the same woman-centered programming again and again rather than moving on to more promising strategies. Or they drop the effort, believing they have done everything possible to help women, that women themselves have reached the limits of what they can accomplish, or that the pace of social change is just too glacial to permit more rapid progress in the workplace. The answer to this problem isn’t to rescind employee programs that increase productivity, because it’s not the programs that are at fault. The problem is in identifying them as special women’s programs.

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2. Forget the men. During one organizational assessment, I talked with a supervisor (I’ll call him ‘‘Joachim’’) whose initial attitude about efforts to recruit and retain more women was, ‘‘That’s fine, but it doesn’t have anything to do with me.’’ Except for the fact that he would be supervising some of those new women, I could see Joachim’s point of view: what benefit for him could there be in a gender inclusion initiative? At some point during that conversation, however, I mentioned that the women’s employee group was campaigning for back-up child care. It would be provided by an outside contractor, and the parent would pay the cost. It would mean that the parent would be able to come to work whenever school was cancelled or existing child care arrangements fell through. Similar plans have been shown to reduce absenteeism by a significant margin. ‘‘Why didn’t I know about this?’’ Joachim asked, suddenly very interested. I thought he was envisioning how fewer absences among his subordinates would make his job easier, but it turned out that he was a single parent who was struggling with his own child care arrangements. At least on that one issue, he was now ready to see how gender inclusion could benefit him personally. Joachim hadn’t heard about the child care campaign because the women’s employee group operated on the margins of the organization. Although officially anyone could join, and although its agenda and minutes were available to anyone via its Web page, the women’s employee group operated as a woman-only group. As far as he knew until that moment, Joachim had no reason to be interested in what the women were up to. The disconnection of the women’s employee group from the mainstream of the organization was hurting women. Isolated on the sidelines, it was never going to gain much traction, even for proposals that would clearly benefit the organization as a whole. That disconnection was as unnecessary as it was dysfunctional. Men are as likely as women to need consideration for family responsibilities, but they usually aren’t leaders on work/life issues, and they are less likely to take advantage of existing policies. They are often concerned that men in particular will lose credibility and

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standing if they take a family leave or try to negotiate flexible hours, or like Joachim, they may not have even considered the possibilities. The principled answer is simple: make employee programs genuinely available to both men and women. As Joachim’s sudden interest suggests, these programs, as a visible rallying point for gender inclusion, can help break down divisions between men and women. As we saw in Chapter Two, even men who are eager to sign up for grueling work hours benefit from paying more attention to work-life balance, if only because grueling schedules don’t heighten productivity and can lead to debilitating health problems. Similarly, men who can depend on an ‘‘old boys’ club’’ for the mentoring they need can also benefit from intentional mentoring, especially if it allows them to interact with people across lines of gender and race. And finally, inclusive work-life programs are an important recruiting and retention tool for men who need to give significant attention to parenting, or who aren’t particularly enamored of what Caulkin called ‘‘testosteronedominated cultures.’’ 3. Use gender to predict leadership abilities. A Pew survey of over 2,000 Americans that compared perceptions of men’s and women’s capacity for leadership gave top scores to women.21 The survey wasn’t meant to assess actual differences in men’s and women’s ability to lead, of course; it measured what people felt about leadership and gender. Although it’s nice that people have a higher opinion of women’s leadership abilities than they used to, the upswing in women’s standing has had only minor effects on who rises to leadership positions, and overall, men and women still tend to end up in different job categories and with different pay scales. Women aren’t winning. The survey results may help to explain why. It seems logical that the gender judged to have more of the ‘‘right stuff’’ would win the leadership contest, but that’s not what the Pew survey showed. Although respondents rated women considerably higher than men on a majority of leadership qualities (women were judged to be more honest, intelligent, hard working, compassionate, outgoing, and creative

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than men), only a small minority (six percent) of those surveyed concluded that women make better leaders overall. How could that be? Maybe people believe that women’s positive leadership abilities are offset by negative qualities not assessed in the survey such as lack of commitment, an inability to analyze problems effectively, or uncontrolled emotionality. Perhaps those surveyed believe that although evolution gave the women the right qualities, women are genuinely happier doing things that keep them in the background. Or perhaps respondents feel that the one item in which men outranked women—decisiveness—is the single quality most likely to distinguish a great leader from the nonstarters. In any case, winning points for merit wasn’t enough to justify giving women the ultimate prize. It may be that we are troubled by the idea of women winning while men lose, and if women compete head-to-head against men, there’s a possibility they could win on the strength of all those superior leadership qualities. If that happened, the world would go topsy-turvy, and we’d find ourselves in the middle of a twenty-first century version of the nineteenth-century nightmare about what might happen if women won the vote. Women dominating over men still presents an ugly picture, and inequality is unfair, so when it comes to leadership, we shouldn’t necessarily use sheer merit to decide who gets the job. More importantly, the shift in public opinion doesn’t seem to reflect real differences between men and women. The pile of scholarly research conducted on gender and leadership over the last 30 years is ample enough to paper the halls of every business school in America, but it all boils down to one conclusion: ‘‘Despite the assertions of previous research, neither men nor women uniquely can claim leadership profiles that represent a better fit for today’s business challenges. Thus, it is critical in business school admissions policies, as well as hiring and promotional decisions, to consider people as individuals with their own specific, rather than genderbased, strengths and weaknesses.’’22 That’s that. But even if research could turn up actual differences between men and women sizable enough to give one sex an edge, that data

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couldn’t be used to predict how any particular man or woman would handle leadership. Promoting the idea that the men and women are pitted against one another in a contest for leadership superiority is good for nothing but firming up divisions. Women couldn’t collect the prize even if they won the contest, but that’s not the bad news. The bad news is that the whole idea of a contest based on gender is destructive. It doesn’t matter which sex anyone is rooting for; we can’t afford the delusion that men and women are so different from one another that one sex could collectively beat the other in a contest for superiority. And yet, that’s what the Pew survey seems to endorse when it reports its findings: ‘‘For anyone keeping score, that’s women over men by five to one, with two ties, on eight traits, each of which at least two-thirds of the public says is very important or absolutely essential to leadership. Notably, nearly all of these gender evaluations are shared by men as well as women, though the margins are more heavily prowoman among female respondents than among male respondents.’’ There is, however, good news out of the Pew survey: a large majority (69 percent) of those surveyed said that the sexes are, overall, equally likely to make good leaders. That finding is enough to make one wonder whether, perhaps, the public is ready to move beyond ‘‘battle of the sexes’’ scenarios. It’s also an answer to the question of whether cultural change must come slowly. The feelings uncovered by the Pew survey represent a phenomenal change in our perceptions of how gender affects our ability to be leaders. Just a generation ago, women’s leadership qualities would have been seen as decisively inferior to men’s. Women weren’t seen as losers in a leadership contest; they weren’t even thought of as potential contestants. At the broadest social level, opinions about gender and leadership have changed massively and quickly. What brought our opinion of women’s abilities up was seeing women make their way into parts of the working world where they had never been before. It was observing women’s advancement and finding out that they could handle leadership roles as well as men.

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DON’T COUNT THE COST Rosalind Barnett wrote, ‘‘The way out of the gender-difference trap is to realize that both men and women have nurturing and achieving capacities and ambitions that they want to exercise, and neither sex has unique abilities suitable for only one of these two major life arenas. . . . With these realizations, barriers will fall.’’ They will fall, Barnett said, because myths about gender difference ‘‘cannot persist against the strong protests of real working men and women unwilling to have their lives so adversely affected.’’23 Barnett is right that gender doesn’t confer special abilities, but being right isn’t nearly enough. Real working men and women aren’t going to wake up one morning and realize that workplace gender segregation is making their lives harder and they’re going to change it. Giving people the facts about gender (minus the hype) is essential, but even that’s not enough, because ignorance alone doesn’t explain gender segregation. How deeply ignorant of each others’ abilities could men and women really be, considering how much their lives overlap? The trap we fall into isn’t ignorance per se; it’s that we spontaneously blot out information that might make us feel uncomfortable. Human beings resist even the most objective facts if those facts contradict what feels right to them on a gut level. To revisit Kendra and Dennis, what felt right to Kendra was that she was the main parent and Dennis was extra—a babysitter. What did Kendra gain from maintaining her ignorance of his competence? For starters, it allowed her to justify taking precedence in family decision-making. Referring to Dennis as a babysitter, and treating him as if he were inessential, undermined his status. A worker similarly undervalued can’t perform as well as he or she would under friendlier circumstances. Our ability to not see obvious and relevant facts helps us preserve whatever ‘‘gender myths’’ make us feel safe and significant, so there’s a powerful motivation not to see beyond them. That makes us shortsighted about the costs and consequences. Why wouldn’t Kendra want a highly skilled ‘‘babysitter’’ who works for free, won’t push her out of the motherhood limelight, and defers to her on major decisions? Topparent status might shore up her ego, but what looks like a great deal for Kendra will turn out to be anything but. Being perceived as a provisional, inferior member of the organization (or family) is stressful, and the rewards are few. People in that situation are less likely to take

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their duties seriously, and they are less likely to stick around, especially if something better comes along. They have three choices: leave, accept subordinate status and stay, or insist on change. Most people choose one of the first two, even though those choices ultimately generate the highest losses for everyone involved. Setting aside their personal relationship, the reason Kendra might want to give up relegating Dennis to babysitter status is the same reason employers might want to give up on trying to fit visionary female leaders into mid-level ‘‘multitasking’’ positions: it just doesn’t make the best use of the available talent. The cost of those decisions won’t show up in the budget, but the organization is paying for them nonetheless. And in the event that the usual thing happens and the talented women are pushed out or leave for greener pastures, the expenses don’t end with their departure. There’s also the loss of the value they would have brought to the organization in the future, the cost of replacement, and, depending on the state of the job market and the company’s reputation, a potentially long list of highly qualified women whose applications HR will never receive. Last on the list of expenses that are rarely tracked is the cost of tolerating a conflict between the official message and real practices. If an organization frames a strong business case for diversity and then asks people to do their diversity-related work off the clock, the money (or rather, lack of money) speaks louder the official message that ‘‘diversity is integral to our business.’’ Bank of America, for instance, says that the work of its diversity network ‘‘increases understanding of the needs and priorities of our diverse associate and customer base’’; enhances leadership, management, and communication; builds effective teams; and helps associates develop contacts within the organization. That is a business-driven case, but Bank of America contradicts it by emphasizing that activities take place ‘‘during non-working hours.’’ Throughout the business world, employees willingly work off the clock to develop client relationships, finish a report or project, prove their management potential, or contribute to a cause that they are committed to. (They do it somewhat less willingly if they are just trying to keep a job with an employer that only retains people who do some free work.) All these off-the-clock alternatives have one thing in common: they are tied to tangible and more or less immediate personal rewards. Unless unpaid diversity work is tied to similarly powerful incentives, few people will believe the official line that diversity is vital to business.

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The most obvious result of tolerating a big gap between words and action is that diversity work will go to the people who are passionate about it but who have neither the resources nor the incentive to build business-centered diversity programs. People in that marginal situation can be extremely valuable members of diversity teams, but they’re not in a position to create lasting change. They need leadership. The less obvious, but equally expensive, result of speaking and not acting is the loss of credibility. When management uses urgent, positive language about the centrality of a diversity change initiative and then leaves it on the margins, it will be that much harder to move the next change initiative.

CONCLUSION Creating genuine change means resisting what feels comfortable, familiar, and intuitively right. For many, that in itself is the most powerful reason not to try. Most human beings like innovation, but they like it after the fact, when the new practices have come to feel comfortable. Most have to be persuaded, nudged, or outright pushed to take a new direction. As the beta blocker episode this chapter opens with shows, positive change can be difficult to effect even when the evidence is clear and the motivation to move forward is high. What makes it hard to follow the evidence is that once a particular theory and way of doing things has been accepted by the group, it feels like an assault to make a radical change. It’s as if the possibility of change challenges the integrity of the group and the personal integrity of each of its members. Moving toward gender inclusion may make some people feel as if the organization’s true identity and reason for being have been nullified. As a result, the organization becomes something unrecognizable: perhaps a touchy-feely place where everyone cares about their relationships with one another more than they care about profits or getting work done; or a politically-correct hell where women and men have to pretend they’re just the same and a man can be persecuted for telling a woman she looks nice; or second-rate organization in which unqualified people are hired and promoted, dragging down corporate performance; or just a place where the old certainties about what kind of person would be in charge and what kind of people would follow have all been overturned. Some of these fears are hard to voice, just as many cardiologists wouldn’t admit, even to themselves, that they continue to give beta blockers immediately

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after heart attacks because it feels personally dangerous to challenge standard practice. They’re looking at the possibility of change as if it were a snake. Understanding human nature is not, however, the same thing as letting the amygdala decide whether that’s really a viper on the path. When change has to happen, it’s much less dangerous—and generates far less trouble and expense—to take it on than to stay with the status quo.

NOTES 1. Tara Parker-Pope (April 2, 2009). ‘‘Believing in Treatments That Don’t Work.’’ The New York Times. 2. Graham Fenwick and Derrick Neal (2001). ‘‘Effect of Gender Composition on Group Performance.’’ Gender, Work and Organization 8:2. 205–225. 3. BBC News (August 16, 2005). ‘‘Buerk attacks women broadcasters.’’ BBC.co.uk. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/ 4155228.stm. 4. Tom Leonard (August 17, 2005). ‘‘Buerk ‘is bonkers if he thinks women are taking over the world.’ ’’ Telegraph.co.uk. http:// www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1496356/Buerk-is-bonkers-if-hethinks-women-are-taking-over-the-world.html. 5. Also, women allowed to drop virtual bombs anonymously while playing a video game were just as likely to do so as men, but if they first had to identify themselves, wear name tags, and answer personal questions, their bomb-dropping fell to a more acceptably feminine level. Jenifer R. Lightdale and Deborah Prentice (1994). ‘‘Rethinking Sex Differences in Aggression: Aggressive Behavior in the Absence of Social Roles.’’ Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 20:1. 34–44. 6. Joy LePree (December 2001). ‘‘Women in Industry: Five Women Who Have Met the Challenge of Succeeding in a NonTraditional Environment.’’ Industrial Maintenance & Plant Operation. http://www.impomag.com/scripts/ShowPR~RID~3738.asp. 7. Beyond that point, the brain experiences ‘‘a severe bottleneck,’’ according to neuroscientist Earl Miller of the Massachusetts Institute of technology. Alina Tugend (October 24, 2008). ‘‘Multitasking Can Make You Lose . . . Um . . . Focus.’’ The New York Times. 8. Gloria Mark’s 2008 study of multitasking found that people who are often interrupted ‘‘experienced a higher workload, more stress, higher frustration, more time pressure, and effort. So

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21. ‘‘Men or Women: Who’s the Better Leader? A Paradox in Public Attitudes.’’ (August 25, 2008). Pew Research Center Publications. 22. Jill Robinson and Jean Lipman-Blumen (2003). ‘‘Leadership Behavior of Male and Female Managers, 1984–2002’’ Journal of Education for Business 79:1. 28–33. 23. Rosalind Chait Barnett (2004). ‘‘Preface: Women and Work: Where Are We, Where Did We Come From, and Where Are We Going?’’ Journal of Social Issues 60:4. 667–674.

CHAPTER 5

Tools, Part One: Foundations of the Game Baby just give me one reason Give me just one reason why. —Tracy Chapman, ‘‘Give Me One Reason’’ This chapter lays the groundwork for building the best of all possible gender-inclusion plans for your organization. The next chapter is about how to put that plan into action. I urge you not to skip the ‘‘why’’ in favor of the ‘‘how.’’ Being on message is part of the plan, and your understanding of these foundations will enhance your success. Therefore, we start with five strategic supports: • • • • •

the business case for gender inclusion and how to apply it taking care of your feet on the ground, a.k.a: middle management the best way to approach mentoring recruitment and retention: an overview where gender bias really comes from

GET MORE THAN YOU PAY FOR: MAKE THE BUSINESS CASE Rapid progress becomes possible when all the responsible parties recognize that gender inclusion is a business imperative. Because gender inclusion is more about productivity and profit than about being

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nice or recognizing rights, it succeeds or fails for the same reasons as any other business-centered change initiative. For instance, a sophisticated budgeting plan will make it easier to track and predict operating costs, but the plan cannot live up to its potential if it’s treated as optional. The plan’s failure will also cost more than the rusty, outdated system the plan was intended to replace. In the same way, a gender-inclusion plan is only as good as its implementation, and its benefits can’t accrue if the commitment to act is superficial. If, however, the initiative becomes integral to management, it will succeed and the results will more than justify the effort. Lack of resources is cited as the most common reason for the failure to move forward on gender inclusion. That’s unfortunate, because a modest investment produces good initial results, and as momentum builds, gender inclusion pays its own way. Over time, it pays for much more than that. What no organization can do without is a well-constructed plan and the will to take action. To begin with, it’s important to recognize that the bottom-line necessities, the essential supports any genderinclusion initiative must have to succeed, are similar to what has to be in place for any significant organizational change to succeed. Mahatma Gandhi’s call to ‘‘be the change you want to see in the world,’’ is more than most people can manage; they have to see organizational change happen in order to believe that it can happen. They have to find out through experience that it’s real, and that it benefits them (or at least doesn’t hurt them) before they’ll begin to feel that it’s real and right. Managers will only facilitate gender inclusion if they can see that the top leaders already value men and women equally. To make gender inclusion a reality, organizational leadership must: 1. Make the business case. Show how gender inclusion benefits the organization. 2. Build a plan and do it now. Give key initiative leaders a mandate to act, sufficient resources, and reasons to be accountable. 3. Pay close attention to middle management. Assign supervisors specific responsibilities and, this is crucial: reward those who follow through. 4. Broadcast the initiative and continue to keep it visible while it develops. Reinforce the business case by integrating gender inclusion with the total management strategy. 5. Educate about gender bias. Deal directly with negative talk and obstructive behaviors.

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Later in this chapter, I’m going to talk about how to deal with gender-biased decision making, so I should probably own up to my own bias, if it’s not clear already. As a member of the sex that has been pushing for generations to move into new fields like science and engineering, and that has been climbing slowly up organizational hierarchies, I want to see gender inclusion work. It is a matter of fairness. However, the desire to be fair isn’t a powerful enough motivation, and do-gooding our way to failure is even less appealing than staying with the status quo. I could not seriously recommend taking steps toward inclusion if the business case weren’t extraordinarily compelling. Luckily, it is. Organizations that put gender-inclusion initiatives into operation reap significant benefits. Educating people on what those benefits are is the foundation of an effective gender-inclusion plan. That means that the business case is itself a tool—‘‘why’’ needs to be answered so that ‘‘how’’ will make sense. Leaders use the business case to reorient how the entire organization envisions inclusion: it’s no longer seen as strictly a matter of ethics, but can emerge as a significant part of a comprehensive management strategy. For inclusion to succeed, for it to become an intrinsic part of how the organization does business; it has to link directly to the organization’s mission and be an answer to some of the challenges facing the organization.

GATHER THE EVIDENCE A solid business case is built to fit the specific context of the organization and industry, and it is buttressed by evidence from large national or international studies and relevant successes outside the organization. Benchmarking competitors’ successes can be particularly persuasive. Here’s the kind of evidence that can orient the discussion away from fairness for its own sake and toward inclusion for productivity and profit: 1. Enhanced Performance. Companies that make the DiversityInc Top 50 Companies for Diversity outperformed similar firms (those that didn’t make the list) on three separate financial measures tracked over a six year period.1 The study doesn’t establish a causal link, but it’s the total picture, rather than diversity in isolation from other management practices, that makes the difference. 2 Companies manage diversity well when their total

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management function is healthy; under those circumstances, the benefits of diversity cycle back and further strengthen the company’s performance. Another recent study analyzed the National Organizations Survey, a survey of for-profit businesses, and concluded that ‘‘gender diversity is associated with increased sales revenue, more customers, and greater relative profits.’’ 3 Certainly, diversity-heavy companies draw their people from a larger talent pool. At a time when women and minorities comprise 70 percent of the emerging labor pool, it can’t help a company’s performance to fail to develop that talent. 2. Competitive Advantage. A Catalyst study sampling over 350 companies found that those with a higher-than-average number of women in top management performed better on financial measures than companies with low numbers of women.4 Companies with women at the top levels had a 35 percent higher return on equity and a 34 percent higher return to shareholders. The profound implication is that developing a diverse workforce gives companies a competitive advantage. Steve Reinemund, former CEO of one of the DiversityInc leaders, Pepsi, made hiring of women and minorities a priority, and his successor, Indra Nooyi, continues to tie bonuses to performance on hiring and retention. Their attention to diversity does make for more ethical internal operations, but inclusive hiring and advancement is part of a market-driven strategy. Framing diversity as integral to operations and business goals is the only way to earn organization-wide acceptance and cooperation because it’s the single thing everyone in the organization has a share in. Rewarding those who make a significant contribution on diversity reinforces that connection between overall organizational success and the success of diversity initiatives. 3. Good Governance. A major 2002 study by The Conference Board of Canada found that gender-inclusive boards performed better on a number of crucial board functions. They gave more attention to audit and risk oversight, evaluating management practice and board performance, orienting new board members, considering a range of stakeholders, preventing conflict of interest, and imposing formal limits on authority 4. Rising Real Value. Another large study assessed 500 companies in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Europe, and found that a diverse workforce improves a company’s

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performance.5 The best companies had reduced personnel costs because their hiring pool was larger and their retention rate was higher. They were more likely to be considered the employer of choice for the best talent, they were quicker to respond to new ideas about how to improve products and business processes, and they appealed to a wider market. Most compelling, another study of Fortune 1000 boards in 2003 showed that those who believed that investing in diversity would increase their company’s value were right; where board diversity was higher, the financial value of the firm was higher as well. 6 The phrase ‘‘women and minorities’’ actually made some sense in this context; boards that had a higher proportion of racial and ethnic minorities also had a higher proportion of women. Boards composed of insiders were least likely to be diverse. 5. Corporate Support. Considering the advantages of moving toward greater diversity, it’s not surprising to find that corporate support for diversity initiatives is rising as well. A 2001 survey of representatives of Fortune 1000 companies, including those on the ‘‘Best Companies to Work For’’ list, found wide support for diversity initiatives, with over 90 percent saying that diversity initiatives make them more competitive and more than threequarters saying diversity improves workplace culture and recruitment. Even though, in most organizations, race receives more attention than any other aspect of diversity, the vast majority of initiatives also address gender.7

ADD UP THE EVIDENCE Building the case for gender inclusion with evidence for its bottomline advantage moves the issue onto the solid ground where good business decisions are made. There is no need to engage in a polite debate about how much the organization can reasonably be expected to change in the name of fairness to women and minorities; the important issue is what gender inclusion can do for the organization. One of the most common sense cases for gender equity I’ve encountered came from Shell Oil president John Hofmeister. While acknowledging that there is still a long way to go before his company and the industry in general can say they are reaching out to all the best talent, Hofmeister wrote the following:

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At one level, the business case for gender diversity is as simple and as obvious as not arbitrarily discarding resumes without looking at them. As the hiring executive, you would be outraged at the lost potential if half of your applicant pool were arbitrarily discarded. The price of ignoring gender diversity is high, and it is measured in lost potential, lost opportunities and lost credibility. It is so obvious that there seems little reason to discuss it in 2006, more than 30 years after women began entering the workforce in large numbers.8 During a six-year span from the late 1990s through 2003, Shell increased the number of women in senior executive positions by 24 percent and saw significant rises in women’s representation in senior and middle management. Fast changes like that are only possible with the backing of a solid business case like the one Hofmeister sketched, but ‘‘fast’’ here means that an active initiative will see results within a period of years. Similarly, Pepsi has been following its plan to increase diversity over time, and the study that tracked the top 50 companies for diversity followed their performance over multiple years and used multiple measures. Making the decision to move on gender inclusion and then activating the plan must happen fast, but the benefits of diversity don’t show up in suddenly ballooning profits. They accrue over time, and initiative planners should take that into consideration in projecting results. To use an unromantic image, diversity and gender inclusion work like energy-efficient appliances: they save a lot of money over time, but they can’t run without power.

RESPOND TO OBJECTIONS: IT’S NOT REALLY ABOUT YOU Some signs of resistance are easy to see. People complain that men are being displaced in favor of women, that quality and experience is being sacrificed in favor of diversity bean counting, that all this fuss isn’t necessary because equality of opportunity has already been achieved, or that the company can’t afford to let this issue get in the way of addressing more vital concerns. Women in particular may react anxiously or dismissively, saying they don’t need any extra help, and they’re happy with the way things are. However, ‘‘I don’t feel

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discriminated against’’ isn’t a valid objection. Gender inclusion isn’t intended to remedy an individual woman’s problem. In fact, it’s not intended to fix women’s special problems at all. The goal—utopian though it may be—is to build an organization where gender and gender bias don’t unduly influence anyone’s ability to contribute. To convey that message, senior leaders need to make it clear that no one will be given special treatment, and no one will lose or gain anything on the basis of gender. Following Hofmeister’s lead, they should acknowledge that assessments show lingering inequalities, and it is in the best interest of the organization to resolve them. What gender inclusion means is that hiring, advancement and development opportunities, perks, etc. are not going to be influenced by gender at any level. The organization is changing how it does its internal business so that it enhances its profile and meets specific goals. Those goals might include: • • • • • • •

Better meeting client needs Accessing new markets Reflecting the values of customers Attracting the best talent Profiting from having multiple perspectives on teams Increasing creativity Living up to the company’s ethical priorities

Messages like this from senior leaders, delivered in response to overt challenges and whenever a new phase of the plan is implemented, reduce resistance because they take gender inclusion out of the category marked ‘‘hot-button-but-marginal issues’’ and put it where it belongs—as one aspect of the comprehensive management strategy.

MANAGE FROM THE MIDDLE The reputation of middle managers rises and falls in business literature and in organizations; managers are carried out on cutback tides, only to be carried back in—with more responsibilities than ever— when it becomes clear that organizations need people who can supervise the supervisors, communicate laterally, and translate topmanagement strategies for people down the line, often while carrying out non-administrative functions as well.

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Knowledgeable and committed middle managers are critical to the success of gender inclusion. Middle managers’ resistance is often cited in business literature as a chief obstacle to everything from costcutting to the successful introduction of new technology, complaints that only serve to underline their importance. Added to that is a particular problem with diversity: middle managers often think of diversity initiatives that redress gender segregation as low in importance or potentially damaging. Who counts as a middle manager varies from organization to organization, but middle managers are the rubber-toroad people, overseeing the unromantic day-to-day matters of running fractional areas of the organization. They are usually underpaid and underappreciated—and overworked. If middle managers see the gender-inclusion initiative as just a passing whim, they won’t act on it. They can be a tough sell on any change initiative, but especially one that looks like it will generate more work without benefiting them. However, because they are strategically placed to oversee operations, middle managers can be extremely powerful within their sphere, and that power extends well beyond their formal duties. Middle managers set interpersonal and group norms by encouraging behaviors that reflect the culture they feel most comfortable with. Resistance to change is more likely to take shape in that informal or ‘‘shadow’’ culture than it is to be expressed openly. Unless the change initiative bypasses their sphere of influence—an unusual situation—the middle managers are uniquely placed to facilitate smooth implementation or make everything go wrong. Their subordinates tend to concentrate both their goodwill and their frustrations less on the company than on the person they report to directly, and with good reason. It is their immediate superior who can evaluate them, who can ensure they are well-trained or leave them ignorant, who can encourage co-workers to accept them or keep them permanently off-balance. They often make decisions about hiring and advancement, and they can have an inordinate impact on retention. For their part, middle managers may care more about the good opinion of the people who report to them than about what top management thinks, especially if top managers don’t maintain much contact and fail to show respect. A review of data on over a thousand middle managers showed that among the leading motivators, respect, trust, the sense that one’s work is important, opportunities for career development, and recognition from superiors took priority.9 Reasonably enough, middle managers want to have all relevant information, and they want to their opinions

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to be considered seriously when executives are making decisions that affect their areas of responsibility. The only item on the list that referred to tangible rewards was ‘‘fairness in how people are rewarded for work performance.’’ However, the emphasis on respect and fairness is somewhat deceiving. The best solutions to the middle manager problem are pragmatic; they take account of people’s natural resistance and capitalize on their desire for a positive sense of self and fair rewards. The best model for redressing gender segregation or bias should also be the one that motivates middle managers to commit to the initiative. I’ve only found one model that does both at the same time, but it doesn’t come from organizational or management studies. It comes from an anti-poverty system in Mexico called Oportunidades.

OPORTUNIDADES IS OPPORTUNITY IN ANY LANGUAGE Oportunidades started under Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo, now the Director of the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization. Oportunidades uses a pure pay-for-performance strategy, providing monetary and other rewards directly to deeply impoverished mothers who fulfill a strict set of expectations about accessing free health care and maintaining their children’s school attendance. Rewards and accountability are built into the system as one unit. The program has little infrastructure, yet it meets its major goals: five million families are signed up, and rates of malnutrition and absence from school have dropped radically. Various anti-poverty plans based on the Oportunidades model are being tried in Great Britain, in some American states through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and in New York City. Oportunidades works because it’s all business and no hype, and that’s what makes it a good model for integrating gender inclusion with middle-management practices. The system doesn’t attempt to do more than the culture and the available resources allow. Decades (actually, more than a century) of useless debates about the social or biological causes of ‘‘the culture of poverty’’ led to expensive welfare programs that failed to establish reasonable goals and benchmarks. Except for the crucial (and sometimes overlooked) fact that diversity initiatives aren’t welfare programs, all those failed attempts to manage poverty are similar to what has happened with gender initiatives: there

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has been a great deal of debate about what makes women different, and little action to resolve the problem of gender segregation. Oportunidades cuts through useless arguments; it is pragmatic about human psychology and people’s capacity for change. For that reason alone, Oportunidades would offend anyone who believes that poverty is an inevitable human condition, a failure of the individual to show initiative, or a genetic fault tied to racial difference.10 In the same way, organizational plans to end gender segregation offend anyone who believes that a gendered division of labor is written into the X and Y chromosomes and that any effort to create equality of opportunity is at once destructive and doomed. From that perspective, it would be tempting to ask why on earth mothers in Mexico should receive ‘‘extra’’ rewards to do what is, after all, their job. The immediate answer is that valuing educational achievement, tracking nutrition, and seeking regular health care have been out of reach for so many generations that they are no longer recognized as part of their culture. In the most literal way, the resources to do basic parenting have not existed for them, and nothing that occurs in their immediate environment encourages them to believe that could change. The situation of the most beleaguered middle manager in the world cannot, of course, compare with that of a mother struggling with deep, long-term poverty. What that means is that a management approach that presents a workable solution to a dire, stubborn problem like poverty is probably up to the challenge of making change real for middle managers. Most antipoverty programs fail because the people they’re supposed to serve don’t see the value of the program and can’t see themselves taking part. The questions the mothers of Oportunidades faced are similar to those that many middle managers face when they are saddled with the added responsibility for implementing genderinclusion policies and addressing conflicts around gender: why should I take this seriously when I can’t see why it matters, how it will change anything for the better, how to reconcile it with my own worldview, or how I’m going to fit in with everything else I have to do?

BUT BY THE WAY, WHAT’S IN IT FOR ME? A good gender-inclusion plan answers all these questions; it provides for managers’ input in decision-making processes, training on gender issues, and feedback on what’s working and what’s not. Crucial

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to the success of any plan, then, is a clear reward-for-performance system. It’s not just fairness that motivates, but the clear connection between performance and the reward. To bring the issue down to the simplest level, consider what happened when a financial firm that was attempting to persuade brokers to adopt new research technology saw a disappointingly low acceptance rate until it changed tactics and allowed brokers to transfer their commission directly into their own account every time they used the system, just by clicking on a button marked ‘‘Pay Me.’’ Suddenly the brokers were ready to adopt the new technology.11 It had stopped being superfluous and started being the means to a literal payoff. That is the very same approach Oportunidades took to solving a much deeper problem. Managers who fulfill both the letter and the spirit of gender-inclusion policies should be rewarded just as obviously. To perform up to expectations, they need to have had some training, a clear sense of their responsibilities in relation to gender inclusion, the resources and power to follow through with implementation—and good reasons to make it work.

MEN (& WOMEN)TORING Mentoring is a primary practice for developing talent—it is so important that anyone trying to get ahead on raw merit, without the polish and status that good mentoring can provide, is likely to be left behind. Women who have been pioneers are often considered the most appropriate role models for women who come along later, so they are often pressed to become mentors. That expectation, along with the fact that WENs (Women’s Employee Networks: see next chapter for a more comprehensive discussion about the form and function of these.) sometimes serve as venues for establishing mentoring relationships (they are, after all, networks), can help or hinder inclusion goals. Pioneers may have been able to thrive because they didn’t identify with, or align themselves with, other women in a malemajority organization or industry, where alliances among women could have a null or negative effect on a career, but establishing effective mentoring relationships with senior men would open doors. Some pioneers will be gratified to mentor women in an evolving organizational culture. Others will be conflicted about the prospect of inclusion, and they will be reluctant to mentor other women, in part because it means risking their own hard-won sense of security as an accepted member of the group.

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No matter how mentoring is handled in the organization—through formal programs or informal networks or both, with or without the involvement of a WEN —mentoring relationships should cross genders. The role of mentors is to share the knowledge they have gained as organizational insiders; they know the people and the culture, and they can give guidance about how to successfully navigate the organizational hierarchy. The best mentors focus on developing the mentees’ potential and prospects, helping them identify career paths, and working out a strategic approach that fits their situation. It is not, however, a charitable relationship: mentors are developing talent so that the organization can better meet its business goals. Spontaneous mentoring relationships are most likely to occur when the mentor already identifies with the mentee, because most mentors naturally gravitate toward less-experienced versions of themselves. ‘‘You remind me of me back when I started out’’ is a good basis for a congenial mentoring relationship. Gender, race, and other social factors can have a major influence on which rising associate the mentor feels has the best potential. It can be difficult for a potential mentee to take the first step and approach a senior leader, and the risk is higher if it means crossing lines of social difference. For that reason, a formal program is usually the best choice for promoting inclusion. However, a general mentoring program, for which every relatively new employee would be eligible, is a good idea as long as particular attention is paid to connecting women with mentors who have a positive attitude about working with women and who understand that women’s experiences differ in some ways from men’s. Mentoring isn’t enough to create inclusion. Women and men both benefit from mentoring, but the results of a study of the effects of mentoring on salary showed that men and women didn’t fare equally well. The salaries of women who were mentored were higher than those of unmentored women, but they didn’t rise to the level of unmentored men. Similarly, mentored men received significant promotions, while mentored women received a much smaller boost.12 At its best, a mentoring program can only be as good as the organization that sponsors it. Nevertheless, there is plenty that a mentoring relationship can offer. In a successful relationship, both parties realize reciprocal benefits— again, mentoring is not an act of charity. In the traditional relationship, the mentor is far senior to the mentee, but mentors who are just a few steps ahead can also be very effective, with the added benefit that they can hone their own leadership and strategic thinking skills as they

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step into mentoring roles. Mentoring relationships don’t have to be exclusive; in fact, the highest benefit comes from having multiple mentors who have unique contributions to make. At the outset, it’s important to discover overlapping interests. Anything will do: hobbies, sports, pets, food, or travel experiences are good places to start. The point is to find shared interests that can help build rapport and create common ground, but don’t require much personal risk-taking. A good mentoring relationship feels safe. Once the relationship is established, frequent contact is essential to keep the door open. Conversations don’t have to be intense and lengthy, but they do have to be actual conversations—an occasional e-mail is fine, but communicating by e-mail won’t be enough to build a highly effective mentoring relationship. If something comes up, the mentee needs to feel comfortable contacting the mentor for advice. Taking the time to understand the other’s situation helps establish common ground, so that both will have meaningful insights to share, and both can benefit from the relationship. Both parties should develop an appreciation of the issues and challenges the other faces. At some point, that means that talking openly about differences of race and gender.

RECRUIT, RETAIN, STIR, REPEAT One day, during a graduate summer business practicum, I saw a member of the firm’s management (‘‘Paul’’) speed by me in the hall. Paul was heading up a job search, and as he strode from one meeting to the next, he spoke in an urgent, almost angry tone to the other manager walking with him: ‘‘I’d be glad to hire a woman of color if only we could find someone who’s qualified.’’ I was surprised. Paul was not, to use an ancient insult, a male chauvinist pig. He was not paternalistic or dismissive to women. He was also an honest person. When he said he’d be glad to hire a woman of color, he meant it; he wasn’t trying to placate anyone. And he was just as sincere when he said that he couldn’t find anyone qualified for the position. So, where’s the bias? If Paul had the intention to enhance organizational diversity, but circumstances didn’t allow it, what could he do but hire a qualified white man? The enemy, so to speak, is us. People with good intentions, who believe that leveling the playing field is the right thing to do, can

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nevertheless do a great deal of damage under the influence of their own unconscious gender biases. And when we do act on biases, we tend to hide it from ourselves under statements that show how open and ready we are to have women and minorities succeed in our organization. Like Paul, we are sure we’re using objective criteria to make fair decisions about who’s qualified.13 Social psychologists have figured out how those subtle biases influence decisions about who to hire and promote, but what’s hardest to recognize is that we are the enemy, so to speak.14 Gender bias is a collective weakness that has kept workplace gender and race segregation in place for decades after we started congratulating ourselves that ‘‘now women can do anything.’’ Seeing how subtle bias works was a watershed moment for me. What holds up progress are the legions of well-educated, decent people who believe that diversity is an admirable but impracticable ideal. Paul couldn’t identify a qualified women of color because he didn’t know where, or how, to look. The slice of the world he could see was much more narrow than the world really is. Just beyond the border of his familiar world, there were plenty of qualified women of color, but he expected to find them the same way he’d always found white men, using procedures and decision-making processes that were familiar to him. As is usually the case, doing the same thing in the same way was producing the same results it always had. The narrowness of Paul’s vision was not a symptom of a special man’s problem, by the way. The manager walking with him was a white woman, one of the roughly 30 percent of middle-management members who were women. When Paul lamented the lack of qualified women of color, her response was a sober nod of agreement.

BACK TO THE BEGINNING Paul’s problem with finding a ‘‘qualified woman of color’’ came up, of course, during a recruitment project. Recruitment is one of the gateways where major, life-changing decisions are made and those who seem to have potential are separated from those who don’t. Passing through that gate, however, isn’t the same as arriving. To truly arrive, one has to become an insider. For someone whose race or sex makes her look like an outsider, that can be an arduous path.15 Changing recruiting tactics would bring plenty of qualified women of color into Paul’s world, but once there, they have to be able to stay and advance at the same rate as everyone else.

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Douglas McCracken, a senior partner at Deloitte & Touche when the company decided to take action measures to retain women in the early 1990s, wrote, ‘‘To be frank, many of the firm’s senior partners, including myself, didn’t actually see the exodus of women as a problem, or at least, it wasn’t our problem. We assumed that women were leaving to have children and stay home. If there was a problem at all, it was society’s or the women’s, not Deloitte’s.’’16 McCracken’s description of the senior partners’ thinking is a perfect example of how subtle, unconscious bias persuades organizations to sit back and do nothing. The partners saw their corporate culture as open (and it was, to them). They wanted women to succeed, and they had no reason to think that the organization needed to change anything to make success possible. Surely women left because they weren’t right for the culture. The problem was that they weren’t interested in staying, and if they weren’t interested in staying, it was probably because what women really want to do is stay at home and have babies. And if women didn’t want to be there, if they didn’t want to do what needed to be done to get ahead, what could the firm do about it? Deciding that ‘‘women leaving is women’s problem’’ is the most common way of giving in. The biases McCracken describes are pervasive, and because acting (or not acting) on the strength of an unfounded assumption is bad for business, there is everything to lose by sitting back and accepting gender biases as a set of old-fashioned beliefs that might change—slowly, as the culture evolves. What’s remarkable about Deloitte is that the partners decided to change that defeatist strategy. They began to see women’s exodus from the firm as a business problem that could be solved like any other business problem. The plan they enacted was tailored to their needs, but one of their major goals—improving retention rates of women—is crucial to any gender-inclusion initiative. Their goal was to retain women at the same rate as men, and as of 2007, they were meeting that objective. According to McCracken, the turning point for cultural change was a two-day set of workshops, attended by virtually the entire professional management staff. That universally shared educational experience turned ‘‘taboo subjects at work into acceptable topics of discussion.’’ An organization can’t change what it can’t talk about, and education about the experience of gender bias is the key that opens that door. Here, in a nutshell, is how to defuse evolutionary scenarios. In the lofty language of science, the evolutionary explanation sounds like this: ‘‘The human brain, like the human body (and also like all other

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mammalian brains), is sexually dimorphic as a consequence of selection pressures experienced by ancestral generations. The sexual division of labor, a cultural universal, appears to be at least in part a consequence of this sexual dimorphism.’’17 Barbara and Allan Pease took the evolutionary explanation and made it fun: ‘‘Men are equipped to hunt and chase lunch, find their way home, fire gaze, and procreate —that’s it.’’18 But it contains the same message: who do we think we are, trying to outsmart our own biology and the ancient wisdom of our forebears? Kingsley Browne and the Peases wouldn’t fare well in a head-tohead argument with Janet Hyde, whose extensive work on the science of gender similarity I described in Chapter Two. A mountain of research shows that men and women are much more similar than different—in evolutionary terms, men and women are far more isomorphic (similar in form and function) than dimorphic (dissimilar). Further, the ways in which we are similar are most relevant to competence in the working world. Browne fails to acknowledge that. Instead, he offers only one fact: evolution produced sexual dimorphism. Male and female bodies differ. Big news! He doesn’t try to guess how different men and women really are. Is it 5 percent? 50 percent? He could get that information from Hyde, but Browne wants the reader to believe that male/female differences are so big that they produce a ‘‘cultural universal,’’ the sexual division of labor. The sexual division of labor says that men should go out and make a living, and women should stay home to care for children. Mars-and-Venus science always circles back to its beginning—with men in charge at work, and women happily fulfilling their maternal instincts at home. That scenario is probably closer to the cartoon lives of Wilma and Fred Flintstone than it was to the lives of our earliest ancestors, but more importantly, when the goal is gender inclusion, telling people that women want to nurture and men want to lead is just not helpful.

TALK ABOUT BIAS Well, there’s no sense in dancing round the subject. —Stevie Nicks, ‘‘Talk to Me’’

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Bias is the single thing most people are most reluctant to discuss, but it’s bias that urges people to ignore the business case. Bias is what lands some resumes in the trash before they’ve been considered and ends some careers before they’re truly off the ground. If we’re going to solve the problems that bias causes, we have to know how bias works and what it does. First of all, here are some things that gender bias isn’t: it isn’t a moral failing. It isn’t something that men have about women, but women don’t have about men. Liberals aren’t righteously free of it, and conservatives don’t revel in it. Bias doesn’t start with one bitter guy who insults women to their faces, and it hardly ever ends with headlinegrabbing lawsuits. Gender bias in action doesn’t usually make a lot of noise. Mark Agars’s research on ‘‘subtle sexism,’’ which came up in Chapter Two, shows that bias is often so subtle that everyone involved enjoys plausible deniability. Nevertheless, it has a cumulative and measurable effect on a person’s ‘‘motivation, career aspirations, and even performance.’’19 What is the best way to deal with biases that affect managers’ decisions and can influence the behaviors and the fate of everyone in the organization—but do so occasionally, unpredictably, and so subtly that few recognize it? This section provides an introductory guide.

Know the Difference between Race and Gender The first thing to consider is that, although women aren’t the special sex, gender may be a special problem. Some speculate that organizational change comes easier with regard to race and other social differences than it does with gender. I can’t agree that creating racial inclusion is easier, but we do at least talk very differently about race than about gender. Mars-and-Venus thinking says that men and women are mysteries to one another, but in real life, no one grows up without considerable exposure to the opposite sex. Race segregation, by contrast, still divides many of our cities, and there are large portions of the United States where white children grow up without ever speaking with a person of another race. The widespread dearth of ordinary, daily contact among people of different races means that negotiating race in organizations is a different matter than negotiating gender. The same applies to sexual orientation, religious

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differences, and many disabilities: lack of exposure creates a deep pool of ignorance that has to be crossed for people to be able to work together well. Trying to adapt a ‘‘pool of ignorance’’ approach to gender has had disastrous results, making it even harder to see gender bias, urging us to believe that men and women ‘‘just don’t understand’’ one another, and exaggerating the effects of biology so much that it is commonplace in diversity settings to talk about men and women as if they belonged to different species. To see how differently we talk about race and gender, imagine a diversity executive using a Mars-and-Venus approach to describe how people of different races should deal with one another. She would maintain that there are significant biological and social differences between white people and people of color that affect aptitudes, intelligence, and communication abilities. She would say that we can put our racial differences to work for us—but after all, cultural change is slow, so we have to be patient until white people, people of color, and the organization itself are better prepared to handle the transformation and reap the benefits of racial difference. That’s an unthinkable scenario because we don’t expect a diversity professional to profess racist views. It would also, of course, be an unthinkably obstructionist line to take. There is nothing subtle about ‘‘separate but equal,’’ so an audience wouldn’t have to be keenly alert to recognize the racism or understand that racial segregation in the working world remains an unsolved problem. We haven’t come that far with gender. It’s still common to hear that women have special qualities that, balanced against men’s special qualities, supply all the right ingredients for a completely functional, productive, and profitable workplace. And yet the Mars-and-Venus approach to gender raises few eyebrows and continues to work quite well to slow progress on gender inclusion.

Face the Bully When ‘‘male versus female’’ theories of gender are used seriously, however, they do a lot of damage. They need to be defused. Many are based on evolutionary scenarios that feel

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satisfyingly scientific. This is one of the few cases when going ahead with a direct confrontation is necessary. It’s necessary because the evolutionary scenarios constitute the only biaspromoting approach that still makes its way into diversity programming around gender. The goal of the confrontation isn’t to change people’s beliefs. That’s not a worthy goal, and it’s not necessary. The object is to let people know that there’s a powerful scientific argument for gender inclusion.

Ease Tension with Good Information Gender biases were easily spoken aloud 50 years ago, but now anyone with a bit of social know-how can say socially acceptable things about working women, even if his or her beliefs don’t quite agree with the words. Not only are we better at concealing our own gender biases than we used to be, but, ironically, we also feel more inclined to act on those biases if we’ve just finished saying something positive about gender equity.20 We do most of this unconsciously, and that’s one of the reasons that dealing with gender bias is so challenging. However, saying that most bias is unconscious, and recognizing that unconscious bias has a more powerful effect on organizational decisions than outright prejudice, doesn’t mean that we’re powerless to change. Our behaviors and decisions don’t have to be at the mercy of our biases, and awareness enables us to figure out the difference between snakes and sticks. More than three-quarters of Fortune 1000 companies provide some diversity training on gender, and overall, training is effective, reducing the power of bias to influence decisions and decreasing not only explicit stereotyping of women and men but also implicit, unconscious stereotyping as well.21 The key to building awareness is education in an atmosphere that fosters inclusion by providing good information. Here are some ideas about how to start: 1. We develop biases because they’re useful for sorting information quickly—it’s actually an ability, not a flaw. Biases are shortcuts; they allow us to make decisions without reflection when we have to. We respond to those we perceive as potentially dangerous outsiders the same way we respond to snakes in the path: we avoid them. That ability

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2.

3.

4.

5.

6. 7.

to react without thought has a significant downside, however. Biases can’t be depended on to line up with the objective evidence, and when we are responding out of bias, we’re in no condition to sort out the objective evidence from the irrelevant information. People are very protective of their biases. Why give up the shortcut that allows you to feel like you can make decisions about people rapidly and without having to work at it? Because people are protective of their biases, it’s counterproductive to put anyone in the spotlight or ask them to ‘‘confess’’ their biases. Biases aren’t a sign of stupidity, immaturity, or bad intentions; they’re based on a combination of learning and experience. Biases don’t necessarily reflect deeply held beliefs. They can change or disappear as a person gains broader experience. For instance, people tend to let go of biases against women in leadership positions the more they see women in those positions. (That acceptance is conditional, however. We hold women leaders to more rigid standards and give male leaders more latitude to make mistakes—and because we’re biased, we don’t see ourselves doing it.) Although it would be nice if everyone could let go of biased beliefs, that’s not the goal of workplace education on gender. How people behave based on their beliefs outside the workplace isn’t relevant. What matters is what happens at work. When gender bias guides organizational decisions and behavior, it interferes with business—and that is relevant. Women have gender biases as powerful as men’s. Most people think that other people are more biased than they are—which means that we’re all biased in our own favor. It’s just one of those funny human quirks.

Don’t Run Silent and Deep Where gender inclusion is concerned, little gets accomplished by small, cautious, quiet efforts. It’s better not to pretend that

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gender inclusion is anything less than a revolution. The Trojan horse method isn’t going to work with gender inclusion; you can’t, for instance, just slip women into a male majority environment under cover of darkness and hope people won’t notice or react. But the main reason it won’t work to go quietly and slowly is that gender inclusion really does represent a profound change to organizational identity. It’s better for everyone’s well-being to acknowledge the change and work through the resistance. Once a group of people accept a particular worldview and feel comfortable with it, it feels like an assault on the self and the group to make a change. Moving toward gender inclusion will at first feel to some people just like that—as if it will nullify the organization’s true identity and reason for being and make it into something unrecognizable. Turn over the rock of resistance and you can find some unexpected and squirmy fears. Maybe the company will become a haven for radical feminists, with no room for men, or perhaps it will be transformed into a touchy-feely place where everyone cares about their relationships with one another more than they care about profits and productivity. Maybe the office will become a politically correct hell where women and men have to pretend they’re just the same and a man can be persecuted for telling a woman she looks nice. Maybe the organization will collapse altogether under the weight of all those unqualified people who should never have been hired in the first place. Or perhaps it’s just chilling to see the familiar hierarchies—not just who’s nominally in charge, but who wields real power and who counts as an insider—being overturned. In Chapter Four, I talked about how taking the ‘‘cultural change is slow’’ approach puts the brakes on change initiatives. There is nothing to be gained by waiting until another century passes to do an assessment, formulate a gender-inclusion plan, and put it into action. Somewhere in that plan, in the list of how to deal with potential obstacles, there should be a tactical response to the ‘‘cultural change is slow’’ dictum. Once an organization gets serious about inclusion, it can see very rapid progress. In a relatively large company division where the most powerful initial resources consisted of an active women’s employee resource group and top organizational leaders who saw the need for gender inclusion but weren’t convinced it could

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happen, it took less than a year from completion of the assessment to the first increase in successful recruitment of women— an increase from about 4 percent to 35 percent of all new hires. There’s more to be done. The next step is to equalize the attrition rate of men and women, and management is in a better position to put that phase into effect because everyone in the organization is closer to accepting that management is serious when it says gender inclusion will be the standard. Changing recruiting processes is only one part of a genderinclusion plan, but the initial success makes the change leadership highly visible, and the dramatic statistical shift says, ‘‘expect fast change.’’ Achieving momentum is part of the plan. Referring to companies that move too slowly to keep up with market changes, consultant Stan Pace said that ‘‘ripping the Band-Aid off quickly’’ can prevent various bad effects, from slipping profits to business failure.22 As advice about how to run a business, that will make sense to many, but diversity management is rarely thought of as integral to running the business. That’s why most diversity initiatives fail. Diversity initiatives are usually expected to proceed at the speed of an irritating millimeter-by-millimeter pull on the adhesive. That is not destiny having its way; it’s a choice. HR and diversity professionals have major responsibilities in relation to any diversity initiative, but if the gender-inclusion plan starts and ends with them, it won’t succeed—and it won’t be their fault. The famous success of the ‘‘Women’s Initiative’’ at Deloitte & Touche could have happened only with the managing partners driving the change and assimilating the initiative throughout management practice.23 Fast change means upheaval, but implementing gender inclusion doesn’t interrupt business as usual in the way that, for instance, a company-wide shift to new technology does. The practical changes that initiate gender inclusion are moderate and can almost always be managed within the existing framework. Those changes aren’t especially difficult to effect, and they aren’t expensive, even initially. The ‘‘go slow!’’ people are right about one thing: cultural change is hard. What makes it most difficult, however, isn’t deep-seated ignorance about the meaning of gender difference, or outright sexism, or subtle gender biases. What makes it hard

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for employees to navigate the cultural changes gender inclusion presents is senior leaders who fail to manage the change positively and quickly.

NOTES 1. DiversityInc’s yearly top 50 list is determined by an analysis of qualitative and quantitative data from the corporation, including CEO commitment, workforce demographics, mentoring and employee resources groups, supplier diversity, and much else. 2. Stanley F. Slatera, Robert A. Weigand, and Thomas J. Zwirlein (2008). ‘‘The Business Case for Commitment to Diversity.’’ Business Horizons 51:3. 201–209. 3. Cedric Herring (2009). ‘‘Does Diversity Pay?: Race, Gender, and the Business Case for Diversity.’’ American Sociological Review 74:2. 208–224. 4. ‘‘The Bottom Line: Connecting Corporate Performance And Gender Diversity’’ (2004). New York, NY: Catalyst Inc. Representation of women at the top ran from 0 to 38 percent in the companies analyzed; companies were consider to have a higher than average representation of women when they reached 11 percent of top positions. 5. Amin Rajah, Barbara Martin, and Jenny Latham (2003). Harnessing Workforce Diversity to Raise the Bottom Line. Tunbridge Wells, Kent: Centre for Research in Employment & Technology in Europe. 6. David Carter, Betty Simkins, W. Gary Simpson (2003). ‘‘Corporate Governance, Board Diversity, and Firm Value.’’ Financial Review 38:1. 33–53. 7. ‘‘Impact of Diversity Initiatives on the Bottom Line.’’ (2002). Society for Human Resource Management (U.S.). 8. John Hofmeister (October 2006). ‘‘Making the Business Case for Gender Diversity.’’ World Oil 227:10. 8. 9. David Antonioni (November/December 1999). ‘‘What Motivates Middle Managers.’’ Industrial Management 41:6. 27–31. 10. The most memorable modern rendition of the genetic explanation for poverty was Charles Murray’s best-selling The Bell Curve (1994). 11. Jim Carroll (January/February 2003). ‘‘Motivating the Middle Man,’’ CAMagazine 136:1. 16.

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12. Paul Martorana, Jeanne Brett, and Catherine Tinsley (2006). ‘‘The Persistent Gender Gap Among Prote´ge´s.’’ 13. Michael Norton, Joseph Vandello, and John Darley (2004). ‘‘Casuistry and Social Category Bias.’’ Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 87:6. 817–831. 14. For instance, studies of employers and college students show how unintentional biases about gender and race affect employment evaluations. See Rhea Steinpreis, Katie A. Anders, and Dawn Ritzke (1999). ‘‘The Impact of Gender on the Review of the Curricula Vitae of Job Applicants and Tenure Candidates: A National Empirical Study.’’ Sex Roles 41:7–8. 509–528; Charmine E. J. Hartel, Shane S. Douthitt, Gunter Hartel, and Sarah Yarbrough Douthitt (1999). ‘‘Equally Qualified but Unequally Perceived: Openness to Perceived Dissimilarity as a Predictor of Race and Sex Discrimination in Performance Judgments.’’ Human Resources Development Quarterly 10:1. 79– 89; Richard Martell (1991). ‘‘Sex Bias at Work: The Effects of Attentional and Memory Demands on Performance Ratings of Men and Women.’’ Journal of Applied Social Psychology 21:23. 1939–1960; Frances Trix and Carolyn Psenka (2003). ‘‘Exploring the Color of Glass: Letters of Recommendations for Female and Male Medical Faculty.’’ Discourse & Society 14:2. 191–220. 15. A 2008 report looked at the fate of women of color in law firms; the results showed why their attrition rate is so high (nearly 100 percent after 8 years). Compared to white men, women of color were far more likely to experience some form of harassment, be excluded from networking opportunities and passed over when plum assignments were handed out. See Arin Reeves (2008). Visible Invisibility to Visibly Successful: Success Strategies for Law Firms and Women of Color in Law Firms. American Bar Association Commission on Women in the Profession. 16. Douglas McCracken (2000). ‘‘Winning the Talent War for Women: Sometimes It Takes a Revolution.’’ Harvard Business Review 78:6. 159–167. 17. Kingsley Browne (2002). Biology at Work: Rethinking Sexual Equality. Piscataway, NJ: Rutgers University Press. 3. 18. Allan and Barbara Pease (2002). Why Men Don’t Listen and Women Can’t Read Maps: How We’re Different and What to Do About It. New York, NY: Broadway. 248. 19. Mark D. Agars (2004). ‘‘Reconsidering the Impact of Gender Stereotypes on the Advancement of Women in Organizations.’’ Psychology of Women Quarterly 28. 103–111.

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20. Benoit Monin and Dale T. Miller (2001). ‘‘Moral Credentials and the Expression of Prejudice.’’ Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 81:1. 33–43. 21. Emily Duehr and Joyce Bono (2006). ‘‘Men, Women, and Managers: Are Stereotypes Finally Changing?’’ Personnel Psychology 59:4. 815–846. 22. Mark Henricks (June 2002). ‘‘Make It Quick: No Matter How Big the Change, Overnight Is the Best Pace for Your Overhaul.’’ Entrepreneur. http://www.entrepreneur.com/magazine/entrepreneur/ 2002/june/51894.html. 23. Douglas McCracken (2000). ‘‘Winning the Talent War for Women: Sometimes It Takes a Revolution.’’ Harvard Business Review 78:6. 159–167.

CHAPTER 6

Tools, Part Two: Game Plan You tell me it’s the institution . . . Well, you know, we all want to change the world. —John Lennon, ‘‘Revolution’’ With the business case in hand and some fresh ideas to consider about how to deal with gender schemas and biases, outlier phenomena, and mentoring and middle-management issues, we take the next step into practical applications. The plan begins with selecting the best team to implement effective gender-in-the-workplace strategies and arming it with what it needs to be successful. This is followed by an in-depth discussion of assessment technique and content; a plan to use organizational gender integration for a more effective distribution of talent; recommendations about how to use employee-resource networks (as just that: resources to enhance productivity); and a plan for how to build an education program that will support people’s sense of competence and commitment to gender inclusion throughout the organization. If this chapter reads as though it assumes familiarity with the fundamentals behind these strategies, that’s because it’s assumed that you have picked those up in previous chapters.

CHOOSE AND EQUIP THE TEAM When the business case for your organization has been drafted based on the principles presented in the preceding chapter, it’s time

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to form a working team of allies who report to top leaders and have the clout to effect change. The team should mirror mainstream management structures as much as possible. And, although it sounds counterintuitive, it’s often best to situate a high-status, highly effective man as the point person for the gender initiative. This is a move that automatically makes a set of crucial statements: gender inclusion isn’t a marginal or trivial issue (i.e., ‘‘women’s business’’) and gender inclusion doesn’t pit the women against the men. The message is that it’s okay—in fact, it’s expected—that both men and women will be involved and will benefit equally from the initiative. There is at least one other good reason to give a high-status man significant responsibility and the more visible role: implementing a gender-inclusion initiative belongs in that category of risky assignments that are often given to promising but unseasoned women so that they can ‘‘prove’’ themselves. Because one of the goals of gender inclusion is to create an environment where men and women are equally likely to stay with the organization, it’s usually a better idea to place promising women in medium-risk, high-visibility assignments closely linked to their own field—in other words, give them opportunities similar to those considered appropriate for promising but unproven men. In an ideal world, the inclusion team is composed of people who already recognize the benefits of gender inclusion, know how to create change, and are fully committed to making it happen. However, because we don’t live in an ideal world, choosing the right people usually amounts to figuring out who has some capacity to contribute to and implement a plan for change. Those who recognize the benefits but are held back by any combination of factors, such as fear of consequences, lack of real organizational power, overwork, isolation, lack of will, or complacency, won’t be able to contribute effectively. Middle managers (whose situation often fits the first two or three items on that list), absolutely need to be included, because much of the responsibility for mundane implementation falls to them. The job of the inclusion team is to perform an assessment, build a plan, and oversee implementation. There are many tools for building and managing an inclusive organization, but there is no single best plan that every organization can follow successfully, so the decisions made now should align closely with the business case and existing organizational processes. Unless the organization already has a resident expert on gender inclusion, this might be a good time to bring in a consultant who can oversee the assessment and help establish

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realistic goals. The consultant could create a timeline and straightforward measures of progress, draw the components of the plan together, and deliver a plan tailored to the needs of the organization. Consultants can do a lot of heavy lifting, but they can’t be held responsible for execution without calling into question the commitment of leaders and the relevance of the inclusion plan to the real business of the organization.

START WHERE YOU ARE Do an assessment of assets, needs, history, and prospects for inclusion. To thrive, a gender-inclusion initiative has to dovetail with business goals and be sensitive to the workplace culture, so the business case is the best guide to what factors the assessment needs to take into consideration. Some argue that a slow, thorough assessment is the best way to find out which interventions fit the organization’s situation, but I’m an advocate of fast assessments that map out where the organization’s best opportunities and most pressing problems lie. Build assessments around questions that are broad enough to allow unexpected information to rise to the top, but specific enough to speak to the business case and provide a foundation for a plan. Here’s what to do: 1. Chart the terrain. The first step is to sketch current organizational structures and processes. How is hiring handled? How are men and women distributed? How (by what organizational process) did they get to where they are? Who’s advancing, who’s staying put, and who’s disappearing altogether? The almost automatic assumption is that these questions will determine ‘‘the status of women,’’ so it’s important to emphasize that gender inclusion, by its very nature, addresses the needs and status of both women and men. It’s important to know, for instance, at what point in the pipeline women tend to bottleneck, but it’s just as crucial to understand how men get past that point, and what holds up the men who don’t. 2. Benchmark. Next, step back and compare the current state of the organization with that of other companies in the same industry. Companies outside the industry that are roughly similar in size and structure can also serve as useful comparisons. The most useful comparisons are those between organizations that are at least

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several years into active implementation and those that are lagging. 3. Know the history. The next step is to identify what methods have been tried in the past to address gender-equity issues and how those efforts worked out. Learning what failed outright, which interventions produced equivocal results, and what genuinely succeeded gives an advantage akin to learning about the secret shortcut that shaves an hour off the daily commute. 4. Take stock of assets and resources: • Look for microcultures in the organization where acceptance of diversity is higher. It may turn out that isolated successes are just that—isolated. Nevertheless, those pockets are a good place to start looking for ways to make gender inclusion work on a larger scale. For instance, if the engineers are doing a great job of hiring and advancing both women and men and the marketing branch is still lopsided, the discrepancy could be a result of a basic difference in climate. Or the engineers may be more diverse because of the way they handle recruiting; they may hire new engineering graduates based on test scores and academic ranking rather than depending on friend referrals. They may be more willing to provide informal mentoring, or they may carry out frequent, constructive evaluations. Whatever it is that makes the difference, publicly recognize and reward groups that manage diversity well, and ask their key people to contribute to the assessment. • Consider how employee resource groups (ERGs) and other internal networks could get involved. Women’s ERGs are the most obvious site for gathering energy around gender inclusion, but many other ERGs—including lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender groups; parents’ networks; and groups focused on race or various ethnicities—are natural allies of gender inclusion. • Especially when it comes to recruiting, partnering with external organizations can widen the applicant pool impressively. The assessment should identify opportunities for partnerships based on education and community service. For instance, internship programs at the high-school and college level; outreach to multicultural, LGBT, and women’s business groups; participation in or sponsorship of relevant conferences; and

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job fairs can all create access points to previously untapped parts of the labor market. The best way to enhance recruiting women for ‘‘nontraditional’’ jobs (meaning any profession or field where women are still in short supply) is to contact any of the hundreds of regional and national organizations that exist for the sole purpose of preparing women to move into new employment opportunities and ensuring they succeed. Accountants, firefighters, physicians, executives, managers, mechanics, engineers, and all the sciences have organizations for women, and they should be a part of any recruitment effort targeted at women. 5. Talk to people. The two top executives I’ve worked with who were able to anticipate with considerable accuracy what a gender-inclusion assessment would find had developed a practice of slipping out of their offices occasionally and wandering through the physical space of their operation, showing up in cafeteria lines or strolling with people as they went about their business. This apparently purposeless activity provided them with incisive knowledge of how their organization worked, knowledge that wasn’t available by any other means. Collecting information about how gender influences people’s experience of organizational processes works on a similar principle. Armed with an organizational sketch and a bit of history, simply talk to people at all levels of the organization about their experiences with gender in the organization. It’s the most eyeopening part of an assessment, and it’s particularly useful for revealing potential obstacles to inclusion. For that reason, this is not an assessment step that anyone in-house should take responsibility for. To increase participation, ensure anonymity for organizational members, and encourage honest responses, it’s better to use an outside consultant.1 6. Find the snags before they become snarls. There are plenty of possibilities for generating chaos. For instance: • • • •

Key people not committed Lines of communication not functional Attitudes marked by cynicism or apathy Unfortunate organizational history, with climate issues or harassment never acknowledged and addressed

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• Emphasis on compliance and legal procedure to the exclusion of positive diversity management • Obscure processes for hiring and advancement • Insensitive onboarding process (difficulties with orientation, initial training, integration into workplace culture, and access to information and job tools) A snag is anything that is likely to put a stop to gender inclusion before it can become intrinsic to the organization. Identifying snags is a difficult part of the assessment because it means confronting negatives, but in the spirit of Pollyanna, the goal is to ‘‘find something about everything to be glad about.’’ There are two ways to be glad about the snags: • First, obstacles that are likely to hold up gender inclusion are also going to hold up other change initiatives, and they are probably dragging down management performance more generally. It’s better to have full information about which systems are wobbly. For instance, women may be having a poor onboarding experience because they can’t rely on the informal information and mentoring network to make up for a fundamentally flawed process. Fixing glitches in that process benefits everyone, including those who can get by in spite of the problems. Similarly, key people may be uncommitted not because they oppose gender inclusion, but because they are unhappy with their own work situation, perceive the organization negatively, or are concerned about the holdup of some other initiative important to them. A gender-inclusion assessment can provide great information about the status of the organization as a whole. • Second, recognized problems can be solved, often in unexpected ways. Gender-awareness training can form the backdrop for improving group process and clarifying procedures; such training can also encourage broader participation in work/life programs and leadership development. Instituting an intentional mentoring program can reduce alienation and apathy and strengthen performance, not just for the target group, but for everyone involved. Simply owning up to the organization’s past mistakes and saying, ‘‘Here’s what we’re doing to make sure those mistakes are never repeated,’’ can move mountains of bad feeling out of the way.

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BITE OFF, CHEW, REPEAT Based on your assessment results, the team now constructs a written plan for how to begin and maintain initial progress. The plan should contain some ‘‘quick fix’’ approaches in addition to strategies designed to create long-term progress, but it’s important to distinguish between the two. Update the plan as the initiative evolves to reflect updated assessment data on the organization’s successes and new or ongoing weaknesses and keep momentum up as each success unfolds. A plan built to succeed reflects consensus among leaders about what changes in the gender balance of the organization are most realistic and advantageous. An effective plan translates that consensus into measurable, reachable, relatively short-term goals and spells out what improvements can be expected in individual and team performance when the gender-inclusion plan has been active for a specified period of time. Finally, an effective plan analyzes the effect gender inclusion is likely to have on the bottom line. The effects of inclusion on the financial health of the organization accumulate over time, so the most common error is to tally costs but not benefits. It’s a natural mistake because initial costs are tangible, while unrealized gains are hard to quantify. The same is true of many other major change initiatives: every move forward entails some risk. The business case for gender inclusion is a reminder of why the risk is worth taking.

KNOW WHAT SUCCESS LOOKS LIKE: ESTABLISH GOALS AND MEASURE PROGRESS The initial assessment shows where the organization currently resides with regard to gender balance, in raw terms and in comparison with other organizations. From those findings emerges a portrait of success. Success looks different depending on the organization, but there are three universal features of success: • Top down support. Top executives are visibly and vocally ‘‘down with’’ the initiative. Being ‘‘down with’’ the initiative means more than giving nodding approval or affirming the general value of diversity. It means holding executives down the line accountable for progress; it means putting resources behind the initiative; it means that gender inclusion is openly considered in decisions about day-to-day operations and long-term planning.

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Top executives should position gender inclusion as a business issue, as an all employees issue, and decidedly not as a women’s issue. • Transparency. The reasons for the change, what the organization expects to gain by implementing it, and what steps are being made, are clear to everyone and are reiterated at intervals via every appropriate medium. Every success, however small or partial, is celebrated, and every failure to meet a goal is acknowledged and discussed openly. • Inclusion. Just as everyone knows what the changes are going to be and why the organization is moving toward inclusion, everyone also participates in producing the change. For most, the specific behavioral expectation will be small, but everyone understands that participation is a job duty, and that their participation will be reflected in performance reviews. Aside from a general portrait of success, the assessment establishes the starting point for the gender-inclusion plan and becomes the basis for measuring progress. Progress means moving the organization anywhere beyond square one, but estimating how far and how fast progress can be expected to move along depends on what assets are available and what snags might slow the process down. Key indicators can include: • Changes in gender balance throughout the organization. How, and in what numbers, should men and women be distributed across the organization, horizontally and vertically? • Shifts in the gender balance among new hires and promotions. Do the figures support plans for increasing inclusion? • Productivity effects. What do individual and team performance reveal about the progress of the inclusion plan? Are men and women moving through training and development opportunities at similar rates? Is cross-gender collaboration rising? Are lines of communication operating more smoothly? • Increases in retention rates among members of the target gender. Even extending retention by months can indicate movement in the right direction. • Reductions in sexual harassment complaints. This is a good indicator in organizations where employees already have a high degree of confidence that management responds

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appropriately to complaints. It isn’t useful where employees lack that confidence. • Decreasing segregation in work groups and job assignments. • Salaries. Are they beginning to equalize? • Work/life options. Are men and women accessing family leave, flex time, and other work/life options more equally?

PLAY THE FIELD: TALENT DISTRIBUTION THAT WORKS FOR EVERYONE During an organizational gender-equity assessment, I opened a conversation with ‘‘Sabina,’’ who had held an entry-level technical position at her company for more than three years, by asking her about her prospects for advancement. I’d heard from her superiors that there was an opening for a supervisor, and they had urged Sabina to apply— without success. She’d told them that she wasn’t ready for the challenge, and they, in turn, had begun to question her commitment. When Sabina and I talked, however, I learned that the root of her reluctance was the opposite of a lack of commitment—she loved her job, liked her co-workers, and wanted more than anything to stay with the company. That was why she didn’t want to move into a supervisor’s position. To illustrate, Sabina put her hand up and ticked off, finger by finger, the names of all the women who had moved up in the last three years and were now gone. There was, at that moment, not a single woman supervisor in her division. As far as Sabina was concerned, accepting the new job would be like buying a ticket out the door. She didn’t blame the company or her superiors for her situation. She told me, ‘‘I get along great with the guys I work with because I’m on their level, but they don’t react well when a woman is over them. I’d do it anyway if it meant I could move up the ladder, but after supervisor, there’s only one other level. I can’t move up enough to make it worthwhile.’’ The last aspect of Sabina’s problem, the fact that she faces not so much a glass ceiling as just a very low ceiling, is something she has in common with her immediate co-workers, her own supervisor, and her supervisor’s supervisor—all men. However, if we glance upward through the company hierarchy, following paths that are closed to everyone at Sabina’s level unless they can first make lateral moves into positions that require more education, the smattering of women in

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career jobs near the bottom gives way to an entirely male top management team. Sabina faces the same obstacles her male co-workers do, plus the extra obstacle of being a woman in a male-dominated organization. Nevertheless, there are some very effective ways to open up some possibilities for people in Sabina’s situation. It doesn’t require a revolution, and none of the solutions to the problem of the disappearing women supervisors is especially difficult to implement. Resolving Sabina’s problem is mostly a matter of improving (or just following) the company’s existing structure and policy. Here’s the to-do list: 1. Establish detailed, clear, stepwise explanations of what’s required for promotion, merit raises, and opportunities for new work challenges and further training. If there is more than one way to advance, or if it’s possible to skip a level by acquiring more education or taking on special projects, spell that out. Companies that create and abide by clear policies are most likely to retain and advance women for one single reason: they have a guide to objectivity, so biases and assumptions can’t lead decision making. 2. Ditch vague advancement criteria. ‘‘Has management potential,’’ ‘‘Uses good communication skills,’’ and ‘‘Demonstrates maturity’’ are impossible criteria to meet. (My favorite example, ‘‘Shows quality of mind,’’ comes from the academic world. Try applying that at promotion time.) Criteria can be clarified by answering a series of ‘‘how’’ questions: How will the candidate show that she or he communicates well, is mature, and can function in a management position? 3. Make sure that everyone knows what the criteria are. The hard truth is that in many organizations, a great deal of information goes down through official channels, so much that it’s difficult for those on the receiving end to sort through it all and figure out what really applies to them. Instead, they rely on informal connections for clues about what they should pay close attention to. Women are less likely to have all the information they need because they are less likely to be in the unofficial information loop. There is a big bonus to clarifying, publicizing, and using advancement criteria: people try harder when the criteria are clear. Performance improves with high standards and rewards and fails when the standards are vague and the prospects dim.

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4. End preferential practices. Distribute opportunities on the basis of an answer to the question ‘‘What can you do?’’ rather than ‘‘Who do you know?’’ It’s essential for the some of same reasons avoiding nepotism is essential. Business decisions made on the basis of personal attachments are even less likely to turn out well than decisions made randomly, because allowing preferential treatment will systematically weed out people who are highly skilled but not (or not yet) well connected. Advancing on the strength of personal connections helps to consolidate an ingroup, but that’s rarely good for the organization as a whole. Women are more often on the margins of the group, so they are more likely to lose out on opportunities when favoritism rules. 5. Establish an evaluation process that ensures that information from various sources—not from a single superior—is used to assess individual performance. 6. If the gender balance is skewed at higher levels, the reasons may not be as obvious as they seem. Find out why. Women have not only taken in the message that they should become extraordinarily accomplished and learn how to make organizational politics work in their favor but also that no matter how extraordinary and Machiavellian they are, the risk they take when they step into a leadership position is higher than it is for the male colleagues. Are women really opting out, or are they being nudged out? Can this be handled as a personal issue and left up to the individual, perhaps with a dose of good mentoring? Women who seem reluctant to take on more responsibility may indeed be held up by doubts about themselves (unfortunately, that was my initial assumption about Sabina), but they may also have assessed the chances of a high female performer succeeding and concluded, reasonably enough, that the odds don’t favor it. That perception brings performance and morale down.

INTEGRATE TEAMS—IT’S NOT HOW YOU STAND, BUT WHERE YOU STAND What seems to be Sabina’s special problem turns out to be bigger than her individual situation. It’s also bigger than the collective situation of women in the organization. Competent women are not the only people who vanish from organization because they lack connections

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with a powerful insiders’ group or haven’t been mentored well, so men benefit as much as women when the organization tones processes and clarifies procedures. Leveling opportunities and the risks associated with stepping up and into the limelight so that everyone can compete fairly is the answer. Women’s slow advancement is a sign of organizational issues that will affect men as well as women, but the men who are tripped up because of dysfunctional organizational processes will be harder to see. 1. Teams composed of roughly equal numbers of men and women do better than other groups on tasks involving calculation, problem solving, brainstorming, and making judgments.2 They perform better because mixed groups tend to decentralize leadership. Instead of allowing one person to drive decisions, they share leadership, and that increases participation and commitment. All-female groups, which if stereotypes hold true should be the most cooperative, come in second—they’re less likely to share leadership than mixed groups are. 2. Increasing collaboration and commitment among team members is good for productivity, and gender inclusion is a major contributor. Composing inclusive teams is a challenge initially, and groups may fall back on the safety of having a central leader at first, but they evolve toward shared leadership quickly and team members are more satisfied with the collaborative culture inclusive groups produce. In a work environment like Sabina’s, which currently resembles the traditional middle-school dance floor, a central concern is employee satisfaction and how it affects retention and productivity. The common fear is that people who experience the gender (or racial) unity of their team as a source of comfort or status might become dissatisfied and leave if they are expected to work in a more diverse group, especially if they believe that leadership of the group will end up in the hands of someone they think of as an outsider. Those concerns may be considerably overblown, but integrating groups can get complicated. Various studies over the years have shown that members of all male groups are the least satisfied, while members of mixed groups are the most satisfied.3 Then, in a large study of over 25,000 working people in Great Britain, men appeared to be somewhat happier in all-male than in mixed groups. The difference was small; overall,

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employee satisfaction didn’t have much to do with the gender of co-workers. 3. The much more interesting finding is that status, not the gender of co-workers, was the key to men’s positive perceptions of working in all-male groups. High-status, highly-paid men who work in male-dominant settings aren’t keen on having mixed work groups. Men lower down in organizational hierarchies had a different perception. The authors of the study wrote, ‘‘This dynamic does not apply to low-paid men because their status and prestige is less likely to be threatened and, therefore, they have less to lose, by working in more female-dominated settings.’’4 4. Education about gender bias can help mixed groups work well together. However, as the section on gender bias in the previous chapter demonstrated, the purpose of such education isn’t to persuade people that an individual’s gender makes a big difference to his or her basic competence or ability to function well in the group. The purpose of ‘‘gender ed’’ is to establish common ground. What helps groups arrive on common ground (hopefully before they’ve ever left it) is shifting the focus from gender to status. Everyone, male or female, has the potential to feel threatened by a potential loss of standing. Because we’re human, we’re tempted to use any possible advantage to enhance our position. Gender, however, doesn’t confer competence, so trying to boost one’s status by flaunting gender credentials is vain—in both senses of the word. 5. The most common mistake groups make is using gender to determine who speaks for the group, who should have decision-making power, and who should do the scut work. Sabina’s problem, her lack of advancement, was due as much to unproductive power dynamics within her work group as it was to poorly defined and lax advancement processes. Everyone in the group, including Sabina, participated in producing those dynamics, and everyone has responsibility for working the knots out. Developing a group norm begins with an agreement that the group won’t make the usual ‘‘gender = status’’ blunders. Members should be able to respectfully call one another on missteps, and in groups that already have a history of problems, it can be helpful to assign someone to look out for signs of a dysfunctional dynamic. In many groups, the role of ‘‘gender scout’’ is best filled by an alert man, or anyone with a good sense of humor.

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USE THEM OR LOSE THEM: A WIN-WEN SITUATION Women’s employee networks (WENs) often endure by not trying to create too much organizational change. The best WENs make a good business case for their own existence, and they align their mission, agenda, and activities closely with business goals. It may seem obvious that women working collaboratively for the advancement of women in the organization is good for business, and yet, many WENs have to make that argument again and again in association with virtually every action they take. Woman-focused initiatives and employee groups may help meritorious women advance and show the value of women’s contributions, but they often confront—and have to provide answers to—a number of skeptical questions: Would a truly talented woman feel the need to join a group or attend ‘‘woman-centered’’ events? What is it about women that requires them to band together? Do women need extra emotional support? Do they just like to get together and whine about men? Whether they are framed as serious challenges or as jokes, these questions create an opening to correct misconceptions and raise awareness about how gender shapes the working world. However, there’s an unexpected truth that underlies people’s doubts about woman-centered initiatives: the ultimate goal is to have women and men competing and collaborating as peers in the mainstream, not to separate women out into a separate sphere. Any gender-related initiative or WEN that doesn’t incorporate an explicit plan to move toward that goal is missing the point Possession of a clear mission and a dedicated core group of leaders is just part of what networks need to succeed with the work they set out to do. WENs are hard pressed to move forward if the organizational culture as a whole isn’t evolving toward inclusion, or if top leadership turns over frequently and support for the women’s group is uncertain. Under those conditions, running a WEN can involve a lot of starting over. Many networks are expected to represent the interests of women at all levels of the organizations, so they may spend a good deal of effort trying to negotiate among competing constituencies. If that’s the situation, the net result is that the group commands few resources, follows a relatively conservative line, is cautious about innovation, focuses on how it is perceived, and fills an advisory role. It remains

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marginal. It is rare for even a highly active WEN, with top executive women in leadership roles, to be a power center for generating significant, organization-wide change. Although it isn’t a good idea to make a women’s network responsible for generating and implementing an inclusion plan, a high profile WEN can be a significant player in a gender-inclusion initiative. Representatives of the network should be on the inclusion team. If the WEN has existed for quite a while, and especially if it tracks its activities and accomplishments, it may hold an enormous amount of information about how gender affects advancement prospects and interpersonal relationships, whether women and men have equal access in practice to development opportunities, why women have left the organization, the gender composition of divisions and distribution of functions within departments and work groups, and what features of organizational culture could facilitate or impede gender inclusion. Whether or not WENs have been able to function as centers of change, they are often centers of knowledge and communication, and that potential can be tapped to help advance the inclusion initiative. Typical WEN activities like networking lunches, planning meetings, online discussions, speakers’ series, after-hours social events, and meetings with other employee networks all present opportunities to promote understanding of what inclusion means and how the organization plans to further its inclusion goals. If the WEN doesn’t already have a significant male presence at some of its sponsored events, this would be the right time to invite (or exert pressure on) men to get involved.

EDUCATE. PERIOD. Choices about how to educate are so varied and so dependent on the needs of individual organizations that no single model suffices. At the end of this ‘‘how to’’ discussion which will stay on an introductory level, I do offer a broad sketch of a program outline. Any specific curriculum development would require, at the very least, a moderately knowledgeable educator and a model that allows participants to engage in an active conversation. The programs that I have, and continue to develop for clients depend heavily on those active conversations so that those of us involved in the design and delivery can be as sure as is reasonable to expect that we are meeting the organization’s objectives. This is a long-winded way of stating the obvious: that

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unfortunately or not, when it comes to gender education in the workplace, you have to build it for that workplace. There is no one-size-fits all in this (and in most, actually) diversity education practice. It’s not all ‘‘one of a kind,’’ but it is all custom. Educating on gender bias is also not for the faint of heart, but giving people reliable information and room to talk about it in a low-key way goes a long way. The most difficult task is to defuse the defensiveness many people feel when the issue comes up. There is good reason to be defensive. Unless the diversity awareness training they’ve attended has been handled with unusual finesse, people have come away from it suspecting that the whole exercise was pointless. At worst, they leave the experience more convinced than ever that negotiating gender in the workplace means venturing across a minefield. It is not unusual for people to fear they are going to be asked to confess their prejudices or give up their beliefs. They may fear that if they speak their minds, they will come across as ignorant throwbacks or oppressors. Saying the wrong thing might seriously offend someone (maybe someone whose opinion could alter the course of their careers). If they’ve heard that there are sexual harassment issues in the organization, they may see compulsory education as management’s scheme to punish everyone for the bad actions of one or two people. If they suspect that this is just a matter of HR doing its regular job—by offering a refresher course on compliance and legal liabilities, or staging a ‘‘gender day’’ celebrating women—if, in plain terms, people don’t have any reason to believe that real change is in the offing, they can’t be blamed for deciding to engage as little as possible. Anyone who is trying to educate for inclusion avoids a ‘‘different planets’’ approach, if only because it’s alienating. However, saying no to Mars and Venus can present a thorny challenge, if only because people love to talk about gender differences. Many people have their own pet theories about how men and women differ, often involving observations about who remembers and who forgets, who mows the lawn and who does the ironing, who thinks globally and who puts ideas in mental boxes, who reads maps and who knows instinctually how people are feeling. Pet theories often come out as a way to vent tension and gain a sense of control—and that’s all they’re good for. The best response is whatever respects the pet theorist’s experience without derailing the discussion and diverting attention from the organizational goal of inclusion.

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GENDER ROLE EDUCATION PROGRAM SAMPLE OUTLINE Note: The following course outline is presented as a conversation starter only. It is designed to be delivered by one professional facilitator with gender-inclusion expertise or (2) trained facilitators with HR/ Diversity-education platform expertise and familiarity with gender inclusion. The course is designed as a ‘‘classic half day’’ which is three and a half hours of content in a four hour space. Longer programs are possible; programs shorter than two hours with no breaks are not effective. Summary: The program fosters an environment for understanding how gender expectations and stereotypes affect performance, retention, and job satisfaction. The program is based on what the most current science says about similarities and differences in men’s and women’s ability to perform in the workplace.

OBJECTIVES: Participants will . . . 1. Appreciate that ‘‘gender’’ is not a code word for ‘‘women,’’ and that people of both sexes deal with stereotypes. 2. Understand that conflicts about gender roles arise among women and among men as well as between women and men. 3. Be able to recognize the difference between fair treatment and special accommodation based on gender. 4. Become better acquainted with what the most current science really says about similarities and differences in women’s and men’s ability to perform in the workplace. 5. Understand better how gender roles and stereotypes affect people’s experience of the workplace. 6. Develop practical strategies and greater confidence about dealing with gender role expectations in the workplace. 7. Understand the factors that affect the retention of ‘‘gender outliers.’’

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CONTENT: 1. Objectives for the session and a few useful terms (e.g., how to spot a stereotype and how to distinguish ‘‘sex’’ from ‘‘gender’’ and ‘‘bias’’ from ‘‘prejudice’’). 2. Explanation of the importance of gender in organizing our lives and thinking. 3. A gender quiz—this is a level-setting device to help people assess where they are regarding gender in the workplace. 4. Facts of the Matter • What the major gender stereotypes are • How stereotypes affect people’s experience at work • How stereotype threat affects testing, evaluation, and job performance • How the social meanings of gender compare with verifiable biological facts about differences and similarities between the sexes i. Examples: a) difference between mothers’ ratings of children’s performance based on gender and children’s actual performance; b) given the same resume with either a male or female name, both sexes tend to rate the male higher. ii. Social meanings of gender vary by cultural background and by generation. 5. You don’t have to be a woman to be the outlier. This is a major content piece as explained in some detail in Chapter Three; it lies at the heart of the concepts driving the entire course. 6. Business case: how gender inclusion improves organizational success, which in turn affects firm value, client relations, access to new markets, and recruiting. 7. Teams: how misunderstandings and conflicts within work groups about the meaning of gender affect productivity, job satisfaction, and retention—and how to avoid these problems. • • • •

What men and women value most about their jobs The effect of gender on dedication to the job What men and women need to succeed How gender inclusive teams perform

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8. Practical application: case studies and strategy brainstorming. (A sample case study is presented in Appendix One of this book.) • Gender and leadership • Advice for ‘‘gender role outliers’’ on the job • Difficult situations i. loss of the male-bonded workplace ii. fear of being perceived as a sexual harasser iii. trying to be twice as good as the men. 9. Closing: Q & A and evaluations

NOTES 1. A note on surveys: In a medium to large organization where there is a desire to sound out perceptions and needs, a wellconducted survey can be useful. However, taking surveys and analyzing the results can become a substitute for real action, and formal surveys can have the unintended consequence of preemptively defining terms and setting expectations. That’s what assessment results are intended to do. Use surveys, but with caution. 2. Jennifer L. Berdahl and Cameron Anderson (2005). ‘‘Men, Women, and Leadership Centralization in Groups Over Time.’’ Group Dynamics: Theory, Research, and Practice 9:1. 45–57. 3. For a review and original research, see Terry Blum and Dail Fields (1997). ‘‘Employee Satisfaction in Work Groups with Different Gender Composition.’’ Journal of Organizational Behavior 18:2. 181–196. 4. Riccardo Peccei and Hyun-Jung Lee (2005). ‘‘The Impact of Gender Similarity on Employee Satisfaction at Work: A Review and Re-Evaluation.’’ Journal of Management Studies 42:8 1571–1592; Hyun-Jung Lee and Riccardo Peccei (2007). ‘‘Organizational-Level Gender Dissimilarity and Employee Commitment.’’ British Journal of Industrial Relations 45:4. 687–712.

APPENDIX 1

Corporate Gender This brief case study highlights some of the ways that gender dynamics can influence workplace outcomes. This case study and the questions that follow draw on concepts from the book you have just read. An answer framework is also offered, again simply to reinforce concepts and ideas laid out in this book. There are no absolute right answers to the questions; your response will depend on your individual situation. Please treat these questions and answers as a guide to ways that you might act to facilitate gender inclusion in your organization.

THE CASE OF THE IMPROVING— OR NOT—CALL CENTER Issues Being Reviewed: Insider/Outsider Hormones at Work The Role of Control Chariat is a fast-growing subscriber-based business. At present, it serves millions of customers worldwide and, assuming it continues to innovate and build its reputation for providing end-to-end solutions for its business and private customers,

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within a few years it will outpace its older and stodgier competitors and establish itself as the industry leader. Chariat prides itself on being a progressive company. It has built into its business model and its marketing plan an emphasis on corporate responsibility. For instance, individual customers can sign up for a matching program for charitable donations. Chariat is developing a set of standards for environmental sustainability in its industry, and it has also publicized its agreement with the Calvert Women’s Principles, a global code of ethical practice designed to mitigate workplace discrimination against women. As a subscriber-based business, Chariat does more direct-toconsumer business than business-to-business marketing and therefore relies heavily on its several call centers to serve as its public face, as well as its eyes and ears with customers. The way it handles the customer interface is part of its progressive identity and branding strategy. Chariat rejects the notion that call centers should be little more than low-cost solutions for dodging customer problems. The Executive Committee has embraced the idea that call centers are vital and must be well-run and supported to enable them to fully realize their potential as a powerful means of service delivery. The committee made the difficult choice not to offshore the call center function, but to situate call centers within easy reach of headquarters. Management sees call centers not just as the customer interface, but as the key to substantial revenue generation. Angela Watson is the Director of Call Center Operations. Angela has been at Chariat for less than five years; she didn’t come up through the ranks, but accepted her current position at Chariat when she became bored at her previous job and wanted to take on something more challenging. Angela is considered senior management, but she’s fully aware that she’s been left out of some major decisions that affect her responsibilities. Ultimately, she would like to join what is called the Executive Committee, which is comprised of the VPs, SVPs, and officers. If she ever wants to get that far, Angela knows she has to show that she can do more than execute faithfully whatever new initiatives come down to her. She has to show that she can innovate and make her ideas pay. Angela reports directly to Jethro Bartlett, who is Senior VP of Operations and a relatively new member of the Executive Committee.

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Angela operates with a great deal of autonomy, as does everyone above middle management. Managerial independence is imbedded in Chariat’s culture as well as its organizational design, and it’s one of the things Angela likes about working there. Managers value being able to think on one’s feet and not having to check everything through channels. The Chariat approach to senior management is, ‘‘Here are the outcomes we’re looking for; do whatever’s necessary to bring them about.’’ For her part, Angela believes that the best ideas about how to improve operations often come from the people closest to the action, so she has made ‘‘people empowerment’’ the core of her management philosophy. When Miguel, who manages the largest call center in Angela’s purview, comes to her with an idea for how to improve the routing plan at the call center, she works with him and an IT associate to develop and test the plan. Angela projects that the new plan could save up to 15 percent, and when she’s sure of that projection, she approaches Jethro about implementing it. She’s persuasive, and Jethro sounds enthusiastic. He tells her that the next step is to make a presentation to the Executive Committee. He knows Angela would like to get ahead, so he expects her to jump at the chance. She does. When it comes to workforce diversity issues of race, gender, sexual orientation, disabilities, and spirituality, Chariat seems to be doing about as well as most companies of its kind. Senior management, however, is still dominated by men. In fact, the Executive Committee is all male—they are not all white, but they are all men. They have all been with Chariat for at least a decade, and they know each other well. Some are so close that they socialize outside of work with their families, but they all get along and generally seem to enjoy each other’s company. They are easygoing; they don’t wear suits to work, and they don’t think that working 80-hour weeks makes for a good life or a good company. They make up for it by being intense and focused when they are at work, and they take a no-holds-barred approach to negotiation. They like to argue, especially with one another. They fight hard, and sometimes they switch sides to argue against proposals they know they’re going to support—just for the fun of it. It’s a great way to work the kinks out of an idea, but to an outsider, it would probably seem overly aggressive. Jethro didn’t think twice about the core group’s dynamic until he attended a diversity conference and heard what the speakers

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there had to say about the science behind male aggression and competition and female peace making and collaboration. The facilitators started by handing out a self-quiz to measure people’s comfort level with male and female management styles. Jethro came out with a rating of ‘‘versatile’’; and in fact, he does feel comfortable in both the male and female worlds. Although he enjoys the alpha-male game, he also likes the feminine style. What he can’t imagine is a company where the female style is all there is. That would be dull, and nothing would get done. As the session went on, Jethro was more and more fascinated; he learned that women are totally different because of the way estrogen affects their brains and emotions—and it all starts long before they are born. No wonder the Executive Committee is all male, he thought; women actually aren’t wired to know the difference between a friendly contest of wits and a serious disagreement. The Executive Committee is the epitome of ‘‘guy culture’’—and the opposite of what women look for. Women are better than men at communicating in a supportive way and building harmonious relationships, and that’s how they manage their emotions in order to be fully productive. They’re as competent as men, but guy culture is a bad fit for them. The second half of the presentation dealt with how to change organizational culture to make the most of women’s communication styles and emotional makeup. It’s a nice idea, but Jethro couldn’t imagine doing that at Chariat. The way they get business done works, and that has to come first. The Executive Committee couldn’t do what it does if it had to make women feel comfortable. With the current situation with Angela’s new routing plan, as far as Jethro can tell, it will probably do what she says it will. She’s getting consistently better results from the call centers than anyone else ever has. Angela expects call-center representatives to act like the customer’s best friend and empathizer—and in fact, everyone who works for her seems pretty chirpy and nice. Jethro has no idea how Angela manages to do that and still win the numbers game, but maybe it’s because she fits the female side of the gender equation so perfectly. She has built friendly, harmonious relationships at Chariat, both up and down the organizational ladder, and she’s about as reliable and efficient with her job as—well—a really good mother is with her children. How

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ever, Angela’s manner is restrained, as if she’s trying to keep her emotions in check. And she always wears business suits. She just can’t relax. Jethro can’t see Angela fitting in on the Executive Committee. However, she is an asset. She’s also ambitious. He can at least give her a platform to show what else she can do. There’s more to Angela than Jethro can see. In her own ‘‘ingroup’’ outside of work, Angela is openly competitive; she has a ribald, politically incorrect sense of humor; and she and her friends can argue a point for hours, punctuating the argument with name calling and insults, and then go home the best of friends. The fights signal acceptance and liking—and they all know it. But the few times she’s brought out that side of herself at work, people don’t seem to get it. It’s as if she’s just not being feminine enough. In her first management job, a senior woman told Angela that she should soften her approach: ‘‘No sharp elbows’’ was her advice, and Angela has tried to follow it. Angela’s sense of humor, even considerably toned down for the work environment, still falls flat with her superiors, and they just don’t seem to notice when she challenges them. With her subordinates, she has learned to be nurturing but firm, and as a result, she has become a better listener than she ever thought she could be. Angela has decided that her ‘‘rambunctious’’ side is inappropriate to bring out at work, so she has developed a professional persona that others feel comfortable with. She’s not completely comfortable with the whole idea of even having a persona, but it allows her to do her job. So, what happens during the presentation? The guys hold back with Angela—they don’t do the kind of friendly hazing they normally would, and Jethro realizes that he’s as proud of their good behavior as he is of Angela’s presentation. Maybe, he thinks, gender differences don’t have to get in the way—in fact, maybe it’s like they said at the diversity summit: businesses do better when they see male/female differences as an asset instead of a liability. The guys are more than civil—they listen all the way through before commenting, say encouraging things, and they don’t ask the tough ‘‘prove it to me’’ kinds of questions that would throw Angela off. When Miguel gets up to do his part of the presentation, he gets red in the face and goes too quickly through his material. The guys push him just a bit, testing him to see if he’s really done his homework and can defend the plan. Miguel is

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nervous, but he does all right, and his ability to stand up to opposition makes the case for the routing plan stronger. When all is said and done, Jethro believes it all went well and that Chariat would likely implement the new plan soon, after other priorities have been met and some problems already scheduled for resolution have been dealt with. He’s thinking that it will take at least another fiscal quarter to move on the plan. Angela walks out of the presentation viewing her senior management’s reception as polite but disengaged. She can’t quite understand why they weren’t more impressed by the plan’s potential to increase productivity and cut costs. Later that day, when she approaches Jethro to see where it all had landed after she and Miguel left the meeting, she is told that further evaluation would be necessary to determine whether, or when, it would be feasible to implement a new routing plan. That sounds like a brush off to Angela. Over the course of the next two weeks, every time Angela inquires about being involved in evaluating the plan (or better yet, implementing it), Jethro’s response is vague and noncommittal. The general sense of the answer is ‘‘It’s on the radar screen and still being considered.’’ She concludes that upper management isn’t going to give the new plan a chance, so she’s not going to get any credit for putting it together. Less than a month later, a headhunter reaches out to her about a better job with a higher salary and some leeway to choose her own staff. As much as Angela has liked working at Chariat, she’s pretty sure she’s reached the limit of what they’ll let her do. She tries to think of a good reason to say ‘‘no’’ to a new job and can’t think of one. She accepts the new position and also asks Miguel to make the move with her. When Jethro learns about Angela’s decision to accept another job, he can’t help but wonder if she didn’t leave because she didn’t get her own way. When she handed in her resignation, the guys on the Executive Committee discussed offering Angela a raise to try to persuade her to stay, but Jethro wasn’t enthusiastic about the idea. He suggested that they give Miguel a shot at Angela’s job instead, and that was agreed to. Jethro was surprised that Miguel wasn’t interested in the offer, and instead signaled his intention to resign and go with Angela to her new situation.

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Questions: 1. What might Jethro have done differently in the Executive Committee meeting where Angela and Miguel made their pitch if he didn’t rely on the belief that hormones make men and women as different as night and day? 2. What is different, if anything, about Miguel that might cause him to want to continue to work for/be subordinate to Angela, and why is Jethro surprised by Miguel’s choice to ‘‘follow’’ Angela? 3. What could Angela have done differently to maintain her own sense of management-behavior propriety while also feeling like she could have as much control over the proposal, from inception to implementation? 4. Why didn’t the Executive Committee try harder to retain Angela?

Answer Framework: Believing in the power of ‘‘gender difference’’ to determine a person’s capacities and behavior can lead to unnecessary mistakes. The Executive Committee members aren’t behaving in ways that cause women in particular to come unglued. Women can be just as competitive as men, and they are no more likely to take a fight personally. What senior management is doing is using a particular set of behaviors to draw a line between the insiders and outsiders. Doing that is not a ‘‘guy thing’’—every group does it. Anyone who’s in the room with them but not one of them has choices to make about how to behave in order to gain acceptance or at least get by. The choices people make will rarely be conscious, and most people will do what feels safest. What often feels safest is retreating into conventional gender roles. That’s what Angela is doing when she curtails her urge to do and say things that might be misread as inappropriately dominant. The Executive Committee members aren’t being aggressive because of testosterone. If hormones were in control, they wouldn’t be able to stop at will. Angela, in spite of her lack of testosterone, can behave in ways that people who don’t know her

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well consider inappropriately aggressive—but she reserves that side of herself for situations and people who won’t be offended by it. Because she’s a woman, there are large areas of her life— including work—where being as verbally aggressive as she’s capable of being would have negative consequences. Men, too, sometimes have to stifle aggression, but because (at least mild) aggression is part of the male gender role, there are fewer areas of their lives where that’s necessary.

APPENDIX 2

Voices of Experience What is presented in this appendix is a composite picture of women in first-level supervisory to middle-management positions at a company similar to Chariat (described in Appendix One). Topics addressed include career advancement, the gendered environment, and mentoring and networking. Based on comprehensive anonymous interviews, these observations and comments contain a good deal of pointed criticism about women’s situation in the organization. Although these managers are disenchanted with top management’s approach to gender, they spoke highly of the company overall. Several mentioned that they were looking for jobs elsewhere where they might have better chances for advancement, but most focused their comments on their organization and how they wanted to contribute to its success. They’re frustrated, but not disengaged. The question the reader might think about is this: what steps could this organization take to level the playing field so that men and women could work together as equals and compete fairly for promotions? Specific tools mentioned in Chapters Five and Six, along with the Gender-Inclusion Plan in Appendix Three, could help answer that question.

KEY FINDINGS 1. Women who want to advance find the process of evaluation and promotion uncertain and problematic.

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2. Women managers don’t believe they’re getting all the information about the company’s operations they need to do their jobs effectively. They believe their male peers receive more complete information and receive it sooner through an informal network. They believe that when male managers run into problems, they’re more likely to get support, advice, and leeway to learn from mistakes. 3. Due to the problem with information transfer and advancement processes, taking the first step to shift supervisor has fewer advantages for women than for men. That gap widens at higher levels of responsibility, where, as one interviewee put it, ‘‘What you don’t know can kill you.’’ 4. Women managers equate success with making mostly lateral moves in which they exit the least desirable jobs for somewhat better ones. 5. Women believe that beyond a certain level, the management hierarchy is impervious to women, especially in line management positions. They believe they’re facing a low glass ceiling. 6. Attrition of women in more senior-management positions is nearly 100 percent after five years. 7. Women don’t expect, and don’t receive, help if they experience sexual harassment. 8. Mentoring and peer networking are desperately needed but are, by and large, unavailable.

CAREER ADVANCEMENT a) Processes for evaluation, raises, and promotion are obscure and unpredictable, which sometimes results in unfair or illogical outcomes. Women receive few promotions, while men with less experience are selected. Advancement is largely in the hands of the immediate supervisor, who has to ‘‘sell’’ his people to upper management. Much depends on how well supervisors can (or care to) represent the individual. One interviewee remarked that she received evaluations signed by people who had never seen her work; the evaluations included no comments, and there was no discussion. When she sought information about what the basis for her rating was, she was ignored. Others received positive

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evaluations until they started to seek advancement. Women who received high ratings from their supervisors, on their written management profiles, and in formal interviews did not receive promotions. b) Women don’t gain (and in fact, can lose) by seeking supervisory positions. Becoming a step-one supervisor means taking on a bigger burden, usually for less money (due to the loss of overtime and other factors) and longer hours. Supervisors hear complaints and deal with conflicts, but they have little power to make changes that benefit workers. This lack of real power means they garner little respect from the people under them. That in turn reduces their effectiveness as supervisors. ‘‘One big headache’’ was how one woman summed up any supervisor’s life, but the perception was that problems are worse for women because a woman is less likely to receive respect (from down the hierarchy) and support (from up the hierarchy) than her male counterpart. Interviewees related various anecdotes about women managers who burned out while ‘‘doing everything and being perfect’’ in failed attempts to beat the advancement odds. One person remarked that women who were ambitious left the company soonest because ‘‘they had too much on their plates, and there wasn’t much that was in their control, and when that happens, women push even harder to be seen as competent. They tried to get everything on the score card checked off, and they burned out before they could move up.’’ c) Women adjust their definition of success in response to the perceived lack of upward opportunity within the organization. They equate success for women with lateral moves, special assignments, and pursuing further training and development. Perceptions of what constituted success and progress for women were consistent with the perception of a glass ceiling. The consensus was that women who managed to move around, rather than move up, were the ones who survived. Interviewees believed that lateral paths were as open to women as to men, and that anyone who received good evaluations, sought additional training, and volunteered for special assignments could achieve ‘‘horizontal’’ success. Special assignments were perceived as most desirable because they meant new job duties, opportunities to work on teams, varied and more interesting job duties, and the

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satisfaction of completing a definite project. ‘‘And they look good on my resume,’’ commented one woman, who saw her best chances for advancement in leaving for an organization more open to women succeeding in leadership roles.

THE GENDERED ENVIRONMENT The women in this organization are by definition survivors, but their comments make it is easy to understand why so many women don’t stay. Interviews reflected urgency and highlighted issues that require immediate attention. As one woman said, not angry but perplexed, ‘‘I just can’t understand why they (upper management) don’t try to help us.’’ A number of significant points about the environment turned up during interviews: a) ‘‘You’re out there by yourself.’’ Isolation within the organization is the most profound ‘‘climate’’ problem women experience. Interviewees identified several factors that contributed to their sense of isolation: • being ‘‘out of the information loop;’’ • not being invited or expected to attend informal ‘‘male bonding’’ events (a fishing trip and ‘‘poker night’’ were mentioned); • being physically and functionally isolated in jobs with heavy administrative duties but little contact with people. ‘‘I’m officially a manager, but all I really do is move paper,’’ was how one interviewee described her situation. The isolation is especially troubling because it seems to be a deliberate management choice that indicates a lack of confidence in women’s competence. A telling point regarding the effects of isolation is that several people told me that being gay is not nearly as difficult as being female. One reason interviewees gave for the perceived female/gay difference is that Pride Network is more visible and has made itself accessible to people, whereas the Women’s Network has not done much outreach. ‘‘Ideally, I guess I’d be a lesbian,’’ one woman said. ‘‘Then at least I’d have some connection.’’ b) Watch out for ‘‘Little Sister Syndrome.’’ Some women felt marginalized during initial technical training. Trainers asked men more questions and asked them to

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demonstrate skills more often. In the discussions that ensued, women felt like their attempts to contribute or ask questions were ignored or treated as interruptions. ‘‘I don’t think it was intentional,’’ one interviewee said, ‘‘and I was able to learn by watching and listening. And I did stuff on my own. But it set a bad tone. I felt like the little sister.’’ Another woman described a disturbing incident in which she asked the trainer how to do something, and the trainer came to her station, gestured to her to get out of his way, and blocked her line of vision while he did the task for her. ‘‘Are you going to let me do this or what?’’ she asked. He then stood back and spread his hands in an exaggerated ‘‘You’re on your own’’ gesture. This is poor training technique, but it is also indicative of the environmental hurdles women have to get over in order to do their jobs. c) When one woman fails, all women look bad. Women managers believe that to retain their jobs, women should do 110 percent of what men do and provide continuous proof of basic competence. However, being too visible and too competitive also creates problems. Several interviewees were especially troubled by current and former female co-workers who performed badly. They were afraid that upper management would see the failures not as isolated cases, but as representative of a general female lack of competence. Even a single failure by a woman might be remembered forever as evidence that ‘‘women can’t hack it.’’ d) Be careful how you act, what you say, and what you wear. Trying to look professional while blending in was a common theme. The consequences of being in the spotlight were perceived as more likely to be negative than positive. Ways of taking the spotlight off oneself included never complaining, being obviously supportive of men, not saying anything about gender bias or harassment, not pursuing advancement opportunities, not being too feminine (or conversely too casual) in dress or speech, hiding emotions, and never expressing doubt or reluctance. As one person said, women walk a fine line between ‘‘being a bitch or a doormat.’’ e) You can expect some harassment. Several women described ongoing, low-to-moderate verbal harassment; others described a single incident or two. Conversations among men sometimes included an increased use of

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swearing and degrading sexual terms; detailed descriptions of sexual experiences; speculation and gossip about female co-workers’ sexual activities and relationships; and derogatory comments about women, their job competence, their menstruation, and the size and shape of their bodies. Individual men also occasionally used these verbal strategies in one-on-one conversations with a female co-worker, while others changed their tone when they were alone with women (from friendly/professional to ‘‘seductive’’ or ‘‘sneering’’). Two of the women I interviewed commented that, ‘‘It’s hard to know what to say’’ when men do these things. Most said that silent acceptance would make it worse. Going along with it—using the same kinds of language— was considered similarly likely to backfire. Sarcasm, a blank stare, a mild insult, walking away, and other responses were considered as possibly helpful, but there was a low level of confidence about the usefulness of any counterstrategy. f) Reporting incidents of sexual harassment wouldn’t help, or would make the situation worse. Women in the organization who had experienced harassment thought it was only to be expected. None of those who related incidents had reported them. Several reasons were given for this choice: 1) ‘‘I’d rather handle it on my own. If I go running to HR whenever anything goes wrong, no one will take me seriously.’’ 2) ‘‘I was sensitive about it at first. He was just doing it to get a rise out of me. Now I just don’t care.’’ 3) Filing a formal report is ‘‘a lot of trouble to go to for nothing’’ because nothing will be done. 4) Women who file reports will be treated like culprits, moved into less desirable jobs, and ultimately let go. The belief these women held that reporting sexual harassment would hurt them and leave harassers untouched represents a significant problem. The experience of harassment leads to heightened stress, alertness, and distrust; a woman may be able to ‘‘handle it on [her] own,’’ but no matter how much she minimizes the impact, harassment affects performance. Interviewees’ comments also indicate a larger problem, in that everyone who works in an environment that tolerates harassment is negatively affected, including those who do the harassing. But the central problem is with top leadership, which approved a sexual harassment policy and processes for reporting and mediating, but has not done anything to show it’s serious about creating a harassment-free work

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environment. Correcting the problem could involve sponsoring mandatory education that goes beyond a restatement of policy and legal definitions, making strong statements that harassment will not be tolerated (statements that come from top operations leadership rather than HR), and taking positive action when incidents occur, whether or not a report is filed.

MENTORING AND NETWORKING Women face all the same kinds of doubts and worries as their male co-workers, but they also deal with the effects of being—pardon the expression—odd men out. Most women aren’t troubled by the prospect of working mostly with men; what they’re concerned about is whether they’ll be accepted and respected. Providing significant, organized opportunities for mentoring and networking can make all the difference. It will reduce or make manageable most of the issues listed above: isolation, stigma, exposure to verbal harassment, difficulties acquiring informal training, little-sister syndrome, and the complexities of pursuing advancement opportunities. Two main points came up with regard to mentoring and networking: a) Mentoring for women tends to be informal, uneven, and difficult to access. Some of what was conveyed to me about the workplace environment for women is crucial knowledge that any woman should have. Several women who have been with the company for a long time expressed interest in mentoring less-experienced women and networking with other women. They saw this as a potential benefit to them as well as to the women they might mentor. However, there were three areas of uncertainty about how to contribute: 1) What kind of help/advice might be appropriate or needed; 2) How to know who could use some mentoring, and who would prefer not to be approached; 3) How to implement mentoring, given the difficulties presented by organizational structure, especially the wide, thin dispersal of women; and 4) would upper management really get behind a mentoring effort. b) In its present configuration, the Women’s Network is unavailable to most women in management. Some managers are members of the Women’s Network on paper because they want to support the network in some way.

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Some really want to be involved. They also feel they need of the support and voice a network can give. No one thought that joining the network could have negative repercussions. However, in practical terms, the network is accessible only to women who meet certain criteria. Those who have regular schedules, who can take an hour for lunch, and who work during the day can participate with relative ease. Administrative assistants and personnel in training and development and HR meet the conditions. Women in line management aren’t among them. Meetings and events are scheduled at times when managers usually cannot attend. There is also a ‘‘Women in Technology’’ network online that encompasses the central campus and outlying sites, and some participate in that. One participant said, ‘‘That’s totally public, of course, so you watch what you say. But it’s good to go to when you have tech questions. Usually someone else has already figured out an answer.’’ Although this network is for women, it is only used to exchange technical information that might also be available through more mainstream channels. However, participants believe that other women are more likely to respond to their questions, respond faster, and are more willing to help. Others have no access to networking. One manager mentioned that an attempt had been made to establish a separate women in management network several years ago, but that attempt met with resistance from the Executive Committee. The existence of the current women’s network was given as the reason for the veto.

APPENDIX 3

Gender Inclusion in a Male-Majority Workplace Sample Project Plan This sample gender-inclusion plan for a male-majority workplace is based on a real plan which has been stripped of all identifying information. The fictional company (Rack Inc.) is a manufacturing firm with its main office in New York City and its manufacturing facilities in New York, New Jersey, and southern California between Los Angeles and Long Beach. The original plan on which this sketch is based was built around a needs and opportunities assessment by an outside consultant. The result is a sketch of a plan that is intended to be a conversation starter for readers of this book who might want to attempt a similar project. It is written from the perspective of a Project Team that has representatives from HR, Training and Development, line management, employee networks, and the regular workforce. The plan includes the following sections: —Overview —Major Recommendations —Recruitment —Training and Testing —Retention Strategies: Mentoring and Child-Care Provisions

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OVERVIEW HISTORY AND CONSENSUS: The goal of gender equity is a worthy one, but it is not a priority for most employers and has only recently become a recognized priority for Rack Inc. What has always been a priority is maintaining the most skilled and productive workforce available. Like other employers in male-dominated industries (such as construction, utilities, and law enforcement), over the last decade, we’ve come to terms with the fact that fewer men are interested or qualified for our positions. Nonprofit organizations that have long served women who do nontraditional work are finding that employers’ demand for graduates of their training programs is rising, and (to the surprise of those who’ve spent many years encouraging employers to hire women) the increase includes employers who have always before resisted hiring women. The ‘‘nontrad’’ organizations are good indicators, but most of the women who are competent to do our jobs never contact a women’s organization. The fact is, however, these women are out there in the general population, and an active recruitment effort will find them. Most employers don’t succeed in opening jobs to women. Two things get in their way. The first is an unacknowledged cap on the number of women an employer is willing to hire; they assume that if, for instance, more than 15 percent of their workforce is female, the quality of the work will suffer. On some level they believe that only a small minority of women are actually able to do the work. The second major obstacle is the failure to recognize that all the parts of the organization that affect employees directly (especially recruiting, training, mentoring, job assignment, and advancement) have to work as well for women as they have worked for men. We can do better. All indications are that Rack Inc. is ready to accept more women in nontraditional work positions. The environment has some ‘‘garden variety’’ problems that need attention (and these are addressed in this assessment), but we learned that we outclass other employers. Especially in construction, the military, and fire departments, women have endured harassment running the gamut from excrement in their toolboxes or lockers to being refused safety gear to sexual assault. If complaints are filed, they often lead to reprisals, including firing and blacklisting. Our assessment didn’t show evidence of a hostile or

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dangerous environment for women at Rack, so we’re comfortable recommending actively recruiting women. Launching a venture like this seems like a lot to do, and some people will see the project as an extra (and extraneous) effort to cater to a special population. In fact, recruiting and retaining women requires about the same effort needed for men. Most of what is needed to hire and retain women can be piggybacked onto existing practices that have succeeded for our male-majority workforce. However, men and women need somewhat different approaches in recruiting, training, and mentoring because entering a nontraditional career is different and more challenging than entering a career that has always been identified with your own gender.

MAJOR RECOMMENDATIONS This Project Plan is based on an assessment which yielded three components that, taken as a coordinated effort, will substantially increase the representation of women in nontraditional roles here. The Project Team is recommending the measures that will make the biggest difference for the least effort (‘‘low hanging fruit’’), but we have planned to invest some calculated effort, especially initially. We have the intention, talent, and resources; here’s what we recommend in order to go from the ‘‘good idea’’ stage to reality: — Assign a project manager who can coordinate all the components for implementation. The project manager will coordinate recruitment, retention strategies, and training and development. — Partner with local organizations that are dedicated to training women to enter nontraditional occupations. — Recruit women actively from the general population. — Place women on those crews and tasks that are most open to having a mixed-gender group, and whenever possible, place more than one woman to a group. — Initiate an intentional mentoring program.

RECRUITMENT—DIRECT AND AGGRESSIVE As a first step, we wanted to make sure we addressed the fundamental question of how willing women are to enter nontraditional

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employment situations. An accidental experiment at a major utility company suggested an answer to this query: a utility workers’ strike threatened to shut operations down, so the company moved 325 female clerical workers into operations positions. The conditions were bad: there was a lot of mandatory overtime, there was no training, some of the supervisors saw them as the enemy, and the sudden change to weekly shift rotations threw their lives and child-care arrangements into chaos. Not too surprisingly, a survey after the strike showed that most of the women were glad to go back to their offices. But a substantial minority, mostly divorced or single women with children, wanted to stay in the ‘‘dirty jobs’’ in spite of conditions. So we won’t have much trouble increasing our percentage of women job applicants. Recruiting women through family and other typical routes (such as job fairs, ordinary job ads, and conventional college career offices and academic programs) hasn’t been working. Typical hiring solicitations, such as conventionally-worded newspaper job ads, don’t bring in applications from women. To increase the yield of qualified women applicants, we should reach out to women directly and through less conventional routes, such as 1) online and newspaper ads directed at women and recruiting; 2) women’s nontraditional training and employment organizations; and 3) colleges that take deliberate measures to recruit women for nontraditional programs in technology fields. Programs and organizations of this kind serve to filter out women who are uninterested or lack the basic skills. They also coach women about how to survive in male-majority work environments.

RECRUITING KEY POINTS: 1. Send the right message. Getting a prospective female applicant past initial resistance to considering a nontraditional job takes no more than a momentary exposure to the right message. The headline of a job ad; a flyer or brochure posted at a gym, women’s locker room, or college career office; the choice of what images of plant workers to show at a recruiting event; and the first words a recruiter speaks can all remove that misunderstanding immediately. Recruiters, and recruiting materials, should use imagery and text that convey all this in positive terms. The most basic initial message women should get is simple: You belong in this job. (What they’re hearing from us right

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now is more along the lines of ‘‘Are you man enough to work for us?’’) The message to women has to be explicit. Good visuals are the fastest way to convey the message and vault prospective female applicants over the first hurdle—the automatic perception that our jobs are reserved for men. Just as the ‘‘We want you’’ message will draw more qualified women than our current recruiting methods, it will also repel most women who are really looking for a more sedentary, less challenging job. The plan is to speak directly to the specific subset of women who believe they have the personal qualities necessary to be effective in these positions—in other words, they speak to women who see a good fit between their vision of themselves and these jobs. Existing recruiting methods are not communicating well enough with women who have to have a picture of what the job is before they either turn away or take the next step. 2. Be up front but positive about the nature and rewards of nontraditional work. This suggests to applicants and recent hires that Rack Inc. will be an excellent employer for women who want to do nontraditional work. It’s not possible to protect women from hearing discouraging comments, but it is possible to counter them with positive support. Women need to know that Rack Inc. has confidence in them; that we won’t abandon them when they run into gender-specific conflicts on the job; and that we won’t deny women the same privileges, responsibilities, and chances for advancement that men have. 3. Communicate the personal qualities of successful women. The basic requirements for our jobs are clear, but less obvious are the personal qualities the most successful women have. It’s important to communicate that because the challenges are part of what attracts women to the jobs. Women who do well here find the idea of a challenge attractive. They don’t mind going against convention—in fact, that appeals to them. They take pride in having a high-paying job that takes intelligence, preparation, and physical ability. They don’t have a problem with getting dirty, being outside, or working with men. 4. Prevent prospective female applicants from rejecting jobs for bad reasons. Bad reasons include thinking that our recruiting solicitations are meant only for men, that the jobs demand so much upper body strength that women can’t perform them, and that women will end up in the most menial jobs and will be denied

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advancement. Because there is so much social pressure on women not to pursue nontraditional jobs, few women have had a chance to imagine themselves doing them. Still less do they consider that Rack Inc. can imagine women doing these jobs. Give women a reason to believe that we’ll hire them, and they’ll apply. 5. Make the best use of recruiting staff. Because these are nontraditional jobs for women, and manufacturing is a heavily malemajority workplace, it’s important to make the most of opportunities to demonstrate that Rack Inc. is open to women. Women who go to a recruiting event and see people like them representing Rack are more likely to apply. As with visual materials, what matters is how prospective job candidates read the culture. They need to understand that working at Rack is a positive challenge, and one that a capable woman can meet. The key is to be realistic but encouraging, and considering how good the company, the jobs, and the benefits are, that part is easy. We currently employ a number of women who could represent Rack Inc. manufacturing at recruiting events, speak to prospective applicants in a matter-of-fact way, and do so without suggesting that only an Amazon could handle the work and the male-dominated culture. 6. Rack Inc. should target nontraditional recruiting sources. Conventional recruiting methods and sources work well for inviting men to apply, but they are much less effective for recruiting women. For instance, one of the main recruiting tools currently at both our NY/NJ and LA/Long Beach facilities is family and friends. Some women in our assessment questionnaire mentioned having been encouraged to apply by a husband, boyfriend, or uncle. However, this method of recruiting is very limited where women are concerned because, more typically, family and friends actively discourage women from applying for nontraditional jobs. Two people at Long Beach reported that although they’re in favor of hiring women for any job they’re capable of doing, when they look at the manufacturing facilities from their perspective as fathers, the situation looks very different: they would not want their own daughters to work there. We heard from some women employees that their families pressured them not to apply. Families’ ideas about what constitutes a good working environment for daughters, sisters, wives, etc., coincide with the perceptions of most educators, career counselors, and employers, all of whom rarely inform women about nontraditional jobs and often actively

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discourage women pursuing nontraditional work when women express an interest. However, when women do find out about nontraditional careers, and when they learn that other women actually are pursuing them, they are far more ready to think that they should, too. Until the kind of work involved becomes an ordinary choice for women, conventional recruiting routes have minimal results. We should turn to nontraditional sources, chiefly programs and organizations that focus on women, because doing so will increase the rate of successful applicants. 7. Our traditionally-held-by-men positions are among over 500 skilled, high-paying jobs that only small percentages of women have ever worked in. The small representation of women is due in part to various influences that no recruiting effort can overcome. These include personal preference, family pressure, and adherence to traditional gender roles. However, whenever nontraditional fields have opened up and women gain access to appropriate training, the numbers rise quickly. Women who follow this path often have to deal with continuing hostility in their workplaces, and that presents a formidable barrier to their progress. Many women who already have the basic skills, or could gain them through appropriate training, are reluctant to fully prepare for, or apply to, jobs if they believe the workplace is likely to be hostile to them. Unfortunately, in historically male-majority workplaces, that fear is fairly reasonable.

SPECIFIC RECRUITMENT STRATEGIES: 1. WOMEN’S CAREER EXPO The scope of this event could go beyond nontraditional work positions, but ‘‘nontraditional’’ needs to be spotlighted in the advance advertising in order to attract the right kind of applicants. The expo can last for two or three hours; the best time to hold it is on a weekend or evening to increase attendance by people who are already employed. One option is to hold the expo twice in the same day (once in the afternoon, again in the evening) to maximize participation. The most common components of a women’s career expo include: • Brief welcome and keynote remarks from high-ranking managers (both male and female, if possible).

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• An informal panel of three or four women in a variety of our positions, including women who have been here a long time and those who’ve been here for just a few years; they should say a bit about their work and what they like about working here, take questions, and offer to talk with participants individually after the panel. • Information—in the form of a brief presentation as well as any available brochures—about the application, orientation and training processes, and an account of what accomplishments and qualities successful applicants are likely to have. The participants should have a chance to ask questions. Let participants know that we will be hiring over the long term, and if they would like to be considered for a future job, a sign-up sheet for e-mail notices is available. That list may or may not contain names of many viable job candidates, but the ‘‘secret’’ advantage of using an e-mail list like this for sending out job notices is that people forward the notices to friends who might be qualified and interested in applying. • Tips to help applicants prepare for interviews and ‘‘entrance exams’’ and recommendations to those who need further training before they apply. • A designated place where attendees can ask questions one-onone in a quieter setting.

2. LOCAL MEDIA The local press, radio (especially college radio stations), and television are sometimes glad to do stories about women succeeding in nontraditional jobs. Engaging them can spread the word about the career expo and give us positive community exposure—and it costs nothing. The most basic action is to issue a press release to every reasonable venue in the Los Angeles area. The press release should include the following: • key statistics such as what percentage of women work in similar jobs nationwide; • quotes from women in Rack Inc.’s manufacturing facilities about why they chose a nontraditional-employment route (appending a photo of a woman in action on the job is a good idea);

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• a quote from a member of Senior Management supporting the advancement of women into nontraditional jobs with us; • information about the upcoming career expo; • reference to a ‘‘Women at Rack Inc.’’ Web page. The Web page need not be elaborate, but it should be friendly, informative, and easy to find. The Web page can give more information about the expo, the jobs, and the benefits. An ‘‘apply now’’ link could also be available. Again, action photos of women on the job are helpful.

3. ADVERTISING IN THE NEWSPAPER’S ONLINE JOB POSTING An ad for the career expo should appear in all applicable newspapers and online job sites. The ad needs an eye-popping heading, followed by text that conveys in a few words the exciting challenge these jobs offer to qualified women. Only the essential information about the expo should be offered, along with a prominently displayed URL to the Web page described above. Short ‘‘You Tube’’-like videos of women on the job or podcasts from online job-search sites would help to reach a younger and more tech-savvy audience.

4. RECRUITING KIT A ‘‘recruit women’’ kit for use at job fairs and other recruiting events will make life simpler for anyone who goes out to represent us. The kit should contain current brochures or flyers about pay and benefits, information about job-candidate qualifications and the hiring process, referrals (in the form of postcards or flyers) for preemployment training, a sign-up sheet for e-mail notices about future job openings; a bold banner with a text like ‘‘Careers at Rack,’’ and visuals like those we describe in the next section. These images need to be bold, both to catch the eye and to counteract the automatic assumption that these jobs are for men only. Some potential male applicants might ask questions. That could be a good thing; the main point is that men are not generally dissuaded from applying for traditionally male-identified jobs because they see recruiting materials that feature women.

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5. RECRUITING MATERIALS We took a long look at how other organizations are trying to recruit women for nontraditional jobs, and we think Rack can do a much better job. Here are some ideas: Be clear. Avoid using insider acronyms applicants won’t be familiar with. Men get confused by them, too, but because men are already convinced we’re willing to hire them, they look past information they don’t understand. Inform. Describe what people actually do on the job and what kind of abilities they have. It isn’t enough to say ‘‘must meet minimum requirements.’’ Highlight the future. Make it clear that women at Rack have as many opportunities for training and advancement as men. Sound upbeat about their potential. We offer better salary and benefits than other companies in our industry, and our employees stay with us longer. Those are even more powerful persuaders for women than they are for men. Also, compared with women in conventional ‘‘female’’ jobs, women at Rack have a much brighter future. Show on-the-job visuals. Use visual materials that show women and men working together in ways that suggest camaraderie rather than male boss/female subordinate. Feature women in solo shots, dressed in appropriate work clothes. Appeal to tradition. Mention women’s family commitments and connect that to their need to be economically viable. Emphasize that women have actually been going into ‘‘nontraditional’’ lines of work for a long time. This information tells the applicant that we see her as capable and that doing a nontraditional job won’t make her less of a woman.

TRAINING AND TESTING Preemployment Training and Placement Assistance Several existing organizations and educational programs in New York and Los Angeles can be useful for recruiting women for our positions. Actually, they’ve been around since the 1980s (who knew?), and they all receive many more applications for placement assistance and training than they can serve. Several have programs to recruit, train,

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and counsel women considering (or already in) nontraditional lines of work, particularly construction and environmental remediation, along with numerous other fields, including welding, manufacturing, technology, and operating engineering. Other organizations present significant opportunities in the form of women-specific job fairs, online job advertising, and/or other singular recruiting events. One of the questions we wanted to answer was: ‘‘Why should any preemployment training program focus on women?’’ The briefest and most important answer is that these programs, which are specifically targeted at women, succeed. Organizations that serve women in New York and Los Angeles train and place hundreds of women a year. These organizations give women a good start in nontraditional fields by providing both the basic technical knowledge necessary to become trainees and apprentices and the experience of learning in an environment that, as far as possible, approximates a healthy workplace. For many women, this is the first opportunity they’ve had to master technical, mathematical, and mechanical knowledge in a positive environment where their interests and career aspirations don’t make them seem ‘‘weird.’’ There is no ‘‘babying’’ of trainees. The expectations are high, and trainers don’t project that there may be some things women just can’t do. Women who cannot, or choose not to, accept these terms leave the program, so these organizations can prescreen as well as pre-train applicants for Rack Inc. jobs. One of the concerns we’ve had is that separate training might make women less capable of working with men, but especially before hiring, it has significant advantages that outweigh the concerns. We don’t recommend dividing men and women up for post-hire training at Rack Inc. (we address that issue in the next section), but we do recommend partnering with outside organizations that train women. The programs we looked at offer sound technical training, and the ‘‘boot camp’’ approach helps to prepare women to work well with men. They are all generally willing to work with us to develop a curriculum for our specific needs.

POST-EMPLOYMENT TECHNICAL TRAINING A different potential reason to have different classes for men and women came up when we talked with Training and Development staff. That reason is the widely held belief, which is untrue, that women and men learn differently, so they require different teaching

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methods. In short, we concluded that using different training techniques for men and women in our training program is a bad idea. Aside from being too complicated to implement, the science behind the idea that men and women learn differently isn’t convincing. Finally, dividing men and women into different groups isn’t what gender inclusion is all about. We believe that a women’s class would attract judgments about women’s incapacity to learn alongside men or deal with the rigors of the work. It would be seen as ‘‘the dumb class.’’ Some women in the plant already believe that management doesn’t want to have too many women on any one team because they think women aren’t as capable as men. Ultimately, mixed classes will work as well for women as they now do for men—that’s the best goal. We think it’s more important that trainers have a positive perception of working with women as well as men, and they should receive some education in 1) the ways that gender dynamics affect learning situations; and 2) how to adapt lessons to allow for typical differences between men’s and women’s experiential backgrounds in technology, mechanics, and math. The next three sections deal with those issues.

‘‘GENDER ED’’ The interviews conducted during the assessment phase pointed to the need for some training about gender. The question of who would attend training must be addressed, but potential constituencies include senior management, anyone serving in a supervisory capacity, and manufacturing personnel. We believe that ‘‘gender ed’’ would reduce both the obvious conflicts between men and women and the more subtle issues that motivate women to leave. We heard concerns about confrontational trainers and ‘‘male bashing,’’ but we believe that training would promote a safer and more productive workplace. This is not the place for a detailed proposal, but the interviews conducted during the assessment led us to a number of questions that ‘‘gender ed’’ sessions can answer: 1. How does working in a male-majority environment differ for men and women? 2. What kind of woman would want to work in manufacturing?

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3. Do women and men think or learn differently, and if so, are the differences biological? 4. As a man, what do I do if a female co-worker is trying to do a task I’m pretty sure she can’t do? What do I do if a woman is a drag on the rest of us? What if she hangs back and acts like her male coworkers should do some parts of her job? 5. Why do some women go along with, and even add to, crude, derogatory, and sexual jokes about women, and then go complain about it? 6. How should I handle it when people tell demeaning jokes about women or men? 7. As a woman, what should I do about being expected to prove again and again that I can do my job? What should I say to the men who never stop doubting me, or are surprised when I succeed, or try to do my job for me (including men who haven’t been doing it as long as I have)? 8. What should I do about my male co-workers treating me as if I can’t handle hearing a four-letter word? 9. Why haven’t more women made it into line management? 10. Why, if a woman does something wrong or fails, do people think that means women can’t handle the work?

STEREOTYPE THREAT By controlling how tests are set up, classes are structured, teams are composed, and job assignments are discussed, trainers and supervisors can ensure that gender stereotypes don’t affect performance. Research shows that social stereotypes make a difference in people’s ability to learn, their tests scores, and their on-the-job performance. Being in a small minority can place an extra psychological burden (‘‘stereotype threat’’) on a trainee or test-taker that results in lower achievement. Stereotype threat affects performance because it reduces working memory capacity. Working memory capacity is important in any training or testing situation that requires the ability to keep several processes and pieces of information in mind. That’s not the end of the problem, however. Stereotype threat also affects aspirations—that is, when people’s beliefs in their own abilities are undermined by stereotype threat, they set their sights lower.1 The stereotype that women

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lack certain leadership abilities makes many women less likely to seek leadership positions, while the stereotype that men are bunglers when it comes to domestic duties and child care makes men less likely to take charge in those areas. Here’s a snapshot of how stereotype threat works: researchers gave a math test to women, all of whom were top performers in math.2 They divided the women into two groups. The first group was told that the test had previously shown gender differences, and the second group was told that no gender differences had been found. Women in the first group did significantly worse than men who’d also taken the test. However, the women who were told that the math test showed no gender difference performed as well as men. That suggests an easy fix. Technical trainers who know how stereotype threat works can defuse it by 1) refraining from invoking negative stereotypes; 2) verbally reinforcing that women and men are equally likely to do well on the task or test at hand; and 3) discussing how stereotype threat can lower scores and functional performance so that they fail to reflect an individual’s full ability or accomplishment. The last item on the ‘‘fix list’’ reinforces the fairness of the test and the work expectations, while leveling the psychological playing field. Once people know how stereotype threat works, much of the psychological impact of the stigma is lost. Trainers and supervisors have no control over how much exposure people have had to stereotypes about the respective abilities of men and women. However, trainers often ‘‘prime’’ a stereotype, or make it highly relevant to the current situation, by using testing and instructional materials that show only men performing work, always referring to the person making calculations or performing tasks as ‘‘he’’ or ‘‘the man,’’ and showing women rarely and only in passive situations.

STEREOTYPES, TRAINING, AND TESTING We addressed speculations about whether certain tests are ‘‘fair to women.’’ Altering tests to reflect ideas popular about cognitive differences between women and men is particularly counterproductive, because it will be interpreted as ‘‘dumbing the test down for women,’’ which only reinforces the stereotype that women aren’t competent. What does work, as the discussion of stereotype threat suggests, is changing the circumstances of testing to make gender less relevant. If major changes to curriculum or testing materials for any other reason

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are contemplated, it would be best to dissociate those changes from the gender-inclusion initiative—unless the effect of the changes is to create an obviously more challenging testing and training regime. To give both men and women the best chance to perform well, training and testing should take account of the effects of common inferences about gender and ability and of stereotype threat in particular. Here we outline the optimum test-taking set up to reduce the performance effects of gender stereotypes: • Include visual elements that show both male and female subjects performing work, rewrite the text so that both male and female pronouns appear, and refer to gender-neutral subjects such as ‘‘workers’’ or ‘‘engineers’’ rather than to ‘‘the man’’ or ‘‘the men.’’ • Organize testing situations so that there are roughly equal numbers of women and men in test groups where members of the ‘‘minority gender’’ (usually women) are present. • Mitigate the effects of stereotype threat by including a statement about gender in introductory remarks. The statement should say something like this: ‘‘Even today, many people think women don’t do as well as men on tests of this kind, but we’ve found that gender makes no difference.’’ Stereotype threat isn’t particularly tricky to manage, but there are some additional points that are good to keep in mind: • ‘‘Women and minorities’’ are no more psychologically fragile than white men. Stereotype threat can affect anyone. For instance, stereotypes about men say they aren’t as empathetic or sensitive to the nuances of communication as women. When men being tested on their ability to read others’ emotions are given the message that ‘‘men are emotionally insensitive,’’ their performance falls. However, because white men are not generally stigmatized in relation to most work-related cognitive or physical skills, they’re less affected. • Stereotype threat is a problem only when the stereotype is already current in society at large, so trying to persuade women that their emotion-reading skills are not as good as men’s doesn’t affect their performance. • Stereotype threat is a statistical reality, but it can’t predict an individual’s performance. People vary in how they respond to negative stereotypes about their identity. People who have solid

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previous experience of mastering the task or test content are less likely to see their performance deteriorate in response to negative stereotypes; this is one reason preemployment training for the ‘‘minority’’ gender is beneficial. Once a member of a stigmatized minority learns from experience that he or she can do as well as everyone else, stereotype threat loses much of its power. • The obverse of stereotype threat has no effect. For instance, reinforcing existing positive stereotypes about men’s ability to perform math calculations will not improve men’s math performance.

RETENTION Based on the assessment, we determined that factors affecting retention include the sense of isolation; exclusion from information; and lack of mentoring, networking opportunities, and camaraderie. We heard from people that ‘‘everyone knows’’ which teams are accepting of women and other minorities and which aren’t. The best answer to the immediate problem is to allow more than one woman to be placed on a particular team, and to place women on teams that are more congenial to their presence. It’s better (and easier) to put the effort toward the most promising groups than to try to force change where resistance is highest. As numbers of women rise and the number of mixed teams follows suit, the environment will improve. A Women’s Network should be one of the best networking resources, but the structure of the existing network makes it unavailable to women in our plant environments. Furthermore, the Women’s Network isn’t ready—yet—to address issues that affect women in nontraditional employment. Lastly, this would be a good time to inaugurate a new gender-inclusive resource network to represent women and men who find themselves in nontraditional work roles. As useful as networks can be for fostering informal peer mentoring, they won’t be enough to meet our needs; therefore, we also recommend a free-standing mentoring program.

INTENTIONAL MENTORING The need for a mentoring program came up again and again during our assessment. A number of people who were personally interested in

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participating, either as mentors or as mentees, also said they didn’t really know what that would mean or how much of a commitment mentoring would require. Of the existing models that could be adapted for our facility, we agreed that ‘‘intentional mentoring’’ is the most promising solution to the isolating effects of gender and the answer to the question of what a mentor does. It’s hard to overestimate the value of good mentoring on both technical and social fronts. For instance, it’s better to learn the idiosyncrasies of equipment and the subtle tricks that make processes work from experienced people than from trial and error. Unfortunately, we found that women are often not given crucial information unless they make a specific request. They are less likely to be shown how to perform tasks, and they’ve often been refused when they do ask for information or try to get hands-on experience. Some of the women we talked to blamed themselves, and some realized that the men are being given access to technical information and help they’re not getting. This is a mentoring problem, and we can’t afford it. We identified three questions about how to promote gender inclusive mentoring: 1. How should the program be structured so that it works for both mentors and mentees? Most of the programs we looked at failed or exist in name only because they weren’t a good fit, they took too much time away from other job duties, or mentors had no motivation to participate. Establishing a beneficial relationship means, first of all, matching the right mentors and mentees and helping them determine a reasonable combination of face-to-face, phone, and/or e-mail contact. ‘‘Reasonable’’ means a commitment that isn’t onerous for either party, but that allows for enough contact so that the mentee can consider the mentor a valuable and trusted ally. Some mentoring relationships are needed for only a short time; others evolve as the mentee’s career progresses. We think a short formal commitment of three months is a good start. 2. What kind of mentoring should the program foster? Mentoring should help the mentee perform optimally, understand the workplace culture, make the best use of opportunities for further education and advancement, create a good work/life balance (a particularly acute issue here), and manage conflicts and difficulties with a minimum of upheaval. Mentoring works in an atmosphere of trust and relative openness. Both mentors and mentees

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often need coaching at first about how to offer and seek appropriate information and advice. There’s a bigger need for coaching if there are significant differences between the parties in terms of identity (gender, race, age, etc.) and seniority. 3. Who should be a mentor? The main qualifications for mentors are professional and organizational knowledge—and willingness. Beyond that, the qualities of a good mentor vary according to the needs of the specific mentee. Chemistry—the mystery of why some people relate well to one another and others don’t— only does its work as the relationship develops. If a mentoring relationship is not working out, the mentee should be able to move on without incurring bad feelings or repercussions. A good mentor has some empathy, knows how to maintain healthy personal and professional boundaries, and can sense the difference between his or her own past experience and the current experiences of the mentee. The assessment showed that the challenges that face a trainee now are different from those of 10 or 15 years ago. Finally, it is not necessary to be female to be a good mentor for a woman. While there are good strategic reasons for women-only preemployment training and possibly for some postemployment training, mentoring is a different matter. Mentoring is about establishing relationships that help people develop the right technical skills and integrate with the whole workplace culture.

CHILD CARE The issue of child care came up several times, and research with women in other nontraditional fields confirms that accessibility to child care is a major retention factor for many women. Increasingly, of course, it is also important to men. Speaking generally, lack of adequate child care is a chronic problem. It increases both absenteeism (according to some estimates, by 59 percent) and turnover. This is not just about mothers. Fathers now expect to be more involved in caring for their children than they did in previous generations. They want to, but they also have to, either because their life partners also work, or because they’re solo parents or divorced. Solving the child-care problem is more cost effective than not facing it, so we looked into child-care contractors other employers are using.

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Contractors near our facilities on both coasts provide custom solutions. In addition to regular, on-site child care, there are a number of special programs, including sick-child programs, night programs, back-up programs for when regular child care falls through, and back-up elder care—another significant problem for many of our employees. These programs can be offered singly or in combination. Some involve in-home care; others make use of a network of existing child-care centers . As for costs, clients can opt to provide their employees with a discount or establish ‘‘sliding scales’’ where tuition varies depending on salary level. Rack Inc. is big enough that the company’s cost to provide care will be balanced by parents’ contributions.

NOTES 1. P. Davies, S. Spencer, C. Steele (2005). ‘‘Clearing the Air: Identity Safety Moderates the Effects of Stereotype Threat on Women’s Leadership Aspirations.’’ Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 88: 2. 276–287. 2. Steven Spencer, Claude Steele, and Diane Quinn (1999). ‘‘Stereotype Threat and Women’s Math Performance.’’ Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 35:1. 4–28.

Index Barnett, Rosalind, 43, 94. See also She Works/He Works: How Two-Income Families Are Happier, Healthier, and Better Off Baron-Cohen, Simon, 7 Barres, Ben, 46 Brizendine, Louann, 7 Browne, Kingsley, 116 Buchanan, Holly, 79, 82. See also Soccer Mom Myth, The Buerk, Michael, 75 Business case, 101–106 Catalyst, 104 Child care, 180–181 Children: gender stereotypes of, 29; parental commitment to, 42 Conference Board of Canada, The, 104 Deloitte & Touche, 115 Distant, W. L., 1; Hares and Bunnies and, 6 DiversityInc, 104, 123 Duehr, Emily, 36 Earnings: effect of gender on, 20; job satisfaction and, 32

Education: about gender in the workplace, 120, 127, 139, 161; for gender inclusion, 54, 66, 142–145 Emotional brain, 84 Employee satisfaction, 138 Fathers, 91; child care and, 43, 180 Female Advantage, The, 16, 28, 77–78. See also Helgesen, Sally Flett, Christopher, 57 Fortune 1000 companies, 105 Fryer, Roland, 15 Gender bias, 115–117; incremental effect of, 27; nature of, 118–120; unconscious, 114, 124 Gender differences: in aggression, 57, 97; in communication, 7, 10; historical views of, 1, 83–84; in mathematical ability, 176; perceptions of merit and, 48; in performance of domestic chores, 43; pet theories about, 50, 142; research on, 31; in self-confidence, 27, 41 Gender inclusion, 102–103, 107, 128– 133; business case for, 103–105; educating for, 54, 66, 142–145;

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influence of, on organizational identity, 51, 96, 121; leadership and, 80–81, 86–87; men’s support for, 37; mentoring and, 112; on teams, 138– 139; strategies for implementing, 33– 35, 72–73, 84–85, 121–122, 127–128 Gender-inclusion plan, 133–136 Gender outliers: advancement of, in organizations, 49, 51; commonalities among, 56; definition of, 45; examples of, 47; invisibility of, 55; stigma and, 54; transgender and, 46 Gender similarities, 3, 7, 16, 31–32, 78. See also Hyde, Janet Shibley Gender stereotypes, 9, 30, 35–36, 78; about parents, 29, 79; attributions of merit and, 48; costs of, for individuals, 32; organizational well-being and, 21–22 Glass ceiling, 157–159 Glass cliff, 81 Gray, John, 2, 4. See also Mars and Venus

Male advantage, 9–10 Managers: attitudes of, toward women, 36; gender inclusion and, 102, 128; reward for performance of, 110–111; women as, 155–156 Mars and Venus, 4, 6, 116. See also Gray, John Masculinity, 9–10, 30, 46, 57 McCracken, Douglas, 115 Mentoring: gender inclusion and, 112– 113, 178–180; in gender-segregated organizations, 81, 161; retention and, 178 Microcultures, in organizations, 130 Miller, Michele, 79. See also Soccer Mom Myth, The Mothers: the ‘‘mommy track’’ and, 82; stereotypes about, 29, 85

Harassment, effect on bystanders, 33, 55 Haslam, Alex, 81 Helgesen, Sally, 8–9, 16–17. See also Female Advantage, The Hofmeister, John, 105 Hyde, Janet Shibley, 31–32, 116

O’Flaherty, Ian, 52 Oportunidades, 109–110 Organizational change, 106; factors in failure of, 72, 83; resistance to, 71, 85 Organizational identity, 96 Organizations: assets of, for gender inclusion, 130; gender norms in, 47– 46, 50, 76 Outliers: defined, 45–46; in organizations, 54–57, 67–68

Insider/outsider dynamics, 55; among children, 57; consequences of, 88; need to belong and, 12–13; in nontraditional work settings, 49; social exclusion and, 57 Keenan, Edward, 85 Leadership: feminine advantage in, 8; on gender-mixed teams, 138; organizational change initiatives and, 86, 122– 123, 127; responsibilities of, for gender inclusion, 13–14, 52–53, 102, 107, 131; role of, in cultivating talent, 95 Ledbetter, Lilly, 37–39, 46 LeDoux, Joseph, 84 Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, 37

Nontraditional careers, 131, 164; acceptance of, 52; advancement in, 48–49; recruiting for, 166–169 Nooyi, Indra, 104

Pace, Stan, 122 Parents, time spent with children, 44 Paw study, 32 Pepsi, 104, 106 Pool of ignorance, 118 Productivity, 135, 139 Race and gender, 15–16, 37, 40 Recruitment, 131–132, 172 Reinemund, Steve, 104 Retention, 109, 115, 135 Rivers, Caryl, 43. See also She Works/He

Index Works: How Two-Income Families Are Happier, Healthier, and Better Off Schein, Virginia, 35. See also ‘‘Think manager—think male’’ attitude Schemas, 58–60 Sexual orientation, 55, 117; gender stereotypes and, 47; perceived, 46 She Works/He Works: How Two-Income Families Are Happier, Healthier, and Better Off, 43. See also Barnett, Rosalind and Rivers, Caryl Shell Oil Company, 105 Soccer Mom Myth, The, 79. See also Buchanan, Holly and Miller, Michele Social change: as threat, 83–84; backlash to, 20 Sotomayor, Sonia, 49 Stereotype threat, 5, 175–178 Stereotyping and group solidarity, 77 Successful gender inclusion, indicators of, 134–135 Summers, Lawrence, 11–12 Tannen, Deborah, 10 Teams, 59–60, 77, 144; gender inclusive, 137–139

185 ‘‘Think manager—think male’’ attitude, 35, 40. See also Schein, Virginia Tokenism, 13–12, 77–78 Tools: assessment, 129–131; benchmarking, 129; for bringing outliers in, 52, 60–64; education, 142– 145; employee resource groups, 130; external organizations, 130; for advancement of women, 136–138; mentoring, 111, 178–180; overview, 102–103; for recruiting for nontraditional careers, 166–168; retention, 178; snags, dealing with, 131–132; training and testing, 172–178 Women: doubts about commitments of, 28; retention and advancement of, in organizations, 136–138, 157–159, 178 Women of color: attrition of, in law firms, 124; earnings of, 40; recruitment of, 87 Women’s employee networks, 37, 111, 140–141 Work/life balance: influence of, on employee satisfaction, 9; men’s health and, 30–31; programs, 81–82

About the Author DR. ALICE ADAMS has been working in both the corporate and academic worlds, maximizing the effectiveness and understanding of gender for over seventeen years. Her focus is on developing new paradigms for operational, human resources, and diversity management at all levels to leverage human capital for more successful integration and utilization of women and men at work. She is the author of two other books about gender and systems.